Turkey Troubles

by Dan Thieman

"Turkey Troubles" is a humorous piece for two recorders (or groups of recorders). It's set up to be performed as a duet, and both recorder parts also include spoken words.

Recorder 2 continually attempts to say "gobble," but for some reason just can't get it quite right. But no worries! Recorder 1 is here to help (or at least try to help...). The music repeats three times, and each time through is faster than before, which adds to the humor. Listen to the recording and you'll quickly get the idea.

Recorder 1's gobble "corrections" start out very politely, but then the corrector gradually loses patience to the point of exasperation. There's plenty of time between the "gobbles" and playing recorder notes, but please do be careful with the transitions between speaking and playing – we don't want any injured turkeys out there.

We recorded all the spoken words as solos except for measure 24 and at the end. Feel free to use either all solo gobbles throughout, or all group gobbles throughout if that works better for your turkeys. Or you could have dedicated gobblers who don't play recorders at all, and recorder players who don't gobble at all.

Recorder 1 uses GAB and recorder 2 uses GABCD. The piano/recorder score is available online as well as the recorder parts for ease in duplication.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.