In 1989 I got my first job teaching music. The school was Orchard Hill Elementary School in the Phoenix-Talent School District in southern Oregon.
I had not expected to be teaching music to little children and I found myself grasping for musical material to fulfill the needs of the teachers who sent their children to me.
One class in general was so full of energy and curious 2nd graders. One day their teacher came to me and said that the class was going to be focused on the study of dinosaurs for the next 9 week period. She handed me a paperback book full of simple songs from the series "Wee Sing". Those songs are OK, of course, but nothing that thrilled me.
So, before school one day I sat down and started to mess with parallel 4th riffs and with Queen's "We Will Rock You" in my mind. Before long I had the basic chorus of "Dinosaurs".
The kids arrived and I started the riff on the piano and they loved it. We kept at it and within a few minutes (because of the sound of the slow heavy beat) they started trudging around the music room repeating "Dinosaurs" bent over in imitation of their slow moves. From that moment it was almost a collaborative moment. I started making up lyrics that might rhyme with dinosaur names. By the end of the day, with another class as well, I had the song almost to its completed end.
In 1996, when I was going to record children's songs for my CD, this song returned to me, and I laid it down synthetically with a computer 'band'. The only overdub for the song was a sound effect for the huge bass heavy thud of the dinosaur stomping which was the recording engineer's idea.
After the release of my CD this song has been the one requested the most often by the little ones. The Dinosaur Song.
The Dinosaur Song on Amazon.com
I had not expected to be teaching music to little children and I found myself grasping for musical material to fulfill the needs of the teachers who sent their children to me.
One class in general was so full of energy and curious 2nd graders. One day their teacher came to me and said that the class was going to be focused on the study of dinosaurs for the next 9 week period. She handed me a paperback book full of simple songs from the series "Wee Sing". Those songs are OK, of course, but nothing that thrilled me.
So, before school one day I sat down and started to mess with parallel 4th riffs and with Queen's "We Will Rock You" in my mind. Before long I had the basic chorus of "Dinosaurs".
The kids arrived and I started the riff on the piano and they loved it. We kept at it and within a few minutes (because of the sound of the slow heavy beat) they started trudging around the music room repeating "Dinosaurs" bent over in imitation of their slow moves. From that moment it was almost a collaborative moment. I started making up lyrics that might rhyme with dinosaur names. By the end of the day, with another class as well, I had the song almost to its completed end.
In 1996, when I was going to record children's songs for my CD, this song returned to me, and I laid it down synthetically with a computer 'band'. The only overdub for the song was a sound effect for the huge bass heavy thud of the dinosaur stomping which was the recording engineer's idea.
After the release of my CD this song has been the one requested the most often by the little ones. The Dinosaur Song.
The Dinosaur Song on Amazon.com
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