Whippoorwill

The whippoorwill, or as it might more properly be described, "The Eastern Whippoorwill," is a medium-sized night bird found widely through North and Central America. It was a common sound at night in the area of southern Ohio where I grew up, and was one of those birds you learned to identify in the Boy Scouts, both by its beautiful camouflaged feathers and by its distinctive call, which could be interpreted to sound like its name. (You will hear that call at the beginning and ending of our recording.)

The song is a fairly well-known round, commonly found in classrooms and around campfires for many decades. And, as is often the case with folkish rounds, pinning down the exact origin of this great piece is difficult. We treat it here much the way I first learned it almost 50 years ago. (Yes, those same Boy Scout gatherings where we looked for the bird itself.)

Our arrangement is a simple folk setting, with guitars and a nice flute for the intro. We go through the tune three times. The first time is just a unison version, with a two-part round starting the second time through. Mind you, if you are more adventurous, you can make it a 3-part round, starting another part eight bars in.

The round is very straightforward until you reach the very end. We could have just let the round end... and you still can, but we chose to do a simple 2-part ending to the tune, letting the voices close in contrary motion. For the very last chord, though, we give you the cool option of letting your singers form a beautiful 4-note chord, an F(add9) chord, to be precise. It takes a little practice to get your singers to divisi into this sound, but the result is great for performance. If you want to keep it simple, you can end with everyone singing F, or maybe dividing the group on C and A, up in the staff. No matter how you do it, have fun! - PJ