SOTU 554 "Swayin' to the tempo of a squeezebox melody" Songs About Instruments

Some pleasant surprises today:
- Brian started us off with the definitive ukulele song, the paoriginal, Four Little Strings
- Dave and Melissa gave us a new instrument with their rendition of You Play Glockenspiel, I’ll Play Drums
- Next Rob gave us a lovely rendition of The Piper of Dundee, "And wasna he a roguey"
- Then we waltzed around to John's rendition of Ivory Tears.
- Mark gave us a third version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I can never get too much of this gem.
- Three super songs from Joo today: Take Your Love With Me gives us another song with a ukulele
- Joo's I Saw Lynda At A Fair gets me wondering again about lovely Linda and all of her instruments.
- Again from Joo, we get Appalachian Melody which mentions the dulcimer, banjo and fiddle
- Another piano (pianner) tune from Jarvo where the piano also makes an actual appearance. Ole Pianner Rag
,- Joko and Jon gave us a wonderful Guy Clark song, The Guitar
- And cua94 gave us another song that mentions pipes, Scotland The Brave
- Alan has given us another zither song, Come Hither With Your Zither, that also makes mention of piano and violin (AKA "fiddle").
- Since we have no tambourine yet, I'm gonna add Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man

That brings the score up to:
-Ukuleles - 9
-Guitars - 8
-Piano - 7
-Trumpets - 4
-Drums -4
-Fiddle -4
-Bagpipes - 3
-Harps - 2
-Banjo - 2
-Dulcimer -2
-Zither -2
-Kazoo - 1
-Dan moi - 1
-Ondes martenot - 1
-Coronet -1
-Clarinet -1
-Trombone -1
-Cello -1
-Bassoon -1
-Flute -1
-Euphonium -1
-Accordion - 1
-Whistle - 1
-Gong - 1
-Glockenspiel- 1
-Tambourine - 1

Please let me know if I've missed putting a video on the Play List.
 
Well I couldn’t resist posting something for instrument week. I am working on a second song which is an arrangement of Music for a Found Harmonium but it is proving more challenging than I anticipated so here is a quickie from the Magnetic Fields with simple D A G chords but it sounds so sweeeet!

 
UkerDrew said:
Well I couldn’t resist posting something for instrument week. I am working on a second song which is an arrangement of Music for a Found Harmonium but it is proving more challenging than I anticipated so here is a quickie from the Magnetic Fields with simple D A G chords but it sounds so sweeeet!
Click to expand...
are you going to use a looper? - just watched a live guitar loop clip and it was brill
also watched the magnetic fields acoustic guitar - was expecting that guy with a deep voice but it was sung by a girl - your version was so good
 
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pabrizzer said:
are you going to use a looper? - just watched a live guitar loop clip and it was brill
also watched the magnetic fields acoustic guitar - was expecting that guy with a deep voice but it was sung by a girl - your version was so good
Click to expand...
I have a looper and it would make sense to layer in keys but that’s beyond my skill and available time at the moment. I thought about looping Brian in but once again probably no time for that either. It’s such a fun song to play but probably over ambitious to learn it in a week. There‘s really only 3 parts that repeat but the key is getting close to the 120 bpm it needs to not sound plodding. Thank You!
 
Rare footage of a monk from the orthodox monastery at Valamo, in Russian Karelia, which is located on Valaam, the largest island in Lake Ladoga.
When the song "jingle bells" was written it heralded the idea of one horse one man.
It is thought that the "jingle bells" from the Russian Orthodox tradition Inspired Sergei Prokofiev to compose the "Troika" from Lieutenant Kijé. (Op. 60, suite for orchestra)
This caused great offence with senior Bolsheviks including Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, who told him: "You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way."
Innocently enough the "Troika" was a musical masterpiece about a sleigh ride, but referred to a three-horse team drawing a sledge. To the Bolsheviks this smacked of revisionism and a return to Bourgeois ways, since it contradicted the principles set out by Marx which stated "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"
Three horses instead of one was surely a capitalist luxury.
Prokofiev arrived in San Francisco on 11 August 1918, and the rest is history.
 
Hey, Jim!

Thanks for hosting! I've been struggling for time this week but I visited my mate, Paul, last night and we managed to get this together. It's another notch for the guitar, I'm afraid. Seems those things are pretty popular!
It was a case of trying to learn the song from scratch and film it in the couple of hours we had. Turns out take 16 was the keeper! I've included a blooper reel at the end (contains the odd F bomb)...

(Oh, I got the season title wrong on the vid too...my apologies!)

Cheers!

 
As they used to say on Blue Peter*, “ Here’s one I made earlier” I wrote this this morning in about 15 minutes because I’m not flush with time at the moment. I was toying with the idea of a song that mentions flugelhorn in the context of a brass band, we have some truly wonderful brass bands here in the North of England ( other places too of course, but brass bands are in many ways the sound of the North), but then my mind took flight and Chuck Mangione came to me, not literally of course, he doesn’t live next door to me or anything. But I know Chuck is a flugelhorn player of world renown , and so “Chuck Mangione’s Flugelhorn” became a song that demanded to be written. The premise is one many parents will be familiar with, (I know I am), your son or daughter comes home from school and has a project they want you to help them with. If I had more time I’d have liked to have fleshed this out, put in another verse, a bridge maybe, but it is what it is. The eagle-eyed among you will notice I am wearing a Chuck Mangione style hat.



My daughter came home from school at 3
Saying “Dad we have a project can you help me please?
We must ask our mums and dads about days gone by.
What music did you dance to, where and why?”

I said, “Honey let me think cos my memory
Might not be as good as it used to be.
But we used to groove from dusk til dawn
To Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn “

Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn
Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn

I said, “In ‘76 we dyed our hair bright green,
Then in the 80s we loved the electronic scene,
And back in the day before you were born
We danced to Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn.

Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn
Chuck Mangione’s flugelhorn

*UK kids tv show, massively popular when I were a lad.
 
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Hello, Jim and many thanks for this week! This is a bit belated because it was challenging to learn and then, when I came to record it yesterday, I found that I'd lost my voice - not surprising as I have been sneezing for several days. Anyway, I tried again today and it sort of worked out, although I think my voice might have dropped a couple of octaves!

 
This could be Townes Van Zandt's saddest song...and he has a few. Instrument mentioned is a mouth harp. Sometimes known as jaw harp or jew's harp. I like one of the comments on Towne's version of this on youtube. It said " it's like a Steinbeck novel in under five minutes". Guitalele tuned down 3 steps...like a guitar on capo 2. With some tenor uke overdubs.
 
I downloaded some tanpura loops from soundcloud and was messing about with G. Gershwin to try and fit one of his songs to it, and this was the result.
I got tanpura rhythm... and a new melody.
 
Guitars & trumpets!

 
Hi again Jim, I thought I had played all the instrument songs I wanted to play but then I saw one more. A banjo one.

Carl Jung suggested that when we're about seven we separate from and then bury or repress whatever parts of us don't seem to be acceptable in the world around us. According to Jung, these unacceptable parts become our shadow.

"My shadow is a happy gypsy girl.
Her hair is the colour of the sunrise.
Freckly face, with a crooked smile,
Two missing front teeth, north and south.
My shadow is a happy gypsy girl.

When she falls, she draws faces on her bloodied knees.
One sad, one happy, marching in perfect harmony.
My shadow is a sloth on steroids
Living in a tree house.
When she falls, she draws faces on her bloodied knees.

She plays the banjo to serenade drunken souls.
Tucks them in bed with that half bottle still in their hands,
Snoring peacefully through their whiskey breath.
She plays the banjo to serenade drunken souls.

My shadow serves rainbow fruit punch at funerals.
She jokes about Death calling it the ultimate painkiller.
Then skips around discussing the sort of footwear to don in heaven,
with the grieving family asking her to scram.

When my heart sinks, she shoots rubber bands at me.
She catapults my sorrow into the sunbeams.

My shadow is not afraid to be happy
My shadow is not afraid to be silly
My shadow is not afraid to be nasty
My shadow is not afraid to be naughty
My shadow is not afraid of bad poetry
My shadow is not afraid to be free
My shadow is not afraid to be me.


 
One Man And His Uke said:
Those put me in mind of something I never knew the existence of until a few years ago, the Nykelharpa. Wish I had more hours in the day to write a song about one of those 😂
Click to expand...
The fiddle player in our jug band also plays the Nykelharpa. I love its sound, but she doesn't play it in the jug band.
Here's Saskia with her Nykelharpa. Steafan, who now owns the two taishogotos above, is her husband.
Saskia with Nykelharpa.jpg
 
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