Key findings whilst looking for good repertoire for:
1. Round w/o words
2. Round w/ words
3. Pair of partner songs
Range is a huge barrier to doing many of the prettier rounds that do more than cycle between I and V. I really wanted to choose tunes that remained within an octave, even though we typically thing of the voice as having an octave and a bit/a half. It gives me a better chance of singing the tutorial within lots of vocal ranges. I also think that given how badly people can manage to sing the octave-spanning classic "Happy Birthday" in tune because they don't anticipate the size of the jump, singing an octave's worth of notes in tune will already be a great enough challenge for some. For this reason, I've now had to throw out my original w/o words song which was an octave and a 3rd (for any Arts Unit people, it goes - each vowel = a quaver's worth: dooo re mee faaaaaa, dooo re mee faaaaaa, dooo re mee faaa me faa soooooo soooooo)
There are a great deal of rounds that exist with words but when the words are taken out, are actually far more difficult because there are less placeholders! For this reason, Ah poor bird will now be my w/o words song because of its very approachable, scalic nature. My new song will likely be Ghost of John.
The majority of suggested partner songs that I could find technically could be sung at the same time but I felt they didn't sound fantastic as the contour was too similar to be complementary. In my mind I had been looking for something as complementary as this pair a friend used on prac but it turns out the simpler the tunes the trickier the pairing. At the other end of the scale were entire pop songs that could be overlaid over each other but much of the lyric content didn't feel usable for a primary school teacher.
Fortunately, The Piano Guys are awesome. This simple gifts/rainbow mashup feels like it could be the one. But it doesn't last very long is my only concern - it just goes for one round of the first half of Simple Gifts/one round of the Rainbow tune. But maybe that's all people want??
If that's not a great idea my next stop will be these tunes (Rose, Rose and Hey Ho Nobody Home) which go mostly well together-ish as well as being rounds(!)
You may have now noticed that potentially all of my songs will be in a minor key. Not intentional but may be providing a bonus of showcasing pretty repertoire that doesn't sound "happy" :D