Halloween Green Bean

Ah, there's nothing quite like the purest form of kids' music, meaning music that kids' themselves create. It's strange and bizarre and sometimes totally nonsensical, but also brilliant and creative in cool ways.

Two years ago for Halloween, my Becca wrote this song: "Halloween Green Bean" (mp3) Her mommy helped her just a little bit with the phrasing for one of the lyric lines, and I arranged the music, but it was essentially very much her own creation.

In case you can't quite understand the lyrics, here they are:

I wanna be a Halloween green bean.
I wanna be a Halloween bear.
I wanna be a Halloween monster,
so I can give you a scare. Boo!

Not bad for a three year-old. :o)

Becca is five now and she's written a few other songs, including a melodic epic called "The Sun Goes Up", which has some beautiful lyric verses balanced by some really kooky lyric verses...

The sun goes up, and the moon goes down.
The stars go down and the dark goes down.
The apple says, "Hi". And we eat the apple.
There's a freckle on my arm. There's a freckle on my leg.
Etc.

I totally didn't see the apple/freckle lines coming. And that's kind of how it is with all of her songs... Wonderfully weird, with some unexpected turns. She's also been noodling a lot on the piano and coming up with several little riffs that she likes to play over and over. She has descriptions for each of them, too, like the spooky sounding one, which is apparently supposed to be the soundtrack for a movie she wants to make about circlemonsters. And her sister, Evee, is following right along in her path, banging away on the piano and drums and belting out her favorite songs.

People often ask me if my material is inspired by my kids... Certainly, some of it is, but before long I might be able to just have them create all of my material, themselves!

Pictured above... Evee and Becca with their pumpkins for this year, which they designed themselves (we did the carving).

Have a safe and happy Halloween!