Simpedia

Leeanne I., Australia

I personally would leave it until you have learned all the different chords. I use the supplementary books Songs for Children, Songs for Everyone, and Songs for Christmas as practice songs for the chords, or you could source your own material. Songs sound better than ‘exercises’, which is what SM uses, so I don’t go there. Then just process Danny Boy with all chords slowly, do 4 bars at a time. Don’t move to the next 4 bars until they are comfortable playing what you have taught. Kind of advancing the fragments.

Rebecca G., Colorado

I have my students take it in small bits and really pay attention to how the hands move from chord to chord in each of those bits. It’s a bit like translating the chord movement into playing-based language like we do with the foundation songs.

Kym N., California

I teach two phrases (two lines) each time and learn the new chords as they appear in the order of the songs. For example, the first two lines has +9. Then we talk about how it is related to the family chord we have already learned and we figure out how to play a +9 with other chord names.

I have them play the first chord as a 7th in the beginning instead of the 13th. Some kids’ hands are too small for the 13th chord. And switch back to the 13th at the end.

Cate R., Australia

I go straight to the last line first. We work on that. Next, two lines at a time plus the last line. They get it faster and don’t seem to run out of puff!

Stephen R., California:

It wouldn’t hurt to quiz the students on several chords of they new types presented in that song. I may start doing that with future students as we go through the chord charts at the end. For example, before the opening Ab13 in the song, maybe C13, E13, Bb13, etc first for practice.

In the song there are a couple of things to point out: the F as an anchor note on the sequence of Db chords. I prefer finger 2 on the F. The Ab11 to Gbdim switch is just the top two notes moving down. At the end, the Bbm7 to Amaj7 is interesting because just the LH and top RH notes move down. It helps to have students see this during these tricky spots.

Laurie Richards, Nebraska

As you can see, there are many different ways to go about incorporating this song! Personally I don’t think the purpose of this Danny Boy is to have mastered all those chords already. I see it more of a “wow, I really can figure all this out” type of project.

You may have noticed – with ANY Accompaniment project – that a student may know a chord perfectly in a particular song, but in a different context has trouble playing the chord (in the beginning stages anyway). I think this is pretty typical until students just have more and more experience playing different accompaniment projects. It’s the same with Danny Boy – it gives them great exposure to an easy way to play a LOT of different chords, but they probably won’t remember them all right away.

Patti P., Hawaii

I give them time to experience the various chord types in the Chord Chart pages in different keys first. Then I break Danny Boy down into phrases and have them learn a line or two a week, depending on the class. I just let them know at the start of it that we’re going to take this one in small doses.