Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. My days of waking up naturally, stumbling to my computer, picking up my high G concert ukulele, and sitting in my office chair to compose music for the ukulele are ending. Such is the luxury of time. All the time in the world to compose. The third project (record my music) should start on 1st March 2025. Already late in starting my second project this year (get my music published) I will have to multi-task or parallel process to compose, publish, and record. The gift of time. The gift of freedom. The horse is the 11th animal sign in the 12 Chinese Zodiac Tunes I’m writing.
The five black keys
Before I took piano lessons, I witnessed my father playing Chinese songs on the piano. His chubby fingers, straight not curved, glided over the black keys, and only the black keys, as he sounded out the pentatonic melodies.
He had learned to play the piano in college. Did he learn or did he discover that
- A lot of Chinese songs are pentatonic, and
- The F# major pentatonic scale is the only one that uses all five black keys?
Safe to say, it’s easy to figure out melodies of songs that are pentatonic on the five black piano keys. You can’t accidentally play a wrong note.
It’s not so on the ukulele.
Triple meter and dotted quarter notes
To simulate a gallop, I chose to start this pentatonic piece with a pick-up and deliberately introduce asymmetry with dotted quarter notes in common time.
In the second section the duration of the eighth note is retained but the meter changes to 6/8 time.
In the last section, the three eighth notes of the 6/8 time become the triplet of a quarter note in 4/4 time.
Tempo indication
Again, I deliberately refrained from indicating a tempo because it’s more important to play the right notes than to play at any particular speed.
From gallop to waltz
The first and third bars of the third section (labelled with rehearsal mark C) contain the exact same notes but positioned in different places on the high G ukulele.
A different common time
While the melody in first and last sections seem the same, the 4/4 time signature no longer feels the same. Each eighth note in the triplet in the last section has the same duration as the eighth note in the previous two sections of 6/8 time.
Why does it no longer feel the same as the beginning of the piece?
12 Chinese Zodiac Tunes
All 12 pieces are written for high G ukulele. All twelve are pentatonic. Each piece is dedicated to one of the 12 animals in the 12 Chinese Zodiac Cycle. Hence, “12 Chinese Zodiac Tunes.”
- Counting Sheep, Counting Sheep to Sleep
- Gift Horse
- Year of the Snake
- Dragon Born
- Rabbit Hole
- Two Tigers
- Holy Cow
- Rat Race
- Pig Out, Pigs Fly, Guinea Pig
- Doggy Bag
- Rooster – Chicken Feed
- Monkey Around
For other recent compositions and arrangements by Anne Ku, please visit the Daily Music Writing Project or scroll through the consecutive blog posts.
