Where's our memories?

Jessica just put some photos from the All-California Convention up on the Facebooks. I'm sure people have thousands of photos! I want to see some, are there any albums online? Are there any recordings yet? Let's hear it!

Here's the recording Natalie made from the after-party New Music singing at Mark's house, of my tune Multnomah. (Click play on the little player, or download this mp3 here, & there's a pdf of the score here.)
-James

Two Christmas Shape-Note Scores & Recordings

Here's two Christmas tunes for the Western Harmony, scores & sampler demo recordings - I brought them on Monday, but things got a little confusing with the floor being waxed, et cetera.

The first one is the melody of Tchaikovsky's snowflakes, the harmonies have been changed to protect the innocent. The second is a nativity fuging tune with text inspired by the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James (hence the title). I apologize for the sloppy production on the recordings, I only intend them as demos to test the harmonies. There's also a pdf here if anyone across the series of tubes wants to print it out. (& the mp3s here & here.) Happy Christmas & see you all again in the Obama era.

BUSH - shape-note score & solo-quartet recording

I finally have my sexy new digital microphone, The Samson CO3U, & this is the trial run, a demo solo-quartet overdub of the new tune we tried to sing at Mark's house. There is a downloadable pdf file of the score here, & to download an mp3 of the below podcast-player go here. The lyrics were composed in Liverpool this July:

BUSH

On this planet I spin around in anguish & grief.

If heav'n is more beautiful than California, then I want to go.

In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf,

So like a caterpillar will my love grow.

In my vineyard plague-locusts have devoured my belief,

The cankerworm has eaten up the palmerworm, I sow only woe,

In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf,

So like a caterpillar will my love grow.

Travis John

Here is a jpg-image file of that song I brought in a few weeks ago. If you click on it, you can see it larger or print it out. Or download a pdf here. It was my advanced notation skills that typed the score into Finale, but I can't get all of the 'fas' into perfect triangles.


It's an arrangement of a song by Kate Power, a Portland songwriter, the story of a fallen American soldier. She said the spirit of Travis John came to her & helped her write his story. The folksinger Tracy Grammer sings it & hands out copies of the music, to spread it around as a latter-day war memorial. Hence the shape-note arrangement. The full story of the song is here.

To see what it sounds like, I sang all four parts using my ancient retro-ghetto synthesizer & sound-editing software. Warning, the sound of a quintet of my voice accompanied by old synth noises may induce nightmares! But, it's a rough idea of the harmonies.