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Songs
Some songs I like to play. See also my Charts page.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Yes! I have figured out my rhythm problems in "Ballad of Hollis Brown". Turns out I've been trying to play it all this time in 4/4 time when the fiddle part I am trying to write is actually in 2/4. I've totally got it now, I am working on the transcription and will be posting it soon.
(Note: I play a very nice version on my guitar that is definitely a 4/4 song and sounds very dirgelike, which is pretty appropriate for this song. The fiddle version is going to be more rocking. But I guess there is room for that too.)
posted evening of December 25th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Spare yourself and don't listen to this one -- very rough. It is a favorite song of mine though, I want to keep working on it. The idea is to integrate the voice with the viola, and have a dialog between the voice and the violin.
Update: see take 2 for the working version. Much better, cleaner, more successful.
posted morning of December 25th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
This is awesome! Every day I am coming up with a new fiddle part. I worked this out on viola just now: ABC format, PDF. Might record it tonight, maybe tomorrow. Those 8-beat drones at the end of each line will have violin on top of them. (This is the first transcription I have done directly into C clef.)
In the sober light of morning: This transcription is way wrong. The part sounds pretty sweet, and I'm going to try recording it; but the notation does not correctly tell how to play it. So don't rely on it.
Update: See the new post for a better transcription.
I'm pretty happy with this. I tried putting a solo in but it just doesn't work that way. So I'm just playing it straight through. A couple of bars of solo before the first verse might be something to think about.
Background on this song: it is by an old Country band called the Stanley Brothers, but I have never heard them play it. I heard John Miller's cover on the same disc where I heard The Louisville Burglar -- Thanks Jeffrey! This was Sylvia's favorite song for a while so we listened to it a lot.
The cool thing about this song is, I had been looking for a fiddle part for a while; and then yesterday I just heard the part exactly in my head, and how it would fit in with the vocal. I think it sounds really good together.
Update: Huh, I just listened to the John Miller version again for the first time in a while, and my cover is different in some pretty key ways. That's nice to see. He does a two-bar intro, I'll try and add that next time I play this.
I wrote out the fiddle part for "Weary Day" -- you can read it in ABC format or PDF. Note the time signature change in the middle of the chorus -- I wasn't sure how else to represent two extra beats in one of the measures. (In the Corelli piece we were playing in the chamber music workshop, the extra-long measure was just written in to the music with no warning, but that seemed a little hard to get used to.)
Very much a working version -- I am not particularly happy with the integration between the vocals and the fiddle; and I don't think I am singing this one very well right now. But there is the germ of something that sounds good in it.
I think The Louisville Burglar is by the Iron Mountain String Band. I heard it on a CD from Jeffrey Davidson's radio show. So now you know.
Ok, I'm pretty happy with this recording. Not perfect, there are several places where I have rhythm trouble and I generally have a little trouble with starting the verses; but the ratio of moments that work to embarrassing gaffes is a good deal higher than on the previous attempt.
(I re-recorded this tune. See the new post for the recording.)
Here is a story about "John Hardy Was a Desperate Man": It is my very favorite Carter Family song out of those that I have heard, which is a fair portion of their catalog. (Yes -- I even like it better than "Will the Circle be Unbroken".) Listening to it just puts me into a trance. Sadly I have not listened to it in a couple of years because I lost the disc on which it is recorded -- but this has a very nice upshot. In all that time of not being able to listen to the original I feel like I have come up with a very worthwhile version that is properly my own. The chords are different from the Carter Family's version, the key is different, the melody is different. This is about the only song that I cover where my version is really substantially different from the version I am covering. (Not to imply that my covers are of similar quality to the originals, just that they are imitative.) Anyway, listen to it and let me know what you think.
I am thinking maybe I should try playing this in A minor or G minor, that that might be better suited to my vocal range. I had originally chosen D minor because the guitar part is really easy there; but seeing as that's not a concern currently....
Yes! It sounds way better in G minor. I will re-record it later this morning.
posted evening of December 22nd, 2007: 2 responses
I'm starting to use my new mixing program, Audacity. In the spirit of audacity, I'll post a working version of "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning". Not satisfied with much of this but I think some individual bits work very well. My laptop's microphone captures my fiddle surprisingly well; I think for further vocal work I am going to need to get a microphone. And a better sense of rhythm -- it's surprisingly difficult to figure out where to come in when you are listening to a track you laid down previously.
posted evening of December 21st, 2007: 2 responses
I need to come up with more descriptive titles than "Melody 1", "Melody 2" and so forth for the tunes I come up with. Sylvia suggests that the most recent one be called "Sandwich Song", and so it shall be.
