My hat is off to the Bytown Ukulele Group, aka BUG, for their arrangement of The Log Driver’s Waltz, which was the subject of yesterday’s posting. But I really had a hard time singing it in the Key of C. The verses are not a problem: the chorus is quite high.

While listening to the NFB of Canada video and reading the words on the print-out, I realized two things. First, each verse goes directly into the chorus without pausing, and secondly there are quite a few measures after each chorus.

I decided to transpose the BUG arrangement down to the Key of A. This was quite easy to do because I already have MS Word on my computer, and BUG provided a copy for downloading in both PDF and Word formats. If you download and open the Word format you can click on “Enable Editing” and then delete and insert to your heart’s content. I really like it when I don’t have to type out the words to a song beforehand when I decide to transpose to a different key from another source.

The Key of A enables me to sing the chorus without going into what I like to call falsetto mode. Or  opera-singer mode. I also changed the arrangement a bit, providing some chord sequences following each Chorus which you can play through once, or twice. Twice sounds better.

Another arrangement I added is underlining the few words in some of the stanza’s that are quarter notes, or to be sung quickly together. For example, “If you should” are quarter notes, sung quickly together, while the rest of the lyric line is sung in regular length. Bolded words are held. You will see a couple of tiny upwards arrows, just ignore those as far as strumming is concerned. I put those in there to remind myself to sing up instead of down. 😉

The Log Driver’s Waltz in the Key of A:  the-log-drivers-waltz-a