From “A Few Words of Advice to Singers” in an 1813 songbook called “David’s Harp”:
Let the mouth be opened freely, but not wide, and let the tones proceed from the chest — otherwise they cannot be good.
Avoid singing as though the nose was stopped up; — this is commonly called “singing through the nose,” but it is the very reverse of it, as may be proved by closing the nostrils.
Never attempt to sing a part for which your voice is not calculated; for if you strive to reach tones which are above your compass — your abortive attempt will have a tendency to depress the pitch of the tune and create unpleasant sensations in yourself and others — men who cannot reach F with ease, had better sing Bass.
Stand or sit erect, and avoid all ridiculous gesticulation and affectation; “suit your looks and action to the words,” and if the subject be praise and thanksgiving, you need not look as though you were at a funeral.
Above all, let the melody of the song, be accompanied by the melody of the heart; never losing sight of the important direction of the poet, “Rehearse his praise with awe profound, Let knowledge lead the song; Nor mock him with a solemn sound, Upon a thoughtless tongue.”
Hype Machine has introduced a new feature called Fast Forward that’s like speed dating for indie rock fans and indie rock songs. Here’s how it works: After clicking “go” on the Fast Forward home page, Hype Machine plays 30-second samples of songs and shows the blog post from which the song came. (For the uninitiated, the Hype Machine is a streaming service that plays songs that have been posted at a select group of music blogs.)
If Fast Forward seems familiar, it may remind you of Shuffler.fm, a great site that streams music from music blogs through a couple dozen or so curated channels of both mainstream and niche genres. Each song played at Shuffler comes with the blog page with the source music (Shuffler takes the music from each blog’s RSS feed), allowing the listener to read up on the artist as the song plays. Shuffler launched last year, got some good press and won a B2C award at MidemNet Labs startup competition earlier this year.
It’s striking that Billboard, which is the voice of the legacy music industry, has a friendly feeling towards both hypem and shuffler.
By email he commented: I left in too many of those transitions, which are every bit as amusing and clunky as Windows Movie Maker transitions. I’d take them out if I were doing it again. Overall, I pronounced Pinnacle VideoSpin a worthy successor.
A medium difficulty short piano piece for intermediate pianists. Some have liked it for its charming and romantic melody: others have described it as “sentimental salon tosh.” The pianist and academic Arthur Loesser described it as “this dowdy product of ineptitude.”
1935
That sounds almost nothing like the Bob Wills version, published in 1935, via YouTube
The American musician Bob Wills arranged the piece in the Western swing style and wrote lyrics for it. He published it first in 1935 as “Maiden’s Prayer”; later, it became a standard, recorded by many artists.
Here is Uncle Bob Larkan and Uncle Sam McRee, Sr., with the boys and girls that go to make up the happy groups of “Arkansans” that so many hear and enjoy. Typical old southern melodies and old fashioned tunes make up their efforts to please you.
In the mornings when the 4am feeding is over and before my wife gets up I find time to practice, and one night a week I go out to sing.
The practice time is going towards lap steel and dobro. I started learning steel during paternity leave. The pinky on my fretting hand is giving me a lot of pain, so I can’t play normal guitar without making the pain worse, and since steel doesn’t involve fretting it doesn’t need the pinky at all.
The singing is Sacred Harp. It’s a deep well.
Eventually I’ll have time again for gigging, music blogging, and recording. By then I’ll have a new instrument under my belt and probably won’t play much regular guitar. But in the meantime – hibernation.
Horace Weston’s approach to harmony was bold and advanced.
In his composition “Egyptian Fandango” (sheet music here) there is an E7 spelled f#-g#-d-e, putting two whole-tone pairs next to each other to maximize dissonance:
Something really unusual there is the f#, the 9th of the chord, as the bass note. Modern jazz might do that to give a sense of two chords at once, meaning an E7 chord and an F# chord happening at the same time. But the way this is voiced with the 9th right next to the 3rd makes the f# act more like a coloration than a tonal center. Funk would have a 9th but only if the 3rd and root are in other octaves, far away from one another to prevent dissonance, and anyway the 9th would never be used as the lowest note. It’s a quirky and creative touch on Weston’s part.
Another approach to this voicing from the same song, this time staggering the high note to be on the downbeat, putting the rest of the notes together on the upbeat, and adding the 5th of the chord in the root:
This is again a personal and creative concept. The phrase here is the classic oom-pah boom-chuck 1-2 bass-chord chop, but the first note is above the entire chord rather than below it. If that e note before the chord were an octave down, it would be the same old same old. Weston had ideas.
Here’s the entire bar where that chord is sitting:
A similar harmony to the above is in Weston’s composition “Horace Weston’s Celebrated Polka” (view sheet music at the Library of Congress). In the B section the main idea is a closely voiced V7 chord, with the 5th, the b7 and root note right on top of each other in a strongly accented chop:
“Strike the chords of Life’s great autoharp whenever you may, and there comes forth the wails of misery and woe commingling with those of laughter and song”
[letter of Lucy Roberson to Ollie Roberson, from the Nevada Supreme Court case of Roberson v. Roberson, 41 Nev. 276, 169 P. 333(1917)]
I can’t tell you the parts of their relationship which involved roses and love poems and promises in the dark. I can tell you they were minors when they married. I can tell you that their relations crossed the expected boundaries of intimacy, such that Lucy bore at least one child. I can also tell you that the marriage did not work.
The couple talked it over, and decided to go their separate ways. Ollie moved from the piedmont of North Carolina to Reno, Nevada. Lucy moved in with her people, along with the couple’s child.
