The Quick and Dirty

By Grammar Girl  |

One of my best finds this year was a site called Ujam that lets you easily create your own songs. For someone like me—who loves to fiddle with lyrics and the idea of music, but doesn’t own any instruments or live with a musician—Ujam is miraculously empowering. You sing a song, and it creates music (real, multi-instrument music!) to go with it.

My Funny Version of “Jingle Bells”

Here’s an example: A couple of nights ago, I fiddled around with their Christmas music and made “Jingle Bells: The Bitter School Teacher Version.” I’m not happy with my singing because I accidentally posted it live when I meant to save it to improve later, but I still wanted to show it to you so you can see just how easy it is to make a song.

It took me less than an hour to do this: Jingle Bells: The Bitter School Teacher Version. (Please, seriously, just know that I can sing better than this!)

Ujam as a Teaching Tool

Ujam would be a great tool for teachers. You could have your students make songs to go with their lessons. To this day, I still remember Avogadro’s Number (6.022 × 10²³) because two boys in my chemistry class made up a rap about it.

Make Your Own Version of “Jingle Bells: The Bitter School Teacher Version”

The other reason I’m posting this is that I was happy with the lyrics I came up with, and I’d love to see someone else who has more talent or time than I do make it into a real song worth sharing or make a video to go with it. (I was imagining a school teacher with a huge stack of papers to grade and a glass of spiked eggnog by her or her side.) Here are the lyrics, which I post with a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-Non-Commercial license. Please just link to Grammar Girl if you use them. Have fun!

Dashes through the prose
In these one-page school essays
I can’t feel my nose
Make them go away

Bells on bobtail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to laugh and sing
But I’m stuck here tonight

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what “fun” it is to grade
These one-page school essays

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what “fun” it is to grade
These one-page school essays

A day or two ago
I sat right down and cried
I don’t even think
These boys and girls have tried

The papers could be blank
Their scribbles are for naught
My heart it truly sank
They haven’t got a thought

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what “fun” it is to grade
These one-page school essays

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what “fun” it is to grade
These one-page school essays

Now the ground is white
Keep in mind they’re young
Cut some slack tonight
And sing this sleighing song

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what “fun” it is to grade
These one-page school essays