You Are My Sunshine: Getting Started

For years I have wanted to write a ragtime/stride arrangement of "You Are My Sunshine." Years ago, I came up with a very basic ragtime arrangement that I've long enjoyed playing, but I wanted to come up with something more interesting than just the tune and the oom-pah bass.

Thanks to PWJ, I now have the tools to do that!

One of my February goals is to take this song ("YAMS") more seriously, to put some good, focused work into developing a lasting arrangement. I've fiddled with it a couple of times since the start of the month, and this morning I was able to put about a half-hour into it.

In this video, I explore some of the ideas I've come up with. I'm shamelessly stealing from some of Jonny May's ideas in "Bare Necessities," but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? At this point, I'm using training wheels, and both "Bare Necessities" and "Jingle Bells Rag," as well as my Scott Joplin rags, are the wheels.

I am still very early in the creation process, so these ideas may give way to better, more interesting ones. For now, I'm beyond excited about where this is going! It's going to someday be one of those tunes that makes people smile and tap their feet, and puts a spring in their step for the rest of the day!

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Picking Up the Pieces

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