After performing a couple classical pieces, including one that was submitted for a recital, I’m back to pop music. This time out, it’s the Beatles with a children’s song, Yellow Submarine. The tune was a hit for the band in 1966, reaching number two on the Billboard  Hot 100. Trivia note: It was released at the same time as Eleanor Rigby, on a double-A side single.

Yellow Submarine, like many songs for children, is simple in nature and fairly repetitive. This allows me to toy around with playing the lyrical verse a bit differently each time:

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed the sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So we sailed up to the sun
‘Til we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

The song is fun to play, and in the beginning I add tremolo. This takes a lot more practice to sound just right, but it’s a new concept I’m learning and was encouraged to add for variety:

Yep, it’s a nautical theme, so quite a few of my daughter’s bath toys are hanging around the microphone. She had some questions about this. Ha! A fine and colorful collection of rubber duck, fish, and sea turtle groupies. It’s one of my larger audiences.

Up next, I hope to get a Coldplay song finished before Christmas music starts later in November. The song I’ll do requires a lot of work all over the fretboard and has a famous riff that takes extra effort to play on a string instrument. Good times!