SOTU 313 Seventh Year Celebration

Only blues song I know how to play, probably more folk blues the way I do it.
 
Fantastic job Eynowd! Thank you so much for bringing that piece to use. Welcome to the seasons :)
 
I've turned to you fine people before to wrestle with the concept of being an adult. It's always been cathartic, so I thought I'd do it again.

Last week Sparky wrote a quite frankly brilliant song that really struck a chord with me on the first listen. She very generously gave her blessing for me to cover and while learning it the lyrics really struck me. Really well written song that I relate to so much. But I've actually got a bit emotional tonight imagining Nathan as the narrator as well.

Here's my take on it. Thanks again Sparky.



Forgot to mention. It's in G.
 
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I developed a cold & cough over the weekend and my voice has been rough so I've done an instrumental. Two of my own compositions, Moorland Air and Ryedale Waltz played on my Anglo Concertina with accompaniment on ukulele. Moorland Air is in the key of Am so I tuned the 4th string of my concert uke up to A to give open Am tuning. With the chord shapes being unfamiliar I kept the accompaniment very simple. Also I had to keep retuning that string as it wasn't holding tune very well. Partly the string adjusting but possibly also the tuner screw need tightening a little to cope with the extra tension. Ryedale Waltz is in the key of G so I used my Brüko Tenor ukulele which is tuned dGBE, ie re-entrant baritone tuning. I put a drone in from my shruti box as well.

The photos are of the North York Moors and Rievaulx Abbey (which is in Ryedale)
 
Here's an OLD blues tune written by Willie Dixon and first recorded by Muddy Waters way back in 1954, Hoochie Coochie Man. I thought it "needed" the bass so I threw that together in a midi editor and my computer is playing along with me. I dug into my uke collection too and pulled out my custom Moore Bettah tenor, it is the bomb!

 
You will all be living in a state of shock when you find that I have recorded another song from London Calling, in the key of G.
Revolution Rock. Off to pour beer in my hat.

 



Hi, Linda! This is a (very) vague attempt at 12-bar blues in G - I've never tried anything "blues" before. One thing I'm sure of, though, is that you're not supposed to look cheerful when singing the blues, but to explain ... I recorded this following an abortive attempt yesterday to go out for a romantic Valentine's Day lunch, which ended up with us having to abandon the car halfway up a slippery hill and a half-hour trek back to the house along icy roads. The car was eventually rescued by two kind neighbours, one of whom had a quad bike ... on the back of which I had the scariest "off piste" ride ever through the snow. I was just pleased to be home! (P.S. I recorded the "snow footage" from our bedroom window.)
 
It is Wednesday evening and we are at the halfway marker of this week. We have 60 songs and every one of them have been really fantastic. So much can be learned with the open tunings. The Blues have been attempted for the first time by some and we've had some really fabulous original instrumental pieces. You people are an inspiration!

I've loved having fun with the "Happy" songs today. I've enjoyed having new people join too. I am looking forward to what the second half of the week may bring.

If you haven't been following along I will remind you again that I have opened a new bonus playlist for the rest of the week. You may bring me any feel-good happy song you want.

Thank you, everyone, for making this a really great week so far. Let's have a great second half!

:love:
 
An original instrumental composed for this week. I was playing round with an open tuning on my bari earlier this week which was a sort of C tuning, anyway, it involved me dropping the D string and raising the B string. The B string had other ideas and kindly snapped on me. Ordered another set off Amazon which came within two days. I didn’t bother restringing the whole bari. I just put on the new B string. Instead of tuning up, I left the B as is and tuned B, F#, B, D#. Gave me a rather pleasant sounding open chord of some description or other. I don’t know what it is, someone else might. The ringing sound put me in mind slightly of Bron-Yr-Aur, a Jimmy Page instrumental off Physical Graffiti. I was going to leave it untitled, but then I thought “Howlin’ Linda” after our slide playing, blues hollerin’ host seemed appropriate.
 
The tune I'll post today is a German Christmas carol called "Leise rieselt der Schnee".
But I recorded it in the key of G, and I like the 6/8 strumming pattern, which gives it a a kind of a Soul/Blues ballad feeling.
Snow falls softly at Night Blues
 
Hi there! It's nice to meet such ukulele enthusiasts :)
This is Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from snowy Russia.
The violin plays my daughter Olga.

 
Seriously folks, if you do nothing else all day, watch this...

Hi there! It's nice to meet such ukulele enthusiasts :)
This is Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from snowy Russia.
The violin plays my daughter Olga.

 
For my 7th and final blues song of this week, here's another David Allan Coe song, which I began the week with one of his songs. This one is from the early 80's, and I'm in open F. Thanks Linda for getting me to play around with open tunings on the ukulele, it's been quite interesting and educational for me.

 
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