Some folks who do traditional folk music in Ottawa assembled a rendition of "Good King Wenceslas" that I'm reasonably pleased with.

We were given an early version of the video with just a few voices and instruments, and asked to record ourselves performing along with it. I took an old SATB score sheet that I had, transcribed it into MuseScore ( Read more... )

In doing some vocal warm-ups for "The COVID Connection", I have just discovered that singing "ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit" is difficult to sing quickly.

Months in the planning, delayed in the execution... I had the idea of trying to make Vogon poetry sound as pretty as possible, and challenging others to do interesting things with Vogon poetry, in recognition of the 42nd anniversary of the initial broadcast of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I noticed some rhyme parallels between the first ( Read more... )

That four-beat pattern from the Doctor Who episode "The End of Time" is a lot less creepy and ominous if one starts humming/whistling Ravel's Bolero along with it.
 

"... And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking out singin' a bar of "Alice's CEGEP" and walking in. And friends they may think it's a movement.

"And that's what it is, the Alice's CEGEP Anti-Fee-Increase Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar."

Now it is the month of May-ing ( Read more... )

The horror is not ABBA crossed with Lovecraft.  Terence Chua's work is pretty well done and lots of fun.

The horror is ABBA crossed with Gregorian chant.  Or, for that matter, Elton John crossed with Gregorian chant, or Elvis with Gregorian chant.

It's not the concept I object to, not at all.  It's the execution.  Cheezy synthesized music.  Weird ( Read more... )

Last Sunday's Vinyl Cafe show featured a charming little song, "Your Personal Penguin", lyrics by Sandra Boynton, performance by former Monkee Davy Jones.  I did a quick search, and found that the song is on-line, along with a video with bits of the recording session.

The song is catchy, and riffs on Hoagy Carmichael's music for "Heart and Soul".

( Read more... )

A few days ago, there was a brief discussion on the rec.music.filk newsgroup of "Madeira-ing" women at filk conventions -- that is, getting them to play the part of the young woman in a performance of Flanders and Swann's "Madeira M'Dear", as schtick.  The consensus was that it's not a good idea to do this unless the woman in question agrees to it ( Read more... )