If you have any comments or questions, you can send me an email
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If you find any of these songs useful, please consider becoming a member of this site. I am happy and proud to be a member and it has been a great investment that has reaped huge dividends. I have gotten a lot more out of this site than I could ever hope to put in and I am genuinely grateful.
I am a semi-retired Folksinger, retired Army Bandsman, currently teaching Guitar Ensemble, String Ensembles, Concert Choir, and Recorder Ensemble, grades 3 - 8. Next time I retire though, I am going right back into folk singing. (It keeps me humble)
Songs are like children. They have to get out on their own and find their own identity. I started the process by writing them, but you complete the process by learning them, passing them down to young minds, and keeping them alive. I sincerely hope that one or two of my little songs will live on past the time when anyone will know I actually wrote them. It is the sweetest form of immortality I could possibly think of. You can find free MP3s of my folk songs on Soundclick.com
here.
Leave me a message if you drop by. I would love to know what you think of my primitive efforts. I will also be mentioning that my songs will be written down here, so don't get stuck in a loop. I have had to depend on people who are wiser than me in the ways of technology all of my life. It doesn't bother me, but I am grateful that they are so gracious as well as generous. If you need any of these in a different format, give me a shout and if I am not in the middle of concert season, I will be glad to consider your request.
[[[Milestones]]]
>>>We Went over 70,000 downloads, so the next goal is to get to 100,000. (Maybe even by the end of the year? < hope, hope >) When I was first invited to this webpage, I never thought it was possible, but now I have to admit that I am genuinely hopeful.
>>>Three songs have gone over 1,000 downloads now. I can't wait to find material that is at least as useful. Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.
>>>Finally got the Sol-Feg files uploaded. I would love to get feedback on these.
I would love to hear if something you found on this page convinced you to become a member. I don't get anything for it and I'm not looking for bragging rights. I would just like to know if this page is helping out Mike in any way. I don't want his generosity to me, to become a burden for this site. If something else was a deciding factor, be sure and let Mr. Daly know about that as well. If there is anything that any one of us can do to keep this online, I'm sure we can find a way to get it done. Oh, and if you actually read down this far, thank you bunches. My students are used to me but I may be a bit overwhelming to the general public.
Charles Consaul - Files To Download and
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Product Number: 1013000062 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 4
Description: One of my students thought we should be playing this and got the rest of the class to agree with him, so I wrote it up one afternoon and passed it out for the next class. I may do a slightly less challenging version of it in G Major sometime, so if you need one bug me. My students swear by it!
The first part is in fifth and seventh position so this is definitely for a more experienced group, but the second and third parts can be played by any first year player with a bit of experience. If you have classes with players who are at different levels, this might work out well for you as well.
Description: When my recorder players ask for a song (as long as it's legal) I'd better get it for them. Otherwise it's "One, Two, Three strikes and I'm out!"
Product Number: 1012004160 Series: Guitar Solo Pages: 1
Description: This is an intermediate level guitar solo without shorthand notation. To be honest, I wrote it for my own amusement. I was goofing around with the guitar on a day off and it suddenly fell under my fingers. There are just a couple of tricky bits, otherwise it is a fairly easy little song to play, but I heard someone whistling it right after I played it for the first time. That's always a hopeful sign for me!
Product Number: 1012000507 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: I wrote this for a song contest while I was serving with the 298th Army Band in Berlin, Germany. I did not win the song contest, but the song that won was so dreadful, that it was an honor not to win. In any case, I got this song out of it! I will always look back at the time I spent with my little chisel and hammer, knocking a few chunks out of the Berlin wall so I could say that "I Helped!" with a smile.
Description: The combination of repetition and waltz time make this a favorite with beginning recorder students. I deliberately put an F natural in the second part so we can talk about the difference in the way that the melody sounds between the two notes. One of my students came up with a brilliant way to introduce F sharp by the way. She said that it was just like playing a low D, but with your first finger up!
Product Number: 1012000415 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: This is appropriate for late beginners to early intermediate guitarists. The syncopation makes it a bit more challenging, but it's worth it.
Product Number: 1012000520 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: This song started out as a novelty piece, but one day it just took on a life of it's own, picked itself up by it's own bootstraps, and got all serious on me.
Product Number: 1013000042 Series: Guitar Solo Pages: 2
Description: This is a first year guitar solo, with and without shorthand notation. All kinds of things have been crossing the Bering Straits for centuries, so now we will cross it with our guitars!
Product Number: 1012000366 Series: Children's Pages: 1
Description: Do not do this song in a room with a weak foundation. When students sing this song, they tend to literally go "Boing Boing Boing Boing Boing Boing Boing" all over the place. As long as you are on a firm foundation, it is a lot of fun, and tends to bring out a lot of enthusiasm. If you have shy voices that are afraid to come out and play, this is the song to teach them.
Product Number: 1012000508 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: Turns out, Yeshua (Known to us as Jesus) was probably more of a Stone Mason than he was a Carpenter, but I'm not going to stop singing this song over a minor little detail like that!
Product Number: 1012004122 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 4
Description: This is a novelty piece I wrote for guitar ensemble. It includes shorthand notation if you need it, as well as a separate Bass line. We even had a student bring in a drum-set one year. It worked so well I am thinking about trying to get one into the room.
Description: This is a traditional Jewish song about a Top or a dreidel, that they use to collect "Gelt" (real or chocolate coins) during the Hannukah season.
Product Number: 1012000424 Series: String Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: Another of my later efforts with a score and slightly more defined parts. We had a good time with this one.
Product Number: 1012000560 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: Friendly little guitar ensemble part with lots of interplay and movement. Enjoy!
Description: This is also known as the eensy weensy spider, but it is so much more fun to say itsy bitsy. This is fun to both play and sing. We also sing the note names and sol-feg for variety.
Product Number: 1012000355 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: This is a popular children's song from the Opera, Hansel and Gretal Engelbert Humperdink. It is written for guitar ensemble in three voices, with and without shorthand notation. It was written by request from a parent of a student who "hates" opera! I didn't say anything to the student, but let the parent have all the fun when she went up to that student after the concert to spill the beans. The student's response was, "Well, but you hate Rock and Roll!" I guess they are both going to make more of an effort to listen to each other's music so it's all good.
Product Number: 1012000811 Series: Recorder Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: This piece is a little bit more difficult in that it is in the Key of "F Major" (with a B Flat) and it goes all the way up to High F (same as low F but with a half hole on the bottom) so if your group is up to the challenge, try this one!
Product Number: 1012004159 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: This is a guitar ensemble score with no shorthand notation. I used to play these with a friend of mine who recently requested a way to get hold of them. I came upon this elegant method of getting them to him. Hopefully, many others will have some use for these as well. Enjoy.
Product Number: 1012004046 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: I just wrote this and it is still creaking in my head as I upload it. Please let me know if it works for you. I'm giving it to my students tomorrow.
Product Number: 1012000418 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: Another beginning Guitar ensemble piece with a horrible pun for a title. It took three full weeks before I heard my students groaning however and some of them still don't get it. Nope, I don't explain 'em either!
Product Number: 1012000369 Series: Children's Pages: 1
Description: I did not write this song. It is a traditional children's song, but it is very very silly. It was also not nearly long enough, so I added some verses. I hope you don't mind. I tried to make them just as silly as the original verse, and my students tell me that songs sing better when they last longer. My students know a lot about that. They try to teach me something every time we get together. Really !!!
Product Number: 1012004067 Series: Children's Pages: 1
Description: This is a Christmas Novelty Song written to the tune of a traditional Guitar piece. I was practicing it one day and started singing along to myself. My students have a great time singing it, and I hope yours will too. A lot of them tell me that parents are often buying them pretty much anything else they want in lieu of a pony. Go Figgur!
Description: This is a Unison sheet with all of the parts on the same page. Snake charmer is in both Minor and Major and Major modes, which is handy for starting a discussion concerning the differences in the sound. Students have fun with this and you can reward them by allowing them to play it when they get their other work done!
Product Number: 1012004120 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: This is a first to second year arrangement for guitar ensemble. My first group found this a bit of a struggle, but the second group that tried it had very little trouble at all. We play this with the recorders and when we get to guitars, the students just don't want to let it go.
Product Number: 1012004048 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: If you waltz with a cactus on a Saturday Night, you are bound to wake up on Sunday Morning with a Prickly Pear!
Product Number: 1012000406 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: Can your ensemble play for twenty minutes next week, despite the fact that you've only been together for three weeks and barely know each other? This is the type of score you need to get the job done. Goes over well with the audience and has a very low learning curve. You can make a lot out of it with very little work and for some reason it seems to stick in my student's heads! Many of them come back after being away for a couple years and this is one of the pieces they always go back to the bin for!
Product Number: 1012000345 Series: Guitar Solo Pages: 1
Description: This is one of the first sheets I give my students. It is a very simple, two line guitar solo piece that can also be played as a duet (one row plays stems up and the other plays stems down) All of the basses are open strings and the second page has my shorthand notation. There is a second solo called "Take the Cook To Dinner" that I put on there because I honestly believe that when I waste that much space on a piece of paper, Trees everywhere will weep.
Product Number: 1012004119 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 4
Description: This is a first year guitar ensemble arrangement with and without shorthand notation. I also included a Bass part. I originally wrote this as a first year solo but my students begged me to rewrite it as an ensemble piece so they could play it together for the Winter Concert. When you get sixty to seventy guitars playing this at the same time, it is really kind of fun!
Description: I originally chose the name for it's alliterative qualities, but it tends to facilitate discussions about the exotic animals in Australia as well.
Product Number: 1012000509 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: A few years back, they actually named a hurricane after my Mother. They have never to my knowledge, named one after me, but Mom's brush with fame was close enough for me to get a song out of the whole thing!
Product Number: 1012004151 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: Woodrow Wilson (Woodie) Guthrie's Estate attempted to sue Jib Jab (the people who do the parodies on You Tube) for using "This Land Is Your Land" without permission. The folks from Jib Jab responded by proving that this song was now in the public Domain in a Court of Law. What this means is that This song is now made for you and me. I included two additional verses that we sing just for fun. If you prefer a version without the additional verses, let me know and I will be more than happy to post it. Other than that, enjoy!
Product Number: 1012004068 Series: Choir Reduction With Chords Pages: 4
Description: This is a two part version of a popular spiritual, written for our Black History Month commemoration. It starts out in the key of F major and modulates to G Major. It also has a little extra spice sifted into it. I hope you find it useful.
Product Number: 1012004164 Series: Guitar Educational Pages: 1
Description: This is the symmetrical and non-symmetrical three octave scale for guitar. The difference is minor and has to do with whether you consistently follow a pattern, or prefer to play more open strings. Both scales have merit and both are worth learning, if only because different instructors prefer different versions of the same scale and it never hurts to know both!
Product Number: 1012000437 Series: String Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: Mix and match parts for those times when you have players, but not necessarily the players you need. I add to this as I need it and may develop it more as needed, so let me know what you need.
Description: MacDowell wrote a wonderful series of Piano solos but other musicians want to play them as well. Recorder students love to play this and parents tend to like hearing it as well.
Product Number: 1012004047 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 2
Description: This is a beginning guitar ensemble piece for that first concert where you want to sound really big and bold. My students tended to pick up on it quickly, but I think it was mostly because they were playing it a lot more often than the other pieces. I have to remember that trick and see if I can do it again sometime!
Product Number: 1012000380 Series: Guitar Ensemble Pages: 1
Description: Every once in awhile, I have to let my guitar players use plectrums. (picks) They like to strum and they love to play tremolo. This can be played with and without plectrums, but whatever you do, don't play it hesitantly. This is a loud proud song in the Mariachi tradition and it should be played with abandon.
Product Number: 1012004218 Series: Guitar Educational Pages: 1
Description: I learned this picking style from an old episode of Gunsmoke and it took me almost six months to finally master it. Hopefully, with this lesson, you can pick it up in a few weeks. (or even a few days) I put a modified version of the picking style down below since it involves a chord progression that most of my students wanted to learn anyway, for some reason!
Product Number: 1012004223 Series: Guitar Educational Pages: 1
Description: This page contains the original chord progression I learned when I first tried to master the Travis Pick. This style uses a three fingered style. There is also a thumb and two fingered Travis Pick style but it is not included here.
Product Number: 1012004069 Series: Lead Sheet Pages: 1
Description: This is a popular Spiritual that was adapted for the equal rights movement. We use it during our Black History Month Commemoration and hope you find it useful as well. It is a powerful song and you can add as many verses as you have time for. Movements can also be added, as well as a loud resounding "NO" every time the idea of turning around is suggested!
