My daughter has got a little toy xylophone. It’s got eight keys, going from low-pitched to high-pitched from left to right (I’ll refer to these as keys A [low] through H [highest]).
My sister-in-law showed us how to play part of “Joy to the World”, like so (in time to the music):
Joy to the world H-G-F-E
The Lord has come D-C-B-A
Let earth receive her king A-B B-C C-D
Let every heart prepare Him room E-F-G-H …
…
And that’s about as far as we can remember. We haven’t been able to work out the other notes on our own. How would the rest of the first stanza go (through And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing)?
Also, can the house suggest some more songs we could noodle out on the xylophone?
My husband and I were on a road trip and for a joke he bought me one of those little xylophones to keep me amused. (Yeah, like that was a smart idea!)
Within a few minutes I had mastered the opening notes of “Those Endearing Young Charms”. I’m not sure if that’s the title of the song but it’s the one that is always played in the cartoons with the stick of dynamite attached to one of the keys that only seems to go off then Wile E. Coyote or another WB baddie plays the tune.
I’d work out the notes for you but the xylophone mysteriously disappeared after that road trip.
I recently challenged my students to build and program a robot to play an eight note xylophone. (Probably the same one you have, there was only one at Toys R Us. Purple plastic shell, you could play on keys or by hitting the bars yourself.)
The notes are Middle C through High C, with no sharps.
It came with four songs on the back:
Mary Had A Little Lamb
Twinkle Twinkle
Frere Jacques
and I forget the fourth.
One team’s robot played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, which was really impressive. The rest of them kind of played the scales, and not that well mostly.
I’ll try to ignore that the keys are named alphabetically (A-H), instead of musically (C-C). You need to make some changes to your Joy of the World routine:
Sorry about that … can’t really read music. But I figure the musically-inclined could effortlessly imagine this little xylophone in their head, and work out rough melodies.
However, you could perhaps post a conversion chart.
You’re right; and there’s also one on “Buy me some peanuts…” Even worse, it goes outside the one-octave range on “…if I never get back.” the bots must have cheated.
Oh, and the “Endearing Young Charms” tune goes:
C B A B A A C E D F H H
I don’t know the rest; that’s as far as Yosemite Sam ever got. Be sure there’s no dynamite wired to the “H” before attempting this.
Can’t this be kind of worked around in an eight-note universe? It won’t sound great to musicians, but something in the ballpark ( :smack: ) should be possible.
Heh. Just for the heck of it, here’s how the whole thing goes, as best as I can remember the tune:
C B A B A A C E D F H H
G F E D C B A B C
C B A B A A C E D F H H
G F E H C B A B A
E D C E H H
E E F D H H
G F E D C B A B C
C B A B A A C E D F H H
G F E H C B A B A
On a piano, the major scale played on only white keys is a C Major scale. And once you get to G, you cycle around again and start with the letter A.
So, here’s your conversion chart:
A B C D E F G H
**C D E F G A B C**
Now, we can’t guarantee that the eight notes on your toy xylophone actually correspond to the key of C. But if you want to talk musicianspeak, it’s just convenient to say that the top and bottom keys are each a C, an octave apart.
And, just a note to other theory nuts reading this, I don’t want to hear a word about H being the same as B in German!
My little brother, age 4 then, got a toy piano for Christmas in 1965. It had the black keys painted on; the range was approximately 1 1/2 octaves. My sister, age 14 at the time, used to play simple tunes on it.
