The moon will turn full tomorrow, so-named “Beaver Moon”, becoming a blood moon and a lunar eclipse. Called “beaver blood moon lunar eclipse”, it will be visible between 4:10 am and 7:49 am EST. An early night is in order to wake up at the REM hour (Rapid Eye Movement). It’s the last total lunar exclipse until 2025.
What perfect timing it is to share my video recordings of “The Moon Represents My Heart,” one of the most poignant love songs in Mandarin Chinese. Made famous by the late Teresa Teng, though she was not the first to record it, the song is an ear worm. I cannot rest until I’ve put it to rest — hence this blog post.
While visiting my mother last winter, I found a piano arrangement of “The Moon Represents My Heart” I had printed during my years teaching at Maui College. I had scribbled in pencil “Nice! Mom likes this.” Did I play it during one of my thematic solo piano concerts? Why had I printed it? Or perhaps I had performed it with my Chinese colleague for a Chinese New Year house concert in Kula.
Whatever the reason for its existence, I wanted to sing the song with my mother. And so we did on the night of the first full moon in 2022 – the “Wolf Moon”. I recorded myself playing on the electric piano. My mother and I took turns on the verses. I played the ukulele. We sang to my piano recording. We walked around her neighborhood that night in January and took some photos to use in the video. Below was the result.
On the 35th day of the #100DaysUkulele Project, I chose the same song for a different full moon — the “Worm Moon.” For the occasion, I recorded myself singing the song in F on the low G ukulele. It seemed easier to sing than in G. The chords weren’t as rich as the piano arrangement. Positive response from my fellow ukulele players in the private Facebook group encouraged me to continue finding the best arrangement for this song.
Shortly after recording it, I presented this song to my Chinese song class in Zoom not specifically to teach the song in the Winter 2022 season but as an example of a beautiful love song. Recently, I learned that one of the course participants has memorized it to sing at his wedding tomorrow, on the night of the “Beaver Moon”. This propelled me to teach the song, hence the play along videos shown here.
Play Along Video to Piano, Ukulele, and Vocals
The title translates word for word from Chinese to English. 月亮代表我的心 literally translates to The Moon Represents My Heart. 月亮 means the moon. 代表 means represents. 我的 means my. 心 means heart. Doesn’t 心 look like a heart? When sung, the Chinese words assume the tone of the music, foregoing its pin yin tone.
Music is a short cut to language, just as ukulele is a short cut to music. My goal is to get non-Chinese speakers to read pin yin as easily as English or any other alphabet-based language for music purposes. In my Chinese song classes, I give pinyin drills, ear training (for tone recognition), and some music theory (on pentatonicism).
Play Along Video Recordings to the Piano (no vocals)
In the 8-week class in Zoom, I ask my students to listen to different covers of this song. Besides the late Teresa Teng, there’s the late Leslie Cheung who sang it famously. I ask them to use their ears to figure out which keys they sang the song in. I also ask them to describe how different they are. Finally I ask them to find their own optimal voice range. Which key do they sing best in? Then they can fill in the blanks with chords and play on their ukuleles.
The next song we will be studying in “Chinese Mandarin with Song” class is Feng Yang Hua Gu, also known as the Flower Drum Song. We are preparing to perform at 3 Chord Thursday for Chinese New Year of the Rabbit in 2023.
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