Thanks, Mom.

This song is the result of many requests for a song for Mother's Day or as a tribute to moms in general. It is a beautiful rock ballad with an increasingly rich texture throughout that will no doubt cause many a tear to form when performed.

On the P/A recording, the song begins with just rhythm section (piano, bass, drums, electric guitar). The first iteration of the chorus is performed by a young soloist (Abbie Haffner). The rest of the choir joins in at the verse and continues in unison until the last chorus, where it breaks into an optional divisi. During the second verse and third chorus, we added layers of strings in octaves and a gentle synthesized "ah" pad. For the third verse, we added a brass pad (all trombones) and horns playing the melody. At the coda, the horns shine with dramatic rips over the divisi vocals and thick orchestration.

Since the song has some syncopated rhythms, especially in the chorus, you may prefer to perform the piece with middle to upper grade students, especially if you are wishing to emphasize reading. Still, our experience recording this in the studio showed us how quickly our singers were able to pick it up. If your students can learn well by rote, they may have no trouble learning the rhythms at all. If this is the case, perhaps you could tie the learned melody to the written part for notation recognition skill reinforcement.

(Note from John: My own mother was a horn player, so it's no wonder that I chose to use this instrument for those nifty rips. You just can't write a song for Mother's Day without having some element of your own mom in there! Both of my parents are musicians, so I'm especially grateful to them for encouraging me in my music. I am dedicating this song to my mother. Thanks, Mom!)