Just thought I'd share a good musical experience.

A few days ago our group met to play early music, and we were doing a four-part piece called (I forget why) The Bransle Mixed. This piece included what we call "the brother-in-law's line," which is a very easy line which we think the composer included so that his no-talent brother-in-law could be supported by the aristocracy.

Our weakest player (The Kid,she's only 40) wanted that line, and I told her to play it, not as a sequence of random notes but as a song that doesn't move much, like The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. (Only she should pretend that Kenny Rogers sang with expression.)

Well, that started people laughing, and Stringfellow, our harper, had the inspiration that I should sing the lyrics of The Gambler to the tune of the brother-in-law's line while everybody else played. ("We're not elitist," says she.) So the Kid stood next to me so I could hear how the line goes, and eventually, I did it.

Musically, it worked well. If you couldn't understand the words, it sounds like somebody is singing an elegant ancient line to a polyphonic orchestral piece. You just have to keep the others from laughing while you do it.

By the way, a good source for old MIDI's like this is The Classical Music Archives. http://www.classicalarchives.com/index.html

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