Memorize the four notes on the fifth fret of the ukulele with an acronym: chicken feed all day. CFAD. When I first heard it used, I thought that chickens eat all day. Then I realize that “chicken feed” could refer to a noun, as in small or negligible amount of money, wage, or anything. Hopefully my new pentatonic piece using the notes of C, F, A, D is not chicken feed! It’s the eighth piece in the 12 Chinese Zodiac Tunes I’m writing at this time.
Year of the Rooster or Year of the Chicken?
In English, the Year of the Rooster sounds grander than the Year of the Chicken. In Chinese, chicken is chicken whether male or female, large or small. To distinguish the gender and kind of chicken, we add characters in front. Add mother in front of chicken to get hen. Add small in front of chicken to get chick. Rooster is a male chicken. That’s all.
When I spotted the latest drawings of roosters and chickens on George Kahumoku Jr‘s Facebook page, I couldn’t resist asking him if I could share them with my readers. Unko George, as he is affectionately called, is Hawaii’s Renaissance Man, the essence of aloha. He and his entourage of Hawaiian musicians are making one stop in Massachusetts: Friday 28th February 2025 at Club Passim, on their Mainland USA winter tour.
Now I am curious if Unko George has drawn the other eleven Chinese Zodiac animals.
My pentatonic piece for the Chinese Zodiac sign of rooster or chicken or hen or chick uses the acronym CFAD.
Easy to read and play
Unlike my previous piece “Rat Race,” I am making a deliberate attempt to stick to the predictable eight bar structure to make playing it as easy as possible.
One of the things I learned in my journey in writing music is that it’s easy to write music that’s challenging for others to play. Most of the forty-two scores I received in my Call for Multi-hand Piano Music Project were too hard to sightread and uninteresting to play. I decided then to aim to write music that looks so inviting that the “reader” wants or begs to play it.
For this reason, I have tried to stick to common time, quarter notes, minimal eighth notes, and a predictable form. Every eight bars something different happens, if only slightly.
Left hand techniques
“Chicken Feed” makes less use of the left hand techniques that I have been raving about. Hammering on and pulling off shouldn’t be overly done. I reserve it for the fast notes.
The opportunity to hammer on comes with consecutive notes on the same string going from a low numbered fret to a high one. The reverse is true for pulling off. Pull off by plucking the pressed note on a high fret to sound the pitch on the same string but a lower fret or open string.
This pentatonic piece does require moving the left hand from the first position (first three frets) to the fifth fret to execute the acronym CFAD.
While I have not indicated any dynamics in the entire piece, it makes sense to surmise what happens in the end. Should we end with a bang – a big down strum on the last chord CFAD (which is an F6 or Dm7 chord)? Or a soft exit?
12 Chinese Zodiac Tunes
- Counting Sheep, Counting Sheep to Sleep
- Wild Horses or Horse with a Name or Horse’s Mouth or Trojan Horse
- Year of the Snake
- Dragon Born
- Rabbit Hole
- Two Tigers
- Holy Cow
- Rat Race
- Pig
- Dog
- Rooster – Chicken Feed
- Monkey Business
For other recent compositions and arrangements by Anne Ku, please visit the Daily Music Writing Project.
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