One man’s voice

Piratical music of the Caribbean

Posted on February 4th, 2009 in On Children, Personal Messages

The other day I was sent a link to a video of a young girl playing “Carry on my Wayward Son” on an electric organ. After watching, in amazement, as this little girl tore it up I found another performance she did of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song:

This got me into a piratical mood like I have not been in for a while and as a result I decided to look for other performances of the popular song. Once of the best I had ever seen was of a young Asian kid named Sungha Jung playing the song on his guitar (because that is what he plays and he plays the crap out of it). So, for your viewing pleasure, here is that performance:

Now as I was watching that performance I realized that the video was a response video to that of a Wolfgang Vrecun who also posted a video of his guitar based rendition:

Now that I have seen a few ways that this song can be played by one person I decided to search for either a tutorial or guitar tab for the song (because I am that crazy and I dig the song that much and I want to be able to do what an eight year old kid can do). What I found was both wrapped up into one. A two part video tutorial by Jeurgen Schenk and a link to sheet music and guitar tab that he posted:

Pirates of the Caribbean sheet music and guitar tab by Jeurgen Schenk

So I took the sheet music home and handed it to my daughters about two weeks ago. And wouldn’t you know it, Sarah has pretty much mastered the song on the Piano and Bekah is about halfway to learning it on the guitar. In fact, they will be performing it at a talent show for our home school group in a few weeks.

Kids freaking amaze me sometimes. My kids especially. Yes, I know it sounds like I am doting on my kids. But they are my kids. I am supposed to dote.

And just for reference, here is the actual music (or a piece of it) so you can compare what is in those videos to what Hans Zimmer actually intended the music to sound like. Enjoy: