Two Chord Traditional Song

In an age where we are trying to integrate the curriculum and at the same time often eliminate or limit such things as music and art teachers can do quite a bit to bring such "extras" back into the curriculum if they learn a few basic chords and a few traditional songs. Skip to My Lou is one of those traditional songs that is easy to play and sing. The author is unknown.

This song is a traditional American frontier song that was a dance and clapping song originally where partners would dance and "steal" partners as the dance was sung. If a teacher was covering the frontier period of the United States this might be a song that could be used to bring music of that time into the classroom. You may consider leaving out the one verse about finding a prettier girl even though it was part of the original versus. It may be possible to write some new versus to the song.

If you play the guitar it can be played with just two chords and because it has just two chords it is easy to determine when it should change from one chord to another. If you fingerpick the guitar it is also pretty easy to pick the melody along with the chords because it has in most cases two beats between each of the melody notes. This gives you a chance to pick a melody note and then a chord or a pinch pattern using the chord and melody.

The C chord and the G7 chord have been shown in the graphic. Learn to change quickly from the one chord to the other and keep strumming. To change smoothly you must completely lift all three fingers slightly, but not too far off the strings. The higher you lift them, the more chance for error. If you don't move them all at one time, you will slow the process of transition from one chord to the next.

.........Skip To My Lou........
===================
C
Skip, Skip, Skip to My Lou
G7
Skip, Skip, Skip to My Lou
C
Skip, Skip, Skip to My Lou
G7............................C
Skip to My Lou My Darling
====================
C
Fly's in the buttermilk, Shoo, fly, shoo,
G7
Fly's in the buttermilk, Shoo, fly, shoo,
C
Fly's in the buttermilk, Shoo, fly, shoo,
G7.............................C
Skip to my Lou, my darling
=====================

Other versus use the phrases: "Cows In The Cornfield, What will I do?" ; "There's a little red wagon, paint it blue."; "Lost My Partner, What will I do?"; "I'll get another one prettier than you."; "Can't get a red bird, a blue bird will do."; "Off to Texas, two by two."';

This was one of the first songs that I learned to play on the guitar, but also was one of the first ones I learned to play on the 5 string banjo. I especially like the traditional versus like flies in the buttermilk, because it gives a teacher the chance to talk about how milk is churned, how people had fun under such hard conditions, and even how they felt about the use of instruments. The graphic shows one method of fingerpicking the song, but later I changed from this to a number of variations. If you just try to play the notes on the first three strings you can identify the melody and then improvise around the melody.