You’ve been drilling your classroom guitar students for two months; teaching them open chords and the notes on the strings. Well, it’s almost Halloween – time for a crash course in tritones!
Halloween brings out the augmented 4th or diminished 5th in music like no other holiday. Here are some scary, magical, and downright fun songs that any guitar player would love and that most can play. And, with an entire month, I’m thinking you may be able to get your guitar class in shape for a Halloween recital. Picture it: a classroom full of kids dressed as monsters, with guitars, playing the theme from the Twilight Zone….
Halloween the Movie Theme
If you can play this theme without getting scared, more power to you. Make sure you have a drum machine for extra creepiness!
Monster Mash
This song is tons of fun! It’s a classic ’50s style song and a great way to introduce the progression I – vi – IV – V in the key of G. Also, a nice call and response – choose your part. You can do this with one finger chords: G, Em, C and you play the D chord!
Ghostbusters Theme
This video is the best version of the Ghostbusters theme song I’ve ever heard (is that saying much?). If you can’t follow along, try looking at the tab and chords.
Twighlight Zone Theme
The Twighlight Zone theme struck fear into people because of its dissonant intervals. This video is a great one for the classroom because it suggests breaking up the notes between two (or two sets of) players. He also uses the the theme as a finger and picking warm up exercise! If you don’t normally play up that high, or if you’re on an acoustic, start off with your index finger on the 5th fret on the B string.
The Munsters Theme
This is a great song for the guitar – lot’s of tritones to make it spooky too. If you can’t get it from the video, here are the tabs and chords.
Abracadabra – Steve Miller
This is a great and simple song by Steve Miller. Am – Dm – E7 – Am run throughout most of the song. This is a great, dramatic chord progression for guitar. Here are the chords and tabs.
Somebody’s Watching Me – Rockwell
A great ’80s song about paranoia with an easy progression. Check out the chords. It will be great way for your students to try out barre chords and the sharp symbol (they will know this as a hash tag).