These songs have been written especially for young children with the following criteria in mind:

-pentatonic
-melodious
-narrow range of notes
-lots of thematic repetition yet varied and musically interesting
-a note range suitable for primary singing -a note range appropriate for primary tuned percussion and recorder playing
-keys which suit basic tuned percussion (up to one sharp or flat) -able to be sung as rounds in many different arrangements
-all Australian in content
-texts on Australian themes.

Since they are all penta tonic, they emphasise the tonic chord when sung as rounds. I have chosen keys which allow for emphasis of different areas of the pentatonic scale. (X-frequent, x - less frequent). The songs are all listed below in order of increasing complexity. They are placed in alphabetic order in the book.

Why the pentatonic scale?

It is a scale which forms the basis of music in a vast proportion of the world's population. It is also interesting to note that it is the scale most often found in modern western music such as the blues, rock'n 'roll, heavy metal and rap. As a scale for training young ears in interval recognition, it cannot be beaten. It increases the childrens, chances of correctly identifying and memorising a large range of intervals. Kodaly's courses in sight reading all use the pentatonic scale, and their success is beyond dispute.

From a compositional point of view, it is a challenging scale to use since it lacks the fourth and seventh, two notes which add enormous scope for harmonising. By eliminating any semitone intervals you effectively eliminate any opportunities for chromatic harmony which has formed the basis of western music for 400 years. Even so, I was surprised to discover how many possibilities there were for adding harmonic accompaniments to these songs.

These songs are meant to be sung or played on recorder, either unaccompanied as rounds or with appropriate Orff-style accompaniments played on tuned and untuned classroom percussion instruments. When creating accompaniments for the songs, always keep in mind the character and subject matter of the song. As Pete Seeger says, a song should be 'simple and honest'.

The songs are intended to be enjoyed for their own sake first and foremost. At the same time I trust that they will offer primary and junior secondary teachers scope to extend their children's musical education by introducing them to: harmony-through round singing, interval recognition and sight reading, tonic solfa, written music and its relationship to the keyboard through tuned - percussion instrument playing and the connection between written music and wind instruments via the recorder.

The recorded accompaniments can be used in a number of ways. You can sing or play along on recorder to the tape to familiarise yourself with the tunes, or you can get ideas for your own accompaniments from the backings. They can also be used to accompany any dance or movement possibilities you might like to explore. The sung version and accompaniment-only version are placed back to back on the tape so that it is a simple matter to switch between them. Turn the tape over at the conclusion of a song and it will be cued up ready to play the other version.

The source of all of the verse used in these songs is 'Four and Twenty Lamingtons' published by Omnibus books. ed. Jane Covernton.

Australia is many hundreds of years behind other countries (in terms of Western music) when it comes to having a strong heritage from which to draw songs suitable for systematically introducing children to music reading. This collection is my small contribution to that cause.

Since the songs are Pentatonic and simple, I felt it was important to include a range of Kodaly teaching suggestions. There is also an abundance of Orff teaching suggestions in the same manner as in my two previous books, 'Hickety Pickety' and 'Jingle with a Ball'. Kodaly 's method is a very systematic, sequential method of aural training in which children are taught to be able to hear and sing what they read, as well as to write accurately what they hear. In its purest form it is the most thorough ear training available. Children begin at an early age building their repertoire of identifiable note relationships using a very scientific process outlined by Zoltan Kodaly and continued through an unbroken line of teachers all over the world. The songs in this collection are middle-level Kodaly. In other words, your children would need to have gone through solfege fundamentals in order to fully benefit from the solfege exercises contained in the teaching notes which accompany each song.

The title 'On the Susso' of course refers to the catch cry of the 30's recession, meaning 'On the sustenance - dole'. I felt it was a particularly appropriate title for a book published in 1993, especially since its author, by choice, earns less than 'the susso'. It allows me more time to write music.