Schoolhouse Rock: Three is a Magic Number is an educational animated short film that was part of the Schoolhouse Rock series, originally airing in 1973. The film teaches children about the significance and properties of the number three through catchy music and memorable animation. The film begins by introducing the concept of multiplication, explaining that when you multiply two numbers together, the result is larger than either of the original numbers. It then focuses on the number three, emphasizing its magical properties and significance in various contexts. Through playful animation and lively music, the film illustrates how three is a commonly occurring number in our everyday lives. It highlights the three primary colors, the three sides of a triangle, and the importance of having three legs on a stool for stability.
16 cover versions of Three is a Magic Number, which turned 50 this year
Bob Dorough's sweet little ditty, Three is a Magic Number, turned 50 this year. Pop Culture Experiment explains the origins of the song:
In the early 1970s, Bob Dorough began writing music for advertising. Almost 50 years old, Dorough had already had a storied career as a jazz musician. He had a few albums under his belt, not mention that he had co-written a song that Mel Tormé later recorded.
David McCall, who worked in advertising, had a problem he hoped the jazz veteran could solve: "My sons cannot memorize their times tables — yet they sing along with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and they get their words." Dorough's challenge was to write a song — or songs — that could help kids like McCall's learn their multiplication tables. And while children were going to be the target audience, McCall gave Dorough one more directive: "Don't write down to children." Dorough's response was "Three Is A Magic Number," which sang of the significance of the number while also listing off multiples.
McCall, pleased with the result, passed it along to his art director, who set to work on an animation to accompany Dorough's quirky song. Quickly, the project was no longer the record-and-workbook package as had been originally intended. Dorough's song was presented to Micheal Eisner, the head of ABC's daytime programming, and Chuck Jones, who had directed "Looney Tunes" and "Tom and Jerry." With their blessing, "Three Is A Magic Number" and many of Dorough's other songs made it onto ABC as part of "Schoolhouse Rock!"
Debuting on Jan. 13, 1973, "Schoolhouse Rock!" was not a show, but rather a series of short videos that appeared in between episodes of longer shows. The inaugural week's song was "My Hero, Zero." The second week featured "Elementary, My Dear," focusing on multiples of two. And it was the third week, on Feb. 3, that ABC aired the song that inspired the whole project.
However, the song originally had aired before 1973, as part of the pilot of Schoolhouse Rocks. The pilot, called "Curiosity Shop," debuted on September 2, 1971. According to Wikipedia:
The Curiosity Shop version is an extended cut which includes an additional scene/verse that explains the pattern of each set of ten containing three multiples of three, animated in the form of a carnival shooting game.[6] This scene has never been rebroadcast on ABC, nor has it been included in any home media releases.
You can watch the original pilot here (the song starts at 25:44).
As a child of the 1970s, I've long been a fan of the tune. I fell in love with the song again in the late 1980s as a college student in Jackson, Mississippi, when I heard Hattiesburg, MS-based band Beagle Voyage cover the song at a local dive bar (sadly, I've searched high and low for a recording of Beagle Voyage covering Three is a Magic Number and haven't yet found it, please let me know if you run across it). Since the 1980s many other bands have covered the song. In 2018, Pop Culture Experiment dedicated one of its Cover Songs Uncovered columns to the song, which has a long history of delightful covers. Here are some versions they highlight:
Schoolhouse Rock
Three Is a Magic Number
Three is a magic number.
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.
The past and the present and the future,
Faith and hope and charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three.
That's a magic number.
It takes three legs to make a tri-pod or to make a table stand.
It takes three wheels to make a ve-hicle called a tricycle.
Every triangle has three corners,
Every triangle has three sides,
No more, no less.
You don't have to guess.
When it's three you can see it's a magic number.
A man and a woman had a little baby.
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family.
That's a magic number.
3, 6, 9. 12, 15, 18. 21, 24, 27. 30.
3, 6, 9. 12, 15, 18. 21, 24, 27. 30.
Three time ten is. >> 30
Three times nine is. >> 27
Find more lyrics at ※ Mojim.com
Three times eight is. >> 24
Three times seven is. >> 21
Three times six is 18, three times five is 15
Three times four is twelve
And three times three is nine and three times two is six.
And three times one is three of course.
3, 6, 9.
12, 15, 18.
21, 24, 27. 30.
Three times ten is. 30
Three times nine is 27
Three times eight is. 24
Three times seven is. 21
Three times six is 18, three times five is 15,
Three times four is twelve
And three times three is nine and three times two is six.
And three times one.
That's a magic number.
A man and a woman had a little baby.
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family.
That's a magic number.
Three Is a Magic Number, “Schoolhouse Rock!” was a magic series
OK, dear ones, if you are younger than, oh, 35, you might not have any clue about Schoolhouse Rock! If you are my age, you might thank Schoolhouse Rock! for your ability to count by fives, or to multiply by 11. Or for your eternal knowledge of how conjunctions function in the English language.
I was born in 1962, and Schoolhouse Rock! was on TV from 1973 to 1985. I am sure I saw every last episode of the series, each dozens of times. If you wanted to watch cartoons on Saturday morning, you had no choice but to see them. And they were pretty amusing to watch, as the animation matched the cleverness of the songs.
Yesterday, listening to the Fresh Air program on NPR, mostly a replay of Terry Gross’ 1982 interview with Bob, I got to relive a part of my childhood that I had recalled a number of times but never really appreciated.
Bob Dorough was a pretty hip cat who could spin just about any lyric, melody, or groove. An advertising exec had called him in because his own son could sing along with any Jimi Hendrix or Rolling Stones song, but didn’t know his multiplication tables… if someone would write hip songs about multiplication facts, millions of kids might escape the future of being numerically illiterate. And so, from the brain of Bob Dorough was born Schoolhouse Rock!
The very first song in the series was “Three is a Magic Number,” written in 1973, and performed by Mr. Dorough. It opens with an electric piano playing three triad chords (triads are chords containing three notes), the I, the IV, and the V chord, and as each chord is played, a rabbit ear extends from a magician’s hat. (If you don’t know what the I, IV, and V chords are, just listen to the opening of the video, and then you will understand. It is sort of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of music.)
Yes, if you are reading these words there is a really good chance that you have seen this video… and maybe an even better chance that you never heard the kalimba in this song.
The kalimba comes in at 0:16 in the video – first playing arpeggiated triads solo, then to counter the electric piano and acoustic guitar. And the kalimba is really the core of the groove, persisting through the entire song.
But most people who heard the kalimba in 1973 had no clue what it was. This is still the case. Every few weeks, I get a call from someone wanting to get a kalimba, and they tell me they’ve been hearing this magical sound in different songs, in a commercial, or somewhere… and then they somehow figure out “Oh, its a KALIMBA! And I need to get me one RIGHT NOW!”
In 1973 when “Three is a Magic Number” first appeared on TV, the Hugh Tracey Kalimba was a pretty hot commodity among people in the know. Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire had been playing and performing on kalimba for several years at that point, but his song “Kalimba Story” – which explicitly named that magical sound – would not come out until 1974.
Listening back, I can tell this is the Hugh Tracey Alto Kalimba. But the Alto Kalimba usually comes in the key of G, and “Magic Number” is written in Eb (E flat). Why?
Probably Bob Dorough put the song in Eb so it would work perfectly for his voice. Eb is a great key for horns such as trombone, trumpet, saxophone, and clarinet (other reasons why someone might write a song in Eb)… but those instruments are absent in this recording. Or maybe it was just an inside joke, akin to the three triad chords in the intro – the key of E flat has three flats. Of course!
Most kalimbas are diatonic instruments – meaning they play the notes “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do,” over one or two octaves, in one of the 12 different keys. The Hugh Tracey kalimbas usually come tuned to G. But it is also really simple to retune most kalimbas.
How would one retune from G to Eb? First, consider the way I would NOT do it: Eb is two whole steps (or 4 half steps) lower than G. So the obvious thing to do would be to make all of the kalimba’s tines longer, and hence lower, such that they all played two whole steps lower than the original tuning. However, if you try this, you will find yourself pulling the tines out… until they just fall out of the instrument. No, Virginia, the tines are not long enough to go down two whole steps.
Now, let’s imagine a really motivated person who went out and got longer tines that could be tuned two whole steps lower than “factory G” tuning. They would still run into problems, because the resonant box of the Hugh Tracey Alto is designed to resonate well with the low G of the Alto kalimba. But if you pull your tine out a whole step to F, the note doesn’t resonate so well. The low F is about half as loud as the G. And worse, the tine’s overtones, which on a kalimba do not harmonize with the fundamental tone, are actually LOUDER because the energy doesn’t go into the fundamental tone. And if you did have that magical extra long, extra low note that could go down to E flat… well, it might be only a quarter as loud as the G of the standard tuned Alto kalimba… and it would sound pretty bad.
But wait, there is another way to retune to Eb that actually makes a lot more sense, sounds a lot better, and is actually much easier. It requires only that some of the notes be retuned by a half step. We do this by going around the Circle of Fifths.
The “Circle of Fifths” is one of the principle constructs of western music. I’d call it a “key construct,” but that would make you groan. It represents the fact that the key of G and the key of C, even though they seem to be far apart, actually share all the same notes but one. To go from G tuning to C tuning, just change your F# (F sharp) tine(s) to F natural.
As you make one step clockwise in the Circle of Fifths, if takes you up a 5th (eg, from C to G). Going counterclockwise, you go down a 5th, which is the same as going up a 4th. (If you don’t understand the last sentence, it is a very important one to get, so spend some time with it over the coming hours, days, or weeks. Check out the link below about it.)
The downside: on the Alto kalimba, the low note is G, the root note… but if you change to C by retuning F sharps to F naturals, you still have the G in the bass. Any songs you learned on the G Alto kalimba can no longer be played on the C Alto without totally relearning from scratch… in fact, locations are very different too: C Alto’s root note (low C) is on the left side, while the G Alto’s root note is on the right, so your left and right hemispheres have to learn each other’s parts.
The upside: There are thousands – tens of thousands? – lots and lots of songs that start on the low 5 and go up to the root – or G to C on the C Alto. “Amazing Grace” is the poster child for this type of song. So, retuning in this way has its up sides and its down sides.
Now, just to be complete: the next notch around the Circle of Fifths takes you to the key of F, and you accomplish this by tuning your B tines down to B flat. One more notch takes us to Bb, which we accomplish by tuning the E tines down to E flat.
And finally, that studio cat who was playing kalimba on “Three is a Magic Number” had to have three flats on his instrument, and the A tines were tuned down to A flat. In summary: F# to F natural, B natural to Bb, E natural to Eb, and A natural to A flat. That is four tines per octave, or eight tines over the two octave range of the Alto kalimba. Tuning on the fly, I can tune down half a step on one tine in about 15 seconds, so it would take me about two minutes to retune. (Now, if I were retuning this on a kalimba I was shipping out, I would be a bit more precise, and it would take me more like 10 minutes. And I admit I have been around this block a few times, and I just may be a bit quicker than most anyone else.)
So: if you need a kalimba in Eb, or F#, or E, or D… you now have the tools you need to accomplish this retuning yourself.
Or, you could leave it to the pros at Kalimba Magic and we’ll put the kalimba into the key you need in a most reasonable manner that will sound good and be reasonable for you to play.
And I should note: Kalimba Magic is one of only a very few kalimba sellers that will go to the trouble of figuring out what tuning you actually need, how best to accomplish this, and then do retuning for you.
On the other hand, most people just get their kalimbas in the standard tunings. And the books mostly work for the standard tunings.
Best to you on your kalimba journey!
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It highlights the three primary colors, the three sides of a triangle, and the importance of having three legs on a stool for stability. The film teaches children that three is a special number that often appears in nature, art, and mathematics. As the film progresses, it delves deeper into the mathematical properties of three.
It explains the concept of a triangle as a polygon with three sides and emphasizes that three sides are the minimum necessary for a shape to be considered a polygon. It further explores the concept of symmetry and shows how three is the smallest number of lines needed to create a symmetrical shape. The film concludes by reinforcing the importance and relevance of the number three in various aspects of life. It encourages children to remember that three is a magic number that appears in many different contexts and holds special significance. With its catchy songs and engaging visuals, Schoolhouse Rock: Three is a Magic Number effectively teaches children about the properties and significance of the number three in a fun and entertaining way..
Reviews for "Fun with Numbers: Exploring Addition and Subtraction in Schoolhouse Rock Three"
1. Jane - 2 stars - I found "Schoolhouse Rock Three is a Magic Number" to be quite dull and uninspiring. The animation was outdated and the songs lacked any catchy tunes or memorable lyrics. The educational value seemed minimal as well, with the content being too shallow and repetitive. Overall, I was disappointed with this installment of the Schoolhouse Rock series and would not recommend it.
2. Mark - 1 star - "Schoolhouse Rock Three is a Magic Number" was a complete waste of time. The songs were annoyingly repetitive and the animation was poorly done. The educational aspect was also lacking, with little depth to the topics covered. It felt like a rushed and half-hearted attempt to create a kids' show. I would suggest looking for other educational content instead.
3. Sarah - 2 stars - I had high expectations for "Schoolhouse Rock Three is a Magic Number", but unfortunately, it fell short. The songs were forgettable and did not engage my child's interest. The visuals were outdated and not visually appealing. The educational content felt rushed and did not provide enough depth for proper understanding. Overall, I was disappointed with this installment of Schoolhouse Rock and would not recommend it to others.
4. Michael - 2 stars - "Schoolhouse Rock Three is a Magic Number" failed to captivate my child's attention. The songs were lackluster and failed to create a memorable experience. The animation style felt outdated, and the educational content provided little substance. The overall production quality was below average, making it difficult for my child to stay engaged. I would recommend exploring other educational options before resorting to this particular Schoolhouse Rock episode.