Song ideas for teaching kids.

Gwatkins15 · May 2019

I've been teaching my niece guitar for a year or so (she's 7). She's really impressed me with her progress, although choosing/creating stuff to teach her is a nightmare. She does chords easy and she finds 'chord songs' a bit meh. She knows a few scales and I'm slowly getting her improvising.

Does anyone have any ideas of songs like Yesterday, with a melody that uses different strings, so secretly developing her technique but with a melody that's memorable so she can practice at home without YouTube etc.

sev112 · May 2019

Theme tune to MASH

Lestratcaster · May 2019

Some of the Rockshool acoustic performance pieces contain melody notes to pop songs, they're quite for ones I feel aren't ready for full chord shapes yet, I just get them to play the single note melody.

viz · May 2019

sev112 said:

Theme tune to MASH

A classic back-cycle song

What are “chord songs”? Is the issue giving her songs with memorable tunes so she can play single-note melody across the strings? If so:

somewhere over the rainbow
happy birthday
How deep is your love
doe a deer
o come all ye faithful

etc

Rocker · May 2019

Chords and melody (and vocals) together: "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes" is a great song/tune to learn as it affords the opportunity to involve others in the performance. There is at least one good video online that explains the technique and teaches how to play the song.

Sesh · May 2019

Everybody hurts. Although it is just chords, the picking makes it interesting and helps show if and of the notes of the chord are not being fretted properly.

Gwatkins15 · May 2019

Good suggestions. What I'm after really are 'pieces', like yesterday, single note stuff, a bit more challenging than basic happy birthday kind of things. Everything I search for just results in '50 easiest songs with 2 chords', Anyone recommend any grade books, they might be more structured and more of what I'm after. I'll certainly check out the rockschool books.

Lestratcaster · May 2019

RGT@LCM do good acoustic pieces like Auld Lang Syne and Swing Low Sweet Chariot for Grade 1, short recognisable melodies that aren't hard to play. They could do with updating their repertoire a bit though cos its very outdated compared to RSL.