Traditional Irish songs tend to be either bouncy, or tender & sweet. Galway Piper falls into the bouncy, fun-to-play camp!
The melody is composed almost entirely of scale patterns, with a few chord-based skips here and there. It's easy to spot the G chord fragments, which will help with memorizing the piece.
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
Page two, right hand, is a repeat of page one, but the left hand drops down an octave and uses open fifths, giving us a bigger sound.
Almost every bit of the left hand is a G or D chord shape - very easy!
Your students may not need the help of any of these lettered notes - but if some of your pianists play much better than they can read - very common! - then this version with lettered notes might save them LOTS OF TIME. And you, too!
Eventually, they will memorize these notes, particularly when they appear over and over again as in the phrases of Galway Piper.
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
You will notice that the rhythm appears quite different. Commonly, I do double the note values for beginner students so that they are able to count the notes out at home for themselves. It's not as if they will be able to play it quickly at first, anyway!
By the time they get faster at it, they will no longer need to be counting.
Use the chord symbols to make a duet for you and your student. You can trade places with them on the piano bench, too, and have them play chords while you play the melody!
I like to use open 5ths for Irish-sounding music, but if this is a bit of a stretch for your student, then single bass notes instead of two or three note chords will also sound impressive to your pupil.
Duets are fun! And fun is why kids want to take piano lessons, don't you think?
The piano arrangement shown in the video:
Download Galway Piper traditional Irish song for piano
The AlphaNotes version for elementary piano:
Download Irish kid's song with lettered notes
The first-year student arrangement:
Download Galway Piper with shared-hands melody
All the first-year material I give my beginner students.
Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!
This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This", available as a digital download, tells the riveting story of the time when Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a brave young queen risked her life to save her people.
A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!
This book is also available from Amazon as a paperback.
This book is available as a digital download from this site. Visit this page to see some free examples from the book.
It is also available from Amazon as a paperback!
This is the perfect easy start for little pianists.
And when they start reading white-key notes on the staff, this is a fun easy resource to say each week, "Choose a new black-key song at home this week and figure it out to show me next lesson!" They will be spending more time at the piano.
A perfect read aloud storybook
for little boys or girls.
The Adventures of Tonsta highlight the travels of a very young boy with a good heart, who goes about helping folk in trouble.
With a red cap on his head and a sack of tools slung over his shoulder, Tonsta seems to meet people in distress wherever he goes.
Lots of trolls in this book - including one who gives him a Christmas gift!
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.