STAND FOR THE RIGHT & DARE TO DO RIGHT: MEDLEY

At the beginning of the year when I was trying to put together a preliminary plan for the songs for the year, I felt I wanted to do something to refresh the song and maybe even challenge the kids a little more with the  "Stand for the Right" song since we had already learned it for last year's program. As I was blankly staring at the page in the music book  thinking, thinking, thinking, my eyes turned to the page next to it and as I stared blankly at that page too, a small light began to flicker in my brain as I noticed "be true" in both songs....

      ....and then I noticed both songs had the same message 

               ....and then I noticed how the song fell in line with this year's theme

                        ....and then I noticed they were in the same key.

Well,  goodness-gracious!

I started to get excited as I thought that these songs were 

MFEO
(made for each other).

BRIGHT IDEA MOMENT!

Why not do a medley with this song?!?!?! So back in March, although I reviewed "Stand for the Right" I also taught the first verse to "Dare to Do Right".

I never got around to finding time to post this idea back in March, sorry, but if you are still looking at adding something else to your program, here you go! 

My plan for singing this song is to:

1. Start off singing "Stand for the Right" 
2. Then straight into "Dare to Do Right" only singing the first verse
3. Followed by a short pause
4. And then ending the song by singing just a little slower, "Our prophet has some words for you" from the beginning of the song...
5. Followed by "Be true, be true, and stand for the right" from the end of the song.  

Pretty simple, but I think it will help to make more of an impact with the messages of both songs while giving a song we did last year a breath of fresh air.

A couple of months latter after I made this plan, I did discover an arrangement of both of these songs done by Susan Slaugh while I was surfing the internet one night. It is a beautiful medley—duet. Here is a link to her full score sheet music.  Here is a link to the sheet music for the vocal.  I have been actually debating on whether to do this arrangement instead or stick with my original plan. I have had fun challenging the kids with Susan's arrangement and actually, the funny thing is, I have discovered the teachers have had a harder time with it than the children. I'll admit this arrangement is a bit of a challenge to practice when there is not enough singing time to go around, but it actually sounded really great the last time we practiced it.

For the duet section I've tried various groupings like splitting the Primary in half, splitting between boys and girls, but my favorite so far has been the teachers/children split. My biggest challenge though, if I decide to use Susan's arrangement is, how do I group the teachers from the children when it is time to sing it in the Sacrament Meeting program without too much disruption? It just seems easier for them to sing the duet when they are physically grouped in their respective parts. Hmmmm, I don't know. Maybe with more practice it will be easier for them to sing it all blended in one group. Or, maybe I'll just stick to my original plan, or now I'm thinking of going with my original plan but using Susan's music and cutting and pasting it into the format we will sing it. That's probably what I'll end up doing. Either way, it has been fun to challenge the SR kids and let them have another fun and interesting musical experience.