Just a bit of fun really. Can you think of any good words you can spell with the letters A-G? (or A-H - if you wanted to go for german names you get an extra letter )

I've been trying to come up with something all afternoon, and the best I could manage was CABBAGE

Another idea would be to use the french or italian note names, which could better - haven't really thought about them yet.

What is your idea of a "good" word? I'm not sure why "cabbage" would qualify!

FADE could obviously be used to make the music fade away. DECADE might be useful to celebrate a tenth birthday/anniversary. DEAF could be something very loud.

Give us more idea of what you're after.

Anything really, just not the normal boring three-letter ones you get in books (age, bag, etc). The longer and more unusual the better.

Cabbage is the only word I could get that had more than 4 letters, it doesn't really qualify on the interesting side though.

Baggage!

How about "DEBAGGED" - don't suppose they do this at public schools now, but to those of us brought up on Billy Bunter... ! Or BEHEADED - sounds fun!

Sorry, in a bit of a silly mood tonight after an exhausting but most enjoyable barn dance in honour of a friend's 65th birthday. Had a wonderful time, but perhaps overdid the wine.

Beheaded is a really good one!

Silly moods are always good

Decaf, fag, bed.

Perfect end to a Saturday night?

Tried 'baggaged' as an 8-letter word, pity it doesn't exist...

haha, nice one.

Not sure if it's off topic or not, since this isn't the teachers' board - but younger pupils find these good fun as the basis for some 'messing around' at the keyboard. I give beginners a short list where they have to identify the ones they can play, and cross off the ones they can't (= the ones that have other letters in).

Nobody's mentioned BACH yet, perhaps it's in the short and obvious category.

I'd never thought of some of these long words before, though, good fun

All these new words have BEEFED up the thread a bit

When I was in college i wrote a short piece based on my supper! Egg and cabbage. Then I found that it was actually an American folk tune called "Phoebe in her Petticoats."

Short phrases are fun: A bad egg, cadge a cabbage etc.

Perhaps we should string a sentence together of these words, then play them all to see how it sounds.

(See the lengths I'm prepared to go to in order to avoid the housework today!)

Egg and cabbage??

I like the idea of phrases. Sometimes I make up a little story involving getting up out of BED, washing your FACE, having an EGG for breakfast, packing your BAG, going to school with DAD and so on.

Here's my list from when I did a competition with some of my pupils to see who could think of the most words (sorry - it does include some short, obvious ones):

ACE
ADAGE
ADD
ADDED
AGE
AGED
BAD
BADE
BADGE
BAG
BAGGAGE
BAGGED
BEAD
BED
BEE
BEEF
BEGGED
CAB
CABBAGE
CAFE
CAGE
DAB
DABBED
DAD
DEAD
DEAF
DEBAG
DECADE
DEED
EDGE
EGG
FACADE
FACE
FAD
FADE
FADED
FAG
FED
FEED
GAB
GAG
GAGGED
GAGA
GAGE
GAFF
GAFFE

Facade by William Walton - one of my favourite bits of music but almost impossible to get a recording of the music without the words.

You can't play the H!

Yes you can, the Germans use H for our B!

You can in german. B=Bb, H=B

Ooh cool, I didn't know that! You learn something new every day!

It's very confusing. But given that Bach was German, using the German namings is appropriate

Also, Eb=S for Germans.

Aha!! We can cheat then and get loads of new words!!! (Or a SHED load of new words!)

Not quite off-topic, I think, but when I was a teenager I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg (since it was the only place to hear copious quantities of the pop music of the day) and this was a commercial station. One of the advertisers was the Decca record company, and for their jingle they would sing the notes DECCA, the second C being an octave higher than the first one.

I always wondered if they were singing in C Major or A minor . Is the cadence a I-VI or a III-I?

On similar lines, I'm sure the old ITV company ABC used those notes in its jingle...

click here

There's another composer - GADE.
Of course referring to previous posts D. Shostakovich used D-S-C-H as his signature in several works, the best known being the 8th String Quartet.
Also Ravel composed 'Minuet sur le nom HAYDN' !! Work that one out !

I do that with my beginners!!!!!!! We think of words- string them together , write them on my white boards, then 'Let's see what they sound like'.


They love it and it's good note reading stuff!!!!

Well, technically, Es

ooo, I asked whether that was the case elsewhere - thanks for answering BB2!

Ha! That's a good one - I know you mean the composer, but we happen to live near a river Gade - hadn't thought of that one before.

Unfortunately the other rivers round here don't lend themselves to music quite so kindly.

We have a nearby river, the DEE !! There is the Scottish one too.