My Favourite Duets

My Favourite Duets by Barry Cockcroft

Written with flexibility in mind, these mostly easy duets are excellent for music lessons, small ensembles, student concerts or just for fun. Each book contains 60 duets all transposed to match the other instruments from the set. There is a set for woodwind and a set for brass. Mallet percussion matches transposition with the woodwind books.

All tunes are well-known folk songs, nursery rhymes, anthems and children's songs. These are the kind of tunes that kids grow up singing. Knowing the tune greatly speeds up the process of learning the music and allows students to quickly play the duets without having to worry about complex rhythms or phrases. Knowing the tune allows instinctive music making and a faster, less analytical way of learning.

All tunes encourage the learning of musical terms including tempo markings such as Allegro, Moderato etc. and all tunes use dynamics and other expressive terms such as rit., rall. and cantabile.For teachers that like to play along with their students in their lessons, these duets provide the ideal medium. Duets encourage the student to develop musical independence, develop accurate pitch and good rhythm. Playing with the teacher, or another more advanced student encourages the development of a clear tonal concept. The student can hear immediately how quality tone is produced without the need for lengthy explanations. While a picture might be a thousand words, sound might be worth 2000 words.

Main features

• 180 easy duets in 3 graded books.
• Flexible instrumentation - each book is transposed to match a group of different intruments.

Woodwind & mallet percussion - each book is transposed to match all of following instruments.

• flute
• oboe
• clarinet
• alto saxophone
• tenor saxophone
• bassoon
• mallet percussion

Brass - each book is transposed to match all of following instruments.

• trumpet
• French horn
• trombone or euphonium
• tuba

Contemporary piano accompaninment available for all tunes.

• Accompaniment for woodwind & percussion books.
• Accompaniment for Brass books.

Play-along tracks available with the piano acoompaniment for all tunes.

"When I was student in high school it was playing duets that allowed me to quickly develop a mature tone and to learn accurate rhythm. I studied with fantastic saxophonist Barry Currie. Nearly every lesson we would play some form of duet, jazz or classical. I always loved hearing him play and I think that rather than him try to explain a lot of musical concepts to me all the time, he could just demonstrate through his own saxophone.Why traditional tunes? I still believe that the fastest way for a student to learn music is aurally. If they know the tune they can immediately start to play the music without having to worry about reading, phrasing and articulation. It just happens naturally. This is not to say that students playing familar music will not learn to read. In fact, I believe that this will happen even faster as they will be able to associate quickly well-known music with its printed representation.

I hope that you enjoy these duets and I will continue to encourage teachers to play along with their students - and for students to play together. While writing these duets, I worked closely with pianist Graeme Vendy. His unique way of taking a traditional or classical melody and making it sound more contemporary through his own unique chord voicings and stylistic phrasing is amazing. We sat down for 2 days of playing together. Every piece was always different and I'm sure that you will enjoy the spontaneous and contemporary sounding accompaniments." Barry Cockcroft

Piano accompaniment

Simply put, these accompaniments are fantastic. Written by pianist/arranger Graeme Vendy, the piano books offer contmporary sounding accompaniment to all the traditional tunes in the book. The best way to experience this is to simply listen to the audio samples, or download them to try out.

While the duets sound great by themselves, for a more enhanced experience the piano part really adds to the performance. In the event that a pianist is unavailable, a handy play-along CD is available for each piano book.

Two piano books are available for each book of duets, one for brass, and a second for woodwind and mallet percussion. The duet part is written in concert pitch which deal for the pianist to pick out the melody to help the students along. The books are sprial bound, which means the pages will lie flat against the piano stand and there are no page turns for any tune, all music is contained within single open spread.

My Favourite Duets Book 1

1. A Tisket, A Tasket
2. Au Clair de la Lune
3. Big Ben
4. Bingo
5. Blow The Man Down
6. Bobby Shaftoe
7. Clementine
8. Clown Dance
9. Cockles and Mussels
10. Deck the Halls
11. Did You Ever See a Lassie?
12. Down by the Station
13. Fais Do-Do
14. Fiddle-de-dee
15. Frère Jacques
16. Go Tell Aunt Rhody
17. Good King Wenceslas
18. He's Got the Whole World in His Hands
19. Hey Diddle Diddle
20. Hickory Dickory Dock
21. Hot Cross Buns
22. Humpty Dumpty
23. Hush Little Baby
24. Jack and Jill
25. La Marseillaise
26. Lightly Row
27. London Bridge
28. London's Burning
29. Looby Loo
30. Mary Had a Little Lamb
31. My Hat, it Has Three Corners
32. Now the Day is Over
33. Oh Where, Oh Where
34. One Man Went to Mow
35. Oranges and Lemons
36. Oriental Dance
37. Pease Pudding Hot
38. Polly Put the Kettle On
39. Pop Goes the Weasel
40. Portsmouth
41. Rain, Rain, Go Away
42. Reveille
43. Ring Around the Rosey
44. Row, Row, Row Your Boat
45. See Saw, Margery Daw
46. Shortinin' Bread
47. Skip to My Lou
48. Song of the Volga Boatmen
49. Suo-gan
50. Sur le Pont d'Avignon
51. Surprise Symphony
52. Tallis' Canon
53. Ten Little Indians
54. The Farmer In the Dell
55. The Little Skunk
56. There Were Ten in a Bed
57. There's a Hole in My Bucket
58. Tom Dooley
59. Vive l'Amour
60. While Shepherds Watched