Category: Music

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A bit of musical squee!

And now, several moments of musical squee from last night!
In a move that should surprise absolutely NOBODY who pays attention to what I post for more than five minutes running, a little part of my brain demanded last night, “YOU NEED TO FIGURE OUT THE CHORDS TO VIVE L’AMOUR NOW.”
Because y’all knew this was coming, right? I mean, what with all the delighted slurping up I’ve done of chords for Great Big Sea songs, working on Le Vent songs was pretty much inevitable. I’d already futzed around a bit with “Lanlaire”, but “Vive l’amour” is pretty much the other major song of theirs that’s prone to grabbing my guitar-based attention. So it’s the easy and obvious candidate for me to play with.
So I did! And there I am last night with Ti-Jéan in my lap, and I’ve got my piccolo too to try to twiddle out the melody line and make sure the key is actually what I think it is–which, for general reference, is G. And the first moment of squee is when I’m hitting note on the piccolo and the guitar strings start echoing them back at me, in this strange, lovely resonance that sounds a lot like a wet fingertip running around a wineglass. Very, very cool.
Second moment of musical squee: realizing that the chords to the song are in fact dead simple. Dara and I like to make cracks about GBS’ “Goin’ Up” being subtitled “Four Chords No Brain”, and really, “Vive l’amour” is pretty much the exact same chords in a different order (G, C, Em, and D) with occasional bonus A minor thrown in in places. What I haven’t quite gotten down yet is the strum pattern, since I keep wanting to play GBS-style and that doesn’t work with the flow of the song. But I broke out the original studio recording, the one Bernard Simard sings lead on, and it’s easier to follow that one on guitar than it is the Symphonique version. I foresee several more spins through this as I get it down. And possibly transposing into D, or maybe capoing up a fret or two, so I can get it into a better range for me to sing. :D
Third moment of musical squee: realizing that in the huge pile of sheet music transcriptions of various Quebec tunes I’ve slurped down from a couple of places, I do in fact have the reel that serves as the outro for this song! “Reel à Ti-Zoune”! WOO! Much fun to be had there as well!
And the final moment of musical squee for the evening was in fact unrelated to any of the above, but it’s also goddamned awesome so I’ve gotta squeal about it here too. Dara came downstairs with the mandolin last night and plucked out for me, I kid you not, a swing arrangement of “Road to Lisdoonvarna”. Y’know, the most basic of basic jigs in the Irish tune repertoire. She’s got a PROJECT in mind for this. And she’s jazzing this tune the hell up. She played it for me and I instantly had the swing band sound she’s envisioning pop into my head, complete with a full rocking horn section. I wanted to be able to play trumpet JUST so I could actually play that lovely thing myself. I cannot WAIT to see how her project progresses. Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Dara rolls.

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Le Vent du Nord Plan B is GO

Because I am damn well going to see some Le Vent du Nord SOMEWHERE this coming weekend, I have now enacted Plan B: going to the Victoria show on Saturday night!
Advantages to this plan:

  • Dara is coming with me so I’ll have oodles more fun anyway
  • Dara and I have never been to Victoria and we’ve kept meaning to go, so this is an excellent excuse
  • We can go up on the ferry and come home on Kenmore Air–not quite practically to our front door, sadly, but Lake Union is still a lot closer to Kenmore than SeaTac so it’s all good
  • Seeing Le Vent at a jazz club as opposed to a symphony venue means WOO audience participation baby!
  • And hopefully also PICTURES, because there will still be the obligatory show report!

So let’s see if THIS plan gets to go through. Susan the Awesome is sending me her tickets, of which there are four–so I’ll have two spares. Hopefully I can find them a home!

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No Le Vent du Nord symphony show after all :(

Y’know, there’s NEVER a good time to find out that your current favorite band has just had the show you were aiming for cancelled out from under them. But “while you are at a science fiction convention trying to a) promote your work and b) assist with the music programming and c) HAVE FUN” is particularly suboptimal.
Because yeah, I’ve found out today that the Le Vent du Nord symphony show has been cancelled. :( This is not quite as devastating to me as having missed the show in Oregon–at least in this case, “the entire show is not happening”, as opposed to “the show is happening but I’m MISSING IT because my car conked out”. But.
I’ve had to cancel my Amtrak train reservations now, because that was after all the entire point of the trip. I’m now scrambling to see if I can arrange plan B: attending the show they’re having in Victoria on 4/6 instead.
Susan the Awesome will not be able to come out from Ontario at all, on the grounds that she HAD been going to attend both shows, but if the cornerstone show has been cancelled, she can no longer justify the expense especially given that the band will be having a show much closer to her a week later. But I’m working with her to see if I can take her tickets off her hands.
I’m hoping to use one and perhaps two of them if Dara wants to join me for a weekend trip to Victoria. Which would mean that Susan would have two tickets left. So if anybody in the Pacific Northwest reading this thinks they might like those other two tickets, talk to me ASAP to make arrangements. I’d REALLY like to see the tickets get into the hands of fellow fans of Le Vent du Nord!
But DAMMIT. I was really hoping for symphonic goodness. Mope.

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Imminent Anna sightings!

For Seattle-area locals, hey, I’m going to be at Norwescon! Not in a professional writer-type capacity, but I WILL be there, and I’ll be easily found providing assistance to Dara during the music concerts! And just in case anybody wants one, I will also be bringing my few remaining print copies of Faerie Blood. And I’ll have some special CDs as well with ebook copies on ’em, offered at a special price for con attendees! Look for me if you want either of these things, or both!
And NEXT week, of course, I will be happily boinging up to Vancouver to see Le Vent du Nord perform with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra! This time, I am taking the TRAIN. Because I am NOT trusting our car to be driven any farther than the distance necessary to get to and from work. And if the train should encounter any difficulties, you may rest assured that I am FULLY PREPARED to fight my way through any zombie apocalypses that may overwhelm the tracks. Because nothing, I repeat, NOTHING is going to stand between me and seeing a show which is going to look and sound a LOT like this:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-aoShC8EW4&w=420&h=315]
You may also rest assured, O Internets, that I am sternly reminding myself that no, it is NOT socially acceptable for me to shove the VMO’s piccolo player into a closet so I can steal their seat. No matter HOW much I want to see whatever sheet music they’ll be using for the evening! Likewise I will be sternly reminding myself that as this is a symphony venue, it will NOT be really acceptable to jump out of my seat and start dancing or singing the response lines at the top of my lungs, no matter HOW great the urge.
(Though I’m tellin’ ya, Internets, with inspiration like this, this is going to be a hard, hard test of my fangirly willpower!)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YwzFzrqnQY&w=560&h=315]
And at this show I’ll be seeing Susan, who, as I have expressed on previous posts, IS made entirely of awesomeness. And I’ll be staying with Geri, who is ALSO made of awesomeness. And I’ll be seeing fellow GBS fangirls Kate and Angela, with whom I have every hope of carrying out shenanigans the day after the show. Possibly also hijinx, and maybe even mischief!
Any of the rest of you who are also in Vancouver, if you want to meet up, let me know! I’ll be in Vancouver from the afternoon of April 4th through the evening of the 6th. I still have time free on Saturday for possible brunch or lunch!

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Hey look, I made a MUSIC!

Internets, I cannot tell you how much I needed to forget dealing with computers for a couple of hours, and go play me some music with the local Quebec session crowd. We had a pretty tiny group tonight, and things were relaxed and groovy–all the better for a newbie player like myself to try to figure out how to play along with unfamiliar tunes, while not making too much of a nuisance of herself in the corner.
This time, however, I had the distinct pleasure of being able to ask for specific tunes. Namely, the ones Alexandre of Genticorum had taught me! (6/8 d’Andre Alain, and Gigue du Père Mathias!) I wasn’t able to play through them perfectly at speed, but I got within range of it–and it’s worth noting that a couple of passes through where I had to drop out was because I had to get my breath back, not because I’d forgotten what I was doing. Such is the peril of being the only flute player in a room full of fiddlers and accordion players!
I also asked about playing Ciel d’Automne, a.k.a. Autumn Sky, which has the distinction of being the first Quebec tune I fell in love with ever. This is because it’s the loveliest instrumental on the La Bottine Souriante album Rock and Reel (as it was called when it was released in the States), and to this day, stands out for me as one of my favorite slower tunes. I was particularly happy recently to learn that OH HEY it was written by André Brunet–so no wonder I like it–and so naturally I was determined to learn it. Bonus points to me for figuring out that I could practically whistle the whole thing from memory, which helped a lot in figuring out how to play it.
And I’m here to tell you, when you’re a session newbie facing a room full of musicians WAY more familiar with the material than you are, and the phrase “you’ll have to teach it to us” gets winged at you, that’s SCARY. Maybe only slightly less scary than “HEY ANNA! Get up and play this for us, will you?” However, that scary was leavened with a generous dose of AWESOME. Particularly when I was able to point people at thesession.org’s writeup of the tune!
Also notable: recognizing Réjean Brunet’s “Maison de Glacé” and being able to jump in on it, even though I had title server failure and only confirmed later that OH RIGHT I actually knew that tune.
(Yes, folks, I’m apparently slurping up All The Slow Tunes By the Brunets. There are worse ways to be spending my musical time. ;D )
So that was three whole tunes I was able to more or less play along with. And there was a fourth tune I recognized by ear once they hit the B part; I’d heard the session group play that one before. I could even sorta kinda pick up on the B part, though the A part was harder for me to parse. I asked about that one and was informed it was called Hommage à Edmond Parizeau. Not long after that, another fun-sounding one called Reel Ti-Mé was played–though I have to stop myself from thinking of that one as Reel Timmain. Which is what I get for being an Elfquest fan!
And now I have two more identified tunes to add to the list of Things Played in Local Session. I have homework to do!
Many many thanks to the Legers for giving me a ride home, and to our hostess Pascale, who gave me guidance on how to get to her place by bus (even though I had to leave work late and THEN had bus fail that wound up getting me there half an hour late)! A lovely little evening of music all around!

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Wow! New Julia Ecklar album!

Just to demonstrate to you all that every so often I do in fact listen to other forms of music besides “Great Big Sea” and “everybody in Quebecois trad”, I share with you the news that Julia Ecklar is finally releasing a new album! And it’s available for pre-order now!
For those of you unfamiliar with her, Julia’s the lead voice on a lot of the songs on A Wolfrider’s Reflections, the album of Elfquest music that came out in fandom in the late 80’s with the blessing of Wendy and Richard Pini. She was a seriously big name filker back in the day, and I adored her not only for the EQ tape, but also for her affection for Star Trek. She actually played Kirk in a couple of fannish productions of parodies of the second and third Trek flicks–preserved for posterity now by my own belovedest of Daras! Wrath Side Story and Spock Pacific, hee. Oh, Julia was an excellent Kirk.
Her song “Horsetamer’s Daughter” was a classic. And she was frequently beautifully parodied by –Tom’s “Temperature of Revenge” to this day remains one of my very favorite filk songs. And later on, she became the first filker to ever have orchestral accompaniment on an album when she released Divine Intervention, which features a heartbreaking song about Kirk reacting to the destruction of the Enterprise, yet another of her beautiful Trek songs.
Now, the new album has more orchestral work on it and I’m really looking forward to it. I heartily endorse y’all going to pick it up, since it’s gone over budget and Prometheus Music can use all the support it can get! Go support them and an awesome indie musician and filker as well!

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A milestone achievement

Out of general curiosity I looked at the total number of tracks in my iTunes library tonight so that I could do some quick numbers.
I have a total of 8,473 individual tracks in my library. In most cases these are in fact songs, although some of the things I have in MP3 form are actually audio drama. This number does not however include audiobooks or PDFs that are also in my iTunes library.
Of this number, a total of 974 tracks are by Quebecois performers. This means, O Internets, that roughly 11% of my iTunes collection is now Francophone! To put this in perspective for you, only 677 of my iTunes tracks are by Elvis!
Quebecois music now outnumbers Elvis Presley in my music collection.
Elvis. Aron. Presley. Y’know, that guy whose music I grew up listening to and back to whom I can trace pretty much every single thing that makes me swoon about music EVER.
Some amusing sub-stats–a breakdown of track counts by my top groups:

  • La Bottine Souriante: 167 items
  • Le Vent du Nord: 92 items
  • La Volée d’Castors: 91 items
  • Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer: 81 items
  • Genticorum: 45 items
  • Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps: 43 items
  • De Temps Antan: 25 items

(Those last few counts are going to get boosted soon, too! Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps AND De Temps Antan are working on new albums. I hear rumors Genticorum has one on the way, too!)
I can only now conclude that Quebec must have passed a provincial resolution of some sort, perhaps La Loi du Colonisation des Playlists d’Anna Avec La Musique Traditionnelle. Either that or it’s a genre-wide conspiracy for every trad musician within a hundred-klick radius of Montreal to send me the following musical message:
“Bonjour, Anna! Nous entendrons que t’aime la musique traditionnelle. Nous avons des bouzoukis. Et des violons. Et la très, très belle podorythmie! Et avons-nous mentionné des bouzoukis? Nous avons des CDs pour toi. Tu peux apprendre un peu français, oui? Tu apprends le français, nous vendrons des CDs! Victoire pour tout le monde!”
I have to admit, they’re making one hell of a pitch. ;D Well done, entire province of Quebec. Well done, VRAIMENT.

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A Great Big Pile of Great Big Sea!

Great Big Sea’s Facebook account announced this morning that the the CBC Radio 3 account on YouTube posted a whole MESS of videos from a concert this past November in Ontario.

Really. GOOD. Videos. Like this one of “River Driver”. Jesus Jumping CHRIST on a pogo stick, the bass on Murray in this. +50 to the sound engineers who worked this show, because I have never swooned so hard at the harmony mix on this song.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ejo_CTT1nM&w=560&h=315]

And there’s MORE OH MY GOD MORE. Enough that I must really hope that this is potential future DVD footage, because I would buy the HELL out of this.

It’s an entire MINI-CONCERT! Enjoy this, if you’re starting the three-day weekend here in the States!

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Quebecois tunes now in my sights

One of the big intimidating things for me as a newbie to Quebec tunes is that there are so! goddamn! many! of them–a problem equally applicable to Irish/Celtic tunes in general, but I’m growing to appreciate the sheer number of tunes available to an interested student!
And thanks to being pointed recently at this beautiful repository of tunes goodness and a few other fine links as well, I’ve now happily ID’d an initial lineup of tunes I can focus on. These are ones that I have confirmed recordings for, mostly–a LOT of La Bottine Souriante, but also some Genticorum, some De Temps Antan, and even Le Vent du Nord!
These tunes are:

  • Gigue a Trois–this is a Le Vent du Nord tune, by M. Demers! \0/
  • Gigue André Alain–a.k.a. 6/8 de André Alain, this is the first of the two that Alexandre of Genticorum taught me! Including it here for completeness
  • Gigue du Diamante Bleu–Alexandre mentioned this one when he was trying to remember what Gigue du Père Mathias was called. So clearly I must investigate whether it’s similar!
  • Gigue du Père Mathias–And this is the other one that Alexandre taught me! This one’s fun! Also including for completeness since I’ve played with this one already.
  • Hommage à Philippe Bruneau–La Bottine recorded this one! But I’ve found two different PDFs of this, and they appear to be two different tunes. I need to determine which one is actually the one that La Bottine recorded.
  • Jigue/Gigue de Salon–on the grounds that Pascale Gemme of Genticorum wrote it! Don’t have a recording, I think, unless it’s uncredited in one of the instrumental sets on the Genticorum albums.
  • Le brandy–La Bottine recorded this one, and if the mighty La Bottine recorded it, it requires my undivided attention.
  • Le Chat Noir–This has Andre Brunet and Éric Beaudry’s names on it on the Montreal Session site, to wit, category Highly Relevant to My Interests!
  • Le pommeau 1–Alexandre wrote this one! Genticorum recorded it on La Bibournoise.
  • Le reel des menteries–Written by Normand Miron, who I know of course from the Charbonniers. I have a couple different recordings which should have this tune in them.
  • Les Patins de Pauline–By Andre Marchand, recorded by La Bottine Souriante recorded on Chic & Swell. And, well, you don’t get more venerable than M. Marchand, I think…
  • Nuit sauvage–… unless perhaps you are Michel Bordeleau! Again, recorded by La Bottine!
  • Reel au relenti–By the aforementioned M. Brunet! No recording, but for M. Brunet, I make an exception.
  • Reel de Caribou–We’ve played this in session! Though I need to determine which of the conflicting PDFs I have is more like what we’ve played.
  • Reel de la tuque bleue–Recorded by Les Frères Labri.
  • Reel de Siamois–Again, Andre Marchand! Recording on Le Bruit Court dans la ville.
  • Reel des vieux garçons–Must check this against the same recording as Reel de Siamois; same as first tune on that recording?
  • Sheepskin and Beeswax–BEST LA BOTTINE EVER! \0/ This gets played in our session crowd, and it was played when Genticorum was here last year, and oh gods this one is awesome. Recorded on La Mistrine as well as the opening “Ouverture” track on La Bottine’s live album En spectacle.
  • The Woodchopper’s Reel–I think this is in our session repertoire!
  • Valse Bernadette–Another La Bottine, on Tout comme au jour de l’an.
  • Valse d’hiver–Yet another La Bottine, on La traversée de l’Atlantique.
  • Violon guérisseur–Genticorum! \0/ This is on the most excellent Nagez Rameurs.
  • Reel du Pendu–The last of the La Bottines I’m targeting! Again, conflicting PDFs, must match up against my recordings!

This, I think, should keep me happily occupied for months. SO EXCITING! And hopefully also stomp-inducing, because oh my yes I’m going to see if I can get footwork going on these things while I’m playing!