Musicgeeking ahoy
Oct. 20th, 2003 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperIn the "Oh yeah, I AM a fan of Heather Alexander, aren't I?" department, I finally got around to listening to Insh'allah: The Music of Lion's Blood which she released to go along with the novel Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes. I'd gotten it from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka as a gift, and had been holding off listening to it on the thought that I didn't want to spoil any clues about how the novel went in my brain.
So after not having gotten around to the novel yet for the longest time, I finally got around to ripping my Heather discs to my iPod. And I finally said "fuck it" and listened to Insh'allah. And my jaw dropped, as it was far and away the best thing I've ever heard her do. She had a bunch of backup singers performing with her and some of the harmonies that came out of their mouths were just flat out incredible. Plus, the fusion of Celtic and Eastern styles of music worked amazingly well. One song in particular, "Laddie Are Ye Workin'?", has songvirused me thoroughly. Another, "Destiny", brought literal tears to my eyes.
On the strength of that album alone I went and joined a Yahoo group for Heather fans. :) Because I had to find somebody and tell them how much I loved that album. I filled out her comments form on her website, too.
This got me right back onto a major Heather kick, and I skipped around happily through the rest of her songs as well. I've also been majorly caught (again) by "The Witch of the Westmereland" and "High Barbary" (the first because it's just that damned good a song and the second because I've been all about the seafaring songs lately, thanks to M&C about to come out ;) ).
I know "Witch of the Westmereland" isn't actually Heather's song but I do love her rendition of it! And much to my satisfaction, found the tabs for it on the Web. I'm going to be playing with learning it, though at the moment I'm not sure if I can comfortably do it in Heather's key. She's doing the song in C, and while I can play those chords, I can't quite get to the low notes she hits.
"High Barbary" is another fun one, though I can't find tabs for it yet. I did find a reference, while going a'googling, to a book of pirate songs I may have to get, though. ;) But in the meantime I'm trying to work out the chords by ear, which is a challenge as Heather does it in E, and I don't know too many chords that go in that key yet!
In related news, I have continued getting more music onto my iPod... and discovered much to my glee that I had forgotten a lot of the content on these discs that I haven't listened to in a while. This has led to the happy observation that a lot of the pieces played on my Celtic discs are in fact in my mandolin fakebook -- most notably, "The Swallow's Tail Jig", "The Swallow Tail Reel", and "Pigeon on the Gate". The first two were put into the same piece by the Paperboys, the latter put into a piece by the Fables. And Heather also stuck "Swallow Tail Reel" on the tail end of one of her pieces.
Craig, a guy I know from greatbigsea.com and who is in fact both a Newfoundlander and a musician, has sent me his own take on "Swallow's Tail Jig". I want to do this one now, preferably bridged together with the Reel, if I can figure out how to make it work. They're in two different keys and two different time signatures. But if Great Big Sea can stick disparate tunes together in one piece, so can I! ;D
There is something called a "roll" which will make learning these things a challenge, too. It is described in my mandolin fakebook as something typically done by fiddlers, but you can apparently do it on mandolin-flavored instruments as well. What you want to do apparently is squeeze five notes into a beat. You can do it by five notes of equal length, which confuses me. You can also apparently do it as a triplet with two grace notes on the first note, or a pair of sixteenths and an eighth, again with two grace notes on the first note. Trying to get my fingers to figure out how to do this promises to be amusing.
And now that there is iTunes for Windows, I have been happily building a playlist of all the Celtic instrumentals I have on my various discs. This should make for fun listening. And possibly also good background music for Mah Jongg.
mamishka as a gift, and had been holding off listening to it on the thought that I didn't want to spoil any clues about how the novel went in my brain. So after not having gotten around to the novel yet for the longest time, I finally got around to ripping my Heather discs to my iPod. And I finally said "fuck it" and listened to Insh'allah. And my jaw dropped, as it was far and away the best thing I've ever heard her do. She had a bunch of backup singers performing with her and some of the harmonies that came out of their mouths were just flat out incredible. Plus, the fusion of Celtic and Eastern styles of music worked amazingly well. One song in particular, "Laddie Are Ye Workin'?", has songvirused me thoroughly. Another, "Destiny", brought literal tears to my eyes.
On the strength of that album alone I went and joined a Yahoo group for Heather fans. :) Because I had to find somebody and tell them how much I loved that album. I filled out her comments form on her website, too.
This got me right back onto a major Heather kick, and I skipped around happily through the rest of her songs as well. I've also been majorly caught (again) by "The Witch of the Westmereland" and "High Barbary" (the first because it's just that damned good a song and the second because I've been all about the seafaring songs lately, thanks to M&C about to come out ;) ).
I know "Witch of the Westmereland" isn't actually Heather's song but I do love her rendition of it! And much to my satisfaction, found the tabs for it on the Web. I'm going to be playing with learning it, though at the moment I'm not sure if I can comfortably do it in Heather's key. She's doing the song in C, and while I can play those chords, I can't quite get to the low notes she hits.
"High Barbary" is another fun one, though I can't find tabs for it yet. I did find a reference, while going a'googling, to a book of pirate songs I may have to get, though. ;) But in the meantime I'm trying to work out the chords by ear, which is a challenge as Heather does it in E, and I don't know too many chords that go in that key yet!
In related news, I have continued getting more music onto my iPod... and discovered much to my glee that I had forgotten a lot of the content on these discs that I haven't listened to in a while. This has led to the happy observation that a lot of the pieces played on my Celtic discs are in fact in my mandolin fakebook -- most notably, "The Swallow's Tail Jig", "The Swallow Tail Reel", and "Pigeon on the Gate". The first two were put into the same piece by the Paperboys, the latter put into a piece by the Fables. And Heather also stuck "Swallow Tail Reel" on the tail end of one of her pieces.
Craig, a guy I know from greatbigsea.com and who is in fact both a Newfoundlander and a musician, has sent me his own take on "Swallow's Tail Jig". I want to do this one now, preferably bridged together with the Reel, if I can figure out how to make it work. They're in two different keys and two different time signatures. But if Great Big Sea can stick disparate tunes together in one piece, so can I! ;D
There is something called a "roll" which will make learning these things a challenge, too. It is described in my mandolin fakebook as something typically done by fiddlers, but you can apparently do it on mandolin-flavored instruments as well. What you want to do apparently is squeeze five notes into a beat. You can do it by five notes of equal length, which confuses me. You can also apparently do it as a triplet with two grace notes on the first note, or a pair of sixteenths and an eighth, again with two grace notes on the first note. Trying to get my fingers to figure out how to do this promises to be amusing.
And now that there is iTunes for Windows, I have been happily building a playlist of all the Celtic instrumentals I have on my various discs. This should make for fun listening. And possibly also good background music for Mah Jongg.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 10:06 am (UTC)The novel is... it's a great story, and a really solid job at worldbuilding and setting. Barnes is not the greatest writer in the world, in terms of the actual words on the page - there's rarely much poetry there. But he's got great passion for this book and these characters, and it works really well for someone who I'm not enamored of his writing style. I'll probably read the sequel, when it's in paperback.
It definitely adds to the album, which is already brilliant, so I'd recommend it to Heather fans.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 10:44 am (UTC)There are some decisions he's made in how the story is structured that I am vaguely discontented by, but only vaguely. :) And when I get a free moment I need to read the rest of it.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 11:06 am (UTC)I adore it, but I haven't heard Heather's to compare. Dave's guitar style is just awesome, even more so when you consider he pretty much can't see.
He's on LJ too, BTW, as
no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 11:10 am (UTC)Heather's guitar work on the song is less interesting than her overall style of delivery; she does little accents for the various animals that talk in this and that verse, and noticeably changes delivery when she's singing the dialogue for the Knight and the Witch as well. Plus I love how she punches out the bits where the Knight sics his hawk and hound on the Witch.
I'm not entirely sure it's even Heather playing guitar on her take of this song, either; she may be doing the fiddle. There's some nice sweet fiddle work on it scattered all over the song. And she's a far more notable fiddler than she is a guitarist!