A Look At Happy Birthday
May 27th, 2008 by Guitar MX Admin
| Today, the GuitarMX Blog turns 1 year old. That’s right; the first post was one year ago today. To be honest, it doesn’t seem like that long ago. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.
To honor this blogs first birthday, let’s take a look at the song “Happy Birthday”, and how it’s played on the guitar. |
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- According to the Guinness Book of World Records, “Happy Birthday” is the most popular song in the English language.
- The song was created in the mid-1800’s by sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill, who played the tune to their kindergarten class in Kentucky. The original title was “Good Morning to All”, but the title and lyrics changed when they began playing it at birthday parties.
- Sooner or later, someone is going to ask you to play Happy Birthday on your guitar. Here’s an easy lesson on how to play the song.
- If you have problems keeping the rhythm of the song, try this version, which is the easiest way to play it.
- If you need further help, you can try playing it this way.
- Here’s another version, with tabs found here.
- Here’s an advanced arrangement that sounds great.
- A heavy metal Happy Birthday.
Here’s to another year!
Happy birthday, Guitar MX!
Actually, the story of “Happy Birthday”being written by two Kindergarten teachers is only half right. Patty was in fact a teacher, and later one of the world’s leading experts in childhood education, teaching at Columbia. Mildred was actually an ethnomusicologist (at least that’s what we would call her today – in her time she would probably be known as a cultural musicologist). It was less a spontaneous moment of brilliance and more a song precisely calculated to be catchy and memorable. George Washington Law professor Robert Branueis actually just wrote a large piece on the history of the song, and a clear argument on why it should be in the public domain. Check it out:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1111624
All scholastics aside, happy birthday, again!
Thanks for the comment Andy and for the article. I didn’t realize that there is a copyright dispute concerning the song, very interesting.
Happy b-day and hopefully you’ll keep on posting!
Thanks Sammy, I plan to
Congrats, keep up the great posts!