Open Mike Night

Tonight Lynn and I played our first Open Mike Night at the Folk Music Center. Now that we know just what to do, we'll set up something to hold our spot in line at 4:30 p.m. so that we can play in the first set. We ended up being third to last of the second set, so we heard all the acts. Some were pretty good. Some . . . not so much, but it was mostly pretty entertaining.

We played an Irish Medley which included Star of the County Down, Merrily Kiss the Quaker and Coleraine.

If you want to see the video on youtube, you can email me, and I will send you the link.

Using Music as a Punishment...

It could have said viola....

Current String Quartet

I am starting a string quartet arrangement of What Wondrous Love is This - a lovely hymn from the Southern Harmony hymnbook in the dorian mode. What's interesting to me about this hymn is that it doesn't use the 3rd of the scale, which sets the major/minor feel in the listener's ear, although it has a definite minor cast to it. We plan to play this in church during Lent.

I really like this acapella version on youtube by Blue Highway.

What If?

In upper grade music we are learning about the 12-Bar Blues - lyrics structure, chord structure. Being that it is the Lunar New Year starting today, I have been thinking about teaching the Chinese Boatman's Chantey to the recorder students, so I had both the blues and the chantey going through my head at the same time. Perhaps I could arrange a blues version of this pentatonic song for our elementary orchestra for next year's February concert....