music/arrangement for General Taylor

Subject: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 01:17 PM

Hello,

I am trying to find a vocal arrangement for the Sea Shanty General Taylor. Can anyone recommend where I could find sheet music.

Thanks

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 02:15 PM

I have looked for midi, notation, sheet music and found nada.

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 03:03 PM

You might easily find the dots and the words but 'vocal arrangement' for a shanty???

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: MartinRyan
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 03:34 PM

Mudcat is definitely temperamental tonight... This is attempt No. 3 to post:

I agree completely, Steve. I'm reminded of buying a cassette tape of shanties by a "Sailors' Choir" in Holland, many years ago. The packaging looked great and the accompanying booklet had what I reckoned were pretty authentic sets of words. Trouble was that the singing was dreadful - or dreadfully inappropriate, to be exact. I kept thinking of the likely reaction of a group of choral music enthusiasts if faced with twenty hairy shanty singers launching into the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah! Crossover is always possible - but it ain't easy!

Regards

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 05:03 PM

Probably you're looking for the harmony arrangement recorded by Steeleye Span in the 1970s, which has inspired many imitators.

I doubt you'll find it in sheet music form.

Steeleye's tune and lyrics were adapted, I believe, from the version in Stan Hugill's "Shanties from the Seven Seas" (1961). A more complicated version is in Cecil Sharp's "English Folk Chanteys," collected from chanteyman John Short around 1910.

A. L. Lloyd included Short's tune in "Folk Song in England" (1967).

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 05:23 PM

Just sing the tune - or a similar tune - don't forget that shantymen adapted tunes as well as improvised words - and get your other participants to extemporise harmonies. Keep on doing it until it coalesces. Although of course Hugill recorded that only Caribbean crews (he used a different word) sang shanties in harmony.

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 05:32 PM

Using the well-known tune this is quite a difficult shanty to pitch though it's one of my favourites. You have to pitch in on quite a low note in order for the other singers to not stretch themselves too much on the high notes, however in a howling gale (or more likely nowadays a crowded noisy bar-room) it's hard for the others to hear you starting. Perhaps it would be better to start with the chorus.

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Apr 15 - 07:14 PM

'General Taylor': Steeleye Span

On YouTube

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Apr 15 - 09:57 AM

Thanks, #. Nice harmonies!

Subject: RE: music/arrangement for General Taylor
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 11 Apr 15 - 10:35 PM

One of my favorite versions, by the group Clam Chowder:

General Taylor


Jay