On Your 'To-Do' List

Subject: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 11:58 AM

I've always got a billion songs in my 'to-do' folder, but I keep shuffling them when I hear something else I want to learn Next..

Currently on my really really 'next to-do' list is:

'Alison Gross' - from recording of Lizzie Higgins
'Stitch in Time' - from a Maddy Prior recording
'Bonny Boy' - from Shirley Collins recording
'Sir Patrick Spens' - from off a Buffy St. Marie recording (although I detest her vocal stylings, I bizarrely like this..)

And another couple too.... 'The Colliers Rant... and... eek.

Just wondering what's on others 'to do' lists?

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: open mike
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 12:22 PM

and what do you intend to "do" with these?
learn to sing and play them? record them?

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 12:27 PM

Err, I only learn to sing them myself.

But whatever's equally applicable to others I guess..

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: ClaireBear
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 12:28 PM

Setting Kipling's "The Four Angels" to music. Making a new tune for Yeats' "Song of Wandering Aengus."

I'm trying to spend less time learning songs and more time crafting them -- which has never come easily for me. I can write lyrics, and I can cobble together tunes, but can't seem to do both. I figure that getting more individual practice with each activity has got to make it easier, in the end, to fuse the two skills.

C

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 12:33 PM

My To Do includes making a CD of really inspiring Shmaltz Songs, which my MiL requested sometime back. I also want to do a series of CDs of songs I already know by chronological era.


A

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Hamish
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 01:17 PM

Oh don't! Too many, too many...

:-/

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: fat B****rd
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 03:51 PM

Try to figure out Barbecue Bob's 'Motherless Child' on me Fender 12.

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 04:21 PM

Well, I have list as long as your arm of requests from YouTube correspondents for guitar tab, video bits, etc. At the moment I'm working on a guitar arrangement of the Four Tops "Walk Away Renée" for a YouTube correspondent.

Then I've got to work out a guitar fill-in for a concertina version of "Big Noise From Winnetka".

Then there's several pieces from the "Northumbrian Piper's Tune Book" to work on with the violin.

All makes work for the working man...

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: ClaireBear
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 04:29 PM

I forgot to mention that I'm hoping to switch from playing a McCann system duet concertina to a Crane.

I've been trying to fit in getting up to speed on the Crane for about 10 years now, and that project keeps getting back-burnered, but the McCann is badly in need of a refit so the time is NOW.

C

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 11:24 PM

Lots of things I can't afford.

Art

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 11:17 AM

Figure out where the high bit goes in the second part of Paul Cranford's "The Graveyard of the Gulf" so I can play it on the alto flute. (David Greenberg's recording is a bit murky at that point and I can't quite hear what's going on).

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:10 PM

Finish the 2 songs I'm halfway through writing
Do something with all the fragments I've written
Work on singing up-tempo songs (I struggle with this, tend to stick to slow ones)
Work out how to use Windows Media library properly and reorganise my music files
Find a good pianist

Learn:
Easter tree (Dave Goulder)
The forsaken maiden
Braes o' Strathblane
Well below the valley
Sixteen come next Sunday
North Star Grassman

That's just the tip of the iceberg! :)

Ca' the yowes
Flower of Magherally

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:11 PM

Oh, forgot, an important (to me) one... finish adapting 2 gaelic song translations into singable pieces

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 01:00 PM

My big to-do at the moment is to learn the remainder of my ceilidh band's repertoire on the concertina. I've got about 2/3 of the tunes into my fingers, but the other third is resisting ...

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Rumncoke
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 03:28 PM

Having written down all the songs I could remember in an A6 notebook when I found my memory going, I now need to rewrite them into an A5 notebook because my eyes are no longer working as well as they did.

Getting old is a real pain, but considering the alternative, I just adapt and compromise.

Anne Croucher

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Jane Bird
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:08 PM

Now this is a really interesting thread - thanks!

I've been meaning to learn "The Game of All Fours", "The Broomfield Wager" and some decent rousing chorus songs for ages, but I keep not quite doing it.

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 05:43 PM

The Broomfield Wager's another on my to=do list too Jane. As well as The Easter Tree per Suegorgeous. Making a bit of progress on Bodhron would be pleasing too... As well as culling some available local instrumentalists to get out and play with!

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:09 PM

Crow - it's a good one... though not every audience's cuppa..... :)

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 07:02 PM

Having written down all the songs I could remember in an A6 notebook when I found my memory going, I now need to rewrite them into an A5 notebook because my eyes are no longer working as well as they did.

I recommend printing them in Comic Sans. It's the most readable typeface for people with crap eyesight that I've found yet.

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 11:18 PM

I intend, at the next MIT chantey sing, to sing an adaptation of "Wives of Brixham" ttto "Ten Thousand Miles Away from Home", if I can get thru it without crying.

I intend to write a song about seasickness with the chorus "Roll, pitch, yaw, Surge, sway, heave".

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 06:25 AM

And another couple too.... 'The Colliers Rant... and... eek.

I'm presently skirting around The Collier's Rant 2009, maybe for JATZ, maybe not, but it deserves a demo at least. For the past few years I've been doing it on my citera (see HERE) but this past week I've been singing it with percussion alone...

Rapunzel's got a new song on the banjo: a frailing version of Blondie's Dreaming which sounds a treat. All I've got to do is come up with a decent harmony on the chorus & middle-8 - maybe a bit of Black Sea Fiddle too...

Okay - off now to see the new Magellanic Penguin in Blackpool Zoo!

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 07:15 AM

Finally figure out my recording equipment and do a CD of the songs from my new book.

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 07:39 AM

Select verses from Child's variants to make a version of Laird o' Drum that I dare sing.

Learn bass harmony lines to about 300 tunes we've arranged for the Spare Parts concertina band .

Valmai

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Susan of DT
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 07:36 AM

Boy and the Mantle
Young Andrew
Lady Dysie
and a bunch more. I am constantly working up more Child ballads.

Subject: RE: On Your 'To-Do' List
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 13 Jul 09 - 07:42 AM

Excellent! Which country are you in? Would you be interested in the all-day ballad forums we run at the Lewes Saturday Folk Club (Sussex, UK) with experts like Brian Peters, Craig Morgan Robson and Chris Coe?

Valmai