What a queer bird the frog are:
When he sit he stand (almost);
When he walk he fly (almost);
When he talk he cry (almost);
He ain't got no sense (hardly);
He ain't got no tail, either (hardly);
He sit on what he ain't got (hardly).
Historical background
The Uncertain History of the Frog Round
Watch it here
Watch it on YouTube
There are six versions of the video on YouTube:
1. original bar-graph score (as shown above)
2. non-scrolling score
3. non-scrolling score with parts numbered
4. non-scrolling score without octave displacement
5. circular, 3D score without octave displacement
6. with words inside note outlines
Resources
Right-click to download:
PDF score (requires Adobe Acrobat or other PDF reader)Listening exercises
Play it at a high enough level to hear all the voices easily, and direct your attention in ways like this:
For each of these, doing it without the score and with this score are separate skills. When you're doing it with the score:
Other variations include
Another exercise is to sing the same two-measure phrase over and over
(e.g. "what a queer bird the frog are, what a queer bird, the frog are ...)
with your eyes closed, and on each repetition, listen for which part you're
singing along with, and focus on it.
Credits (in order of appearance) Poem Unknown (appeared without attribution in the popular press in the 1920s) Music Unknown (though it appears to have been a popular song in the 1920s) Taught me the round Deena Grossman Score Software Sibelius Voice Software VocalWriter (by Kathleen Elersich @ Kaelabs) Told me about VocalWriter Carl Lumma