Free Sheet Music! Goodnight Irene.
Here’s some easy piano sheet music for a American Classic – Goodnight Irene. It was first recorded by Lead Belly (aka Huddie William Ledbetter or Leadbelly) in 1933. Apparently, the folklorists John and his son Alan Lomax, after having “discovered” Lead Belly in the Angola prison, sent a copy of their recording him performing “Goodnight Irene” to Louisiana’s governor to petition for Lead Belly’s release. (Lead Belly was serving time for attempted homicide).
Huddie William Ledbetter (January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949) aka “Lead Belly or Leadbelly”
Anyway, the song is a classic. It’s been covered by almost everyone – from Johnny Cash to Frank Sinatra to the Meat Puppets. In fact, here’s a list of just a few of the people who have covered this tune.
Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it as much as others have. This is intended for students who can handle a basic waltz style, using G C and D chords in inversions. The key, as you may have guessed, is G major.
The music is also written in a good key for many children’s voices, so could be used for children sing alongs.
You can download the sheet music here.
Filed under free sheet music, printables
Free Beethoven Composer Quiz
My students have been learning about Beethoven in lessons recently and I’ve had several of them read the short Beethoven biography from MakingMusicFun.net.
To accompany this lesson, I’ve created a little quiz on Beethoven based on the bio the students were given above. I’ve used it at a lesson the week following having them read the bio to make sure that the students pay attention. It could also be used with the bio as a reading comprehension style worksheet.
Here’s a snapshot of the quiz. The full text is available at my website here. 
Filed under music history
Infographics mean facts.
Another handy infographic that shows the correlation between music study and intelligence.
Created by TakeLessons
Related articles
- Music as an Elixir for Your Brain (psychologytoday.com)
Filed under music education
New Bass Clef study: Czerny No. 7 from the Little Pianist
Hi everyone! Happy Friday!
Today, I’ve decided to share another one of my Czerny rewrites. This one is similar to the last one – it’s all in bass clef to help intermediate students focus on bass clef reading.
Again, let me know what your strategies are for dealing with bass clef reading. I have several students who have come to me as intermediate students but with weak reading skills. These students are particular unhappy with doing easy pieces that would better match their reading level so my solution is to give them these as quick study pieces - students spend no more than a month on them.
An incomplete picture – if you want the full piece, you’ll have to follow my link
Here’s the link to the whole piece. Czerny No. 7 for bass clef.
Related articles
- Bass Clef Focus: Czerny Op. 823 Rewritten (nolapianoteacher.wordpress.com)
Filed under free sheet music, music education, printables
