Here is an arrangement of "Drunken Sailor" I wrote for combined first- and second-year orchestra students--renamed "Variations on a Sea Shanty." The version for beginners is mostly just open D and first finger E (with a few open As and first finger Bs later on), all in unison. It has a variation with dotted quarter/eighth notes, which I taught more by ear. The intermediate version for second-year orchestra students is all D and A string notes including high E, so cellos get to do a little shifting. (Looking back at the bass part now, I might rewrite m. 7, 8 and the first note of m. 9 and similar places down an octave to give basses the option not to shift up to high E). This second-year intermediate version includes the hooked bowing, a few slurs for violin/viola, and double stops for all instruments but the basses. The theme is the melody in unison, and then violins/violas and cellos/basses are each featured in two variations.
Students enjoyed this melody and recognizing similarities and differences between each of the variations. They also learned the lyrics from Bonnie Greene's Blue Book:
What do you do with a bow and fiddle...early in the morning?
Saw, saw away I tell you...early in the morning!
Sheet music (all PDFs):
- Beginning orchestra parts
- Intermediate orchestra parts
- Score (Violin I represents the beginning orchestra parts, Violin II is from the intermediate version)
Audio (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice:
- Sea Shanty audio files (Google Doc)
Again, I like to use clip art instead of labeling parts "beginning" and "intermediate" or by grade level, so you'll see matching images within the beginning and intermediate parts and on the score.
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