Even now, I persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.
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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.
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.
posted evening of December 24th, 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
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.)
Still not perfect -- there are some missed entrances, the fiddle solo lags in places, I still don't have any decent recording equipment -- but this is totally on track for what I want to sound like. Something I am really happy about is the variation in meter from verse to verse -- I was able to work out occasionally inserting an extra measure in key places and I think it came out really well. The drones are a little annoying without a fiddle on top of them but I just didn't want to try that right now. Maybe another day.
I sort of think this might be a Childe Ballad, not sure though. Janis introduced me to it, we've been playing it together for a couple of years. Came out pretty well, though I'm not too confident with the lyric. Janis usually sings it.
I'm hearing reports from a couple of people that when they click "Play" on the little MediaPlayer objects I am using for streaming my songs, they don't get any sound. If that is true for you, could you make a note of it here, along with what browser and operating system you are using? Here is a MediaPlayer for you to test with:
Here is another one to try:
OK, and one more:
posted evening of December 26th, 2007: 2 responses
Wow, look! This is my nine-hundred and ninety-ninth post to this blog. The counter's about to roll over. Fun! Just in time for the new year.
So I came up with a little air for viola; I am inaugurating my new policy of giving my songs titles, by calling this one "Sally's Sleeping"; as Mr. Fritz observed in comments a few days ago, fiddlers name their tunes "after any damn thing". This is my first song (a) in 12/8 meter and (b) for which I was able to correctly work out notating the rhythm without help from ABCEdit's playback feature.
I found a streaming music player which is not dependent on Windows MediaPlayer, so I am going to try using it. Please let me know if either you were not able to play my music files before, and now you are, or you were able to play them before and now you are not. Thanks!
Here is the music for it, ABC format and PDF. Note that I didn't play exactly the same fourth bar that is written down; the whole point is to play a different variation every time.
posted morning of December 30th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about The site
So I was working on a short air for viola this morning and I went to write it down; and I realized it was almost exactly the same song as Sally's Sleeping, except in 4/4 time instead of 12/8. That one difference makes it sound like quite a distinct song! (Well also I'm playing it in a different key and faster.) Here they are together:
Update: added a new melody to the Sally cycle. See new post for the recording.
Looking at the two side by side a little more, I realize there is another distinction: "Sally's Sleeping" starts on the tonic, and "Sally Woke Up" is a similar pattern of notes but starting on the third. This distinction must be something like an inversion but I'm not sure what words I would use in talking about it.
(Sylvia says, "So you mean, it's like Junie B. Jones and then Junie B., First Grader?" Exactly.)
Gee, I hope I have more than a single melody in my head. The one I wrote out this evening is very similar in structure to "Sally's Sleeping" and "Sally Woke Up"; I am calling this one "Sally's Dreaming" (ABC format, PDF). Here are the three of them together:
