The Spooky Boogie

We think you and your singers will have a lot of fun with "The Spooky Boogie." It will work great in a fall concert setting (boogie woogies are always a big hit!), and while it is "spooky," it never actually mentions Halloween. Perhaps one of the scariest things about it is the key signature. It's in E-flat minor which, of course, has six flats. It's really not as bad as it looks, though. Most of it ends up being played on the black keys. Fortunately, the recorded accompaniment is really cool (and spooky). It has a terrific rhythm section, a fun string part, a pipe organ, and really neat sound effects.

You'll need to get the timing just right for the spoken parts that occur between measures 17 and 27. We've helped out by providing the squeaky door sound effect at measure 17 as a cue. As soon as that ends your kids should start the dialog. The idea here is that your "Kid 1" should look very innocent and non-scary. She/he will make two very lame attempts at a spooky laugh, with comments from other kids in-between. Then, at the third beat of measure 26 we've provided an awesome, scary laugh sound effect. Kid 1 should pretend that the laugh is coming from him/her (and really play it up). All the other singers should look very shocked and surprised. Especially the person with the punch line of, "That was pretty good..." It should all make sense and work out after you've practiced it a few times. Be sure your Kid 1 also pantomimes the scary laugh when it happens again near the end of the piece. Listen to the performance track on the CD for this issue for a terrific demonstration of how it should go.