Babadoobop

It's become a tradition for us to publish a bit of big band jazz in our fourth issue every year. This year, while we certainly have the big band emphasis, we also decided to focus a bit on vocal jazz as well. The song, "Babadoobop" is designed as a vehicle for your students to learn, practice and perform scat singing. Scat singing is usually improvised, but we have written out a melody in this song just to get your students comfortable with singing scat syllables. Scat syllables are nonsense syllables that singers can make up as they go along. Again, we have provided some suggested "words" for your students to learn, however, we encourage you to let them use their own creations. If you and they prefer to sing the song exactly as it's written, that is perfectly acceptable. As it is, it is a lot of fun to sing.

As you might imagine, this song is definitely one for which we recommend the use of the Performance/Accompaniment compact disc or cassette. A big band just can't be imitated effectively on piano alone. We have gone to great lengths to provide authentic style, and we hope you will take a little time to let your students hear the instrumental tracks of the song as well. We used four saxes, four trumpets, four trombones, two horns, piano, bass, guitar, drums, and percussion. As you will hear, they really cook. (Recording the big band sessions is one of our favorite jobs in the studio.)

Using the recording will also help your students learn the song more quickly. When they hear how easy the syllables sound, they will be inclined to sing along. Listening to the singers on the recording will also help your singers swing. The eighth notes that they see are not sung as straight eighths, but rather are sung with a triplet feel as is indicated at the top of the music. Even our youngest singers got into the style when they heard the big band behind them.

You will note that we have hyphenated the words on the lyric page. We found that without the hyphens, the words tended to run together and took longer to decipher. But again, what you will discover is that they are so natural and repetitious that as soon as your students hear them and sing along with them they will have no difficulty reading them as well.

The form of the song is simple so as not to distract from the scat singing. The A section repeats, then goes into the chorus (which is identical the second time unless you wish to alter it), followed by one more repeat of the A section.

The section at measure 37 is the same vocally as the section at 45. It has been written out on the piano/vocal because the accompaniment varies. However, the overall impact is dynamically oriented. At 37, students should sing piano. At 45, they sing mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, and forte, respectively.

On the recording during this section, the ensemble behind the singers is also building. At first, there is just rhythm section and bass trombone. At 45 the first time, the trombone section enters with a countermelody. The second time, the trumpets enter with a different countermelody. The third time, the saxes enter with yet another countermelody. By this time, everyone is performing forte and all the melodies are blending very nicely. If you can, take the time to let your students hear at least this background instrumental so they can identify which instruments are entering and what they are playing.

The song repeats to measure 9 (verses 3 and 4), goes to the chorus, on to measure 26 for one last statement of the verse and then to the coda. The coda is a combination of several of the scat syllables from earlier. Again, using your own words is fine.

A word of caution: if you decide to let your students come up with their own syllables, be careful what they say. Some students may be inclined to include syllables that could be construed as naughty. We tried very hard not to let this be the case with our syllables, but kids are kids. If they find something they think is slightly offensive, they will run with it.