New choral arrangement: Some Nights by Fun.

I heard some magically beautiful choral singing today and was inspired to arrange some music for that choir, Aorere College’s Sweet Sixteen.  The music that they sang was old, but it reminded me of where I had come from musically. It was a piece of music that my parents had played for me when I was young and it left a mark. When I hear music, I wonder how long it will last. Will something I write leave a mark? For how long? Will I ever inspire my students to write and perform music that will leave a mark? I hope so.

Here’s a pdf of the choral arrangement I wrote for the new song “Some Nights” by Fun. You can have it for free. I didn’t choose the song for the lyrics (it’s about a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan and his thoughts on his life) I chose it because of the harmony. I hope someone’s choir out there will perform it. Here’s an mp3 of the arrangement using midi sounds. Please note that in part of the song there is spoken word, and obviously the computer can’t emulate that. Secondly, the drumming is just a suggestion. I’m a singer, so I kept the drumming simple.

Here’s one with me singing

(By the way, I heard this song for the first time on Friday night, and it took me 12 hours to arrange this weekend, mostly because I was being finicky about the rhythm)

Here’s the original song. There is one swear word in the song, and I changed it in my arrangement.

Gamelan instruments played by grade 7

Mother’s Day Message to my Mum the Music Teacher

Thank you Mum.

Thank you for showing me that you can be part of your children’s lives and still have a career.

Thank you for making music a part of our lives as much as it was your students.

Thank you for encouraging all of us to sing in all its forms – for church, for charity, in choirs, in competition, and in the car.

Thank you for finding a song in everything and teaching us all the songs you knew. I can’t pass the time now without thinking, what song will make the time fly by?

Thank you for encouraging us gently and letting us make the decisions about music, but when the time came, always being there when we were performing.

Thank you for finding the time, the week before a big production, to do something special with us.

Thank you for showing me that a winning smile and a polite thank you puts an audience at ease, and that divas are simply painful.

Thank you for continuing to encourage me as a musician.

I love being a music teacher because of you and any time someone says, you’re just like your mum, I beam with pride thinking that I might reflect a little bit of you.

If you had Wendy Williams as your music teacher at Port Moresby International School (1987- 1994), Laidley State High School, St. Ursulas College or St. Savior’s College and have a memory of her that you’d like to share (school musicals, the school band or choir, the United Nations Festival, the school trip and subsequent performances in the US by students from PNG, etc.) please write it in the comments section and I’ll make sure she reads it.

New and improved: Recording of Skylark

I posted a recording of Skylark a while ago on the blog, this is my most recent recording of the song. It was recorded over lunch with a fellow teacher, Brian Duffy, playing guitar. Enjoy!

Fix You arranged for Choir and Rock Band

A while back I was looking for a song that both my choir and rock band could perform at the end of year assembly and I thought that Fix You by Coldplay would be just perfect. I wrote it out using Sibelius (changed the key to E major) and today I finally finished all the parts (I had given the choral parts to my choir a couple of weeks ago). As for my rock band, they won’t need the music, they’ll just learn through listening, but for my own growth as a musician I took the time to write it out as I would like to hear it. Please take a listen, I’d say it’s taken me between 8- 12 hours of listening and writing to finish it and it’s only 4 min long!

Here’s the Fix You arrangement as a pdf. Yes you can have it for free. If you want individual parts, just leave me a comment and I’ll get them to you.

Here’s a pic of just 2 of the pages Ahhh, the sweet feeling of accomplishment!

Songwriting Challenge: Too Long Gone

I’ve written two songs this weekend. One still needs the structure of the song tweaked, but this one is on its way to being finished. Still experimenting with how I want my voice to sound, but you will get the idea of the melody here. The drum track is not perfect, but it helped me stay in time! Please give me some feedback!!

 

Jenny’s experiment with harmony

My student Jenny, in grade 8, decided to see what it would be like to create her own harmonies with her own voice in garageband — just because. You’ve got to love her enthusiasm for making music! Here’s the first experiment.

She tells me that she wants to work on it some more to make it polished, but I thought it best to publish it in it’s raw form. Thanks Jenny for letting me!