Click here to jump straight to the TAB.
There is a specific genre of clickbait article/video that you run across fairly frequently if you do a lot of research into children’s music. Any of these sound familiar?
- TIL That [song title] is Actually About…
- The Secret, Dark Meaning of [song title]
- 10 Song You Sang as a Child That are Actually Terrible
It’s true that many children’s songs include themes of death, disease, and general sadness, but why? The answer is pretty simple: death, disease, and general sadness used to be a lot more common. You don’t have to go back that many generations to find a time when early, tragic deaths happened fairly often, and these songs were both a recognition of and a means of processing that sad fact of life.
Take today’s song, “Clementine.” While the first verse, which is all that most people know these days, is fairly subtle about it, the song as a whole is about the tragic death by drowning of Clementine, the singer’s love. The other verses go into more detail, but more than that, they actually make a few dark jokes about the situation!
In my dreams she still doth haunt me,
Robed in garments soaked in brine.
Though in life I used to hug her,
Now she’s dead, I’ll draw the line.How I missed her, how I missed her
How I missed my Clementine.
So I kissed her little sister,
And forgot my Clementine.Now you Boy Scouts, there’s a moral
To this little tale of mine.
Artificial respiration,
Would have saved my Clementine.
And that’s not even all of them! In earlier verses, the singer laments how he might have saved Clementine, if only he were a swimmer, and comments on how his love is now fertilizer in the churchyard. Yeesh.
“Clementine” Playing Tips
“Clementine” has a distinctive, plodding rhythm created by the 3/4 time signature and the use of a pickup measure to establish a rhythmic pattern that repeats throughout the song. A pickup measure is a shortened first measure of a song, a note or two that introduces the downbeat.
The rhythmic pattern of “Clementine” (titi-TA-TA, to use the rhythm syllable pneumonics for eighth and quarter notes) begins on the upbeat, but in 3/4 time, the downbeat is generally the first note of the measure. Using a pickup measure creates space for the first half of the titi-TA-TA pattern before the first downbeat in measure 1.
If you play the song through multiple times, the pickup measure gets combined with the final measure of the song. That dotted half note gets shortened by a beat on the fly to accommodate the pickup notes. The whole thing loops around on itself, so there’s only an extra partial measure on the first time through.
Click the link or the ‘Download’ button below to see the sheet music if your browser doesn’t display the embedded PDF.
Don’t have a low G uke? Not a problem. I’ve included a standard (high G) TAB for this song as well. Find the link at the bottom on the post. Happy picking
“Clementine” Low G Sheet Music Download
“Clementine” High G Sheet Music Download
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