Season 351 - Life Cycle

Brian Fergus "Welcome" (ukulele/synthesizer cover)

For the "Birth" subtheme for Season 351 of the ukulele, here's "Welcome" - an instrumental from the 1976 album by the German trio Harmonia and featuring Brian Eno.
This is a video of a practice run for a live performance I'll be doing at the Seattle Sound Chapel on December 1, 2018.
The piece is created by layering recorded loops, building a multitrack texture in "real time", using a computer and looping pedal.
First an arpeggiated ostinato bass line is triggered from a small controller keyboard. Next are several layers of acoustic ukulele, followed by two passes of ukulele-triggered atmospheric synthesizer.

 
Hope the sun shines for you, Geoff. ;)

It was a good day. Train journey long jam session. The weather held. Fish and Chips in Whitby then train back. Jam a bit less vigorous this time as we were getting tired.

Took some harmonicas as well and unfortunately a reed may have "blown out". It may just be a hair stuck in a reed - it's happened before, but I'm not hopeful.
 
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Sunday: Birth

Here's a silly original, an excuse to pluck my banjolele!

 
Ahoy people and glad to be back after a few weeks of having waaaay too much to do.
I did the song Lightning Crashes by the band live. I was unsure of what to play so I googled songs +born +birth and found that song on one list - I have heard this song here and there for the past 20 years and I had never thought about the lyrics.
Anyway, here is my submission for 'birth'
 
This was the first song that came to mind for today, and I didn't notice until I was posting it that hendulele had already done it too. Let's see some more versions!

 
Hi, Keith! I skipped being born - boring! - and put freckles on my freckles to become a child. The splendid pink hat is courtesy of Gina ... thank you so much, Gina!

 
This is an XTC song. I made the mistake on my first take of trying to sing the verse in the same octave as Andy Partridge, and blew my voice out. I managed to get one shortened take while singing the verse lower.

 
Could not get anything to work last week...not sure I am completely out of the woods with this, but here it is
 
Naked - Paul McCartney
"I've been naked since I was born"
This is the middle section of a three-part medley from Paul's 2018 album Egypt Station.
 
thank you for hosting the week Keith.
written and played this morning for the "Birth" category.
a love letter from a father to his newborn daughter.



JEMIMAH'S LULLABY

Little gummy shark
Little cooing lark
Little bright spark
My little baby

Little race car
Little airplane
Little spring rain
My little baby girl

Little building block
Little spinning top
Little sweet thing
My everything

Little sundial
Little half-smile
Little storyteller
My little baby

Little rainbow
Little sleeper
Little seeker
My little baby girl

Stars above you
How I love you
May God bless you
My little baby girl
 
There is an old adage that "Schooldays are the best days of your life!". For me it is absolute nonsense. The only education our society offers children is an academic one and only 40% of children are capable of completing an academic education. The rest are just not catered for. So schools are full of children who can't see the point of what they are doing and who spend their time disrupting those who do. So nobody's happy! And I won't even get into the bullying in the playground argument...

So, my response to the "Childhood Theme" is a thorough questioning of our current education system which for many is simply:



PS Written between 7:00 and 8:30 am this morning and recorded, edited and posted by 10:00. Is this a Barbablanca record? :)
 
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