Tag: Music

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Musical vocabulary in French

I am beginning to see that when it comes to musical instruments, the French words for them are pretty easily recognizable. For example, if I look up flute, piccolo, guitar, and bouzouki, the primary instruments I can play, I get flûte, piccolo, guitare, and bouzouki! Also, I know from Le Vent du Nord song lyrics as well as the liner notes of the Symphonique album that violin translates to violon.

And that of course points me at an important musical verb: jouer!

So I can say Je joue le piccolo, la flûte, la guitare, et le bouzouki. The important thing for me to note here also is which noun gets ‘le’ and which one gets ‘la’. Why piccolo gets ‘le’ and flûte gets ‘la’, damned if I know! But that’s the wacky fun of a language that does gendered nouns. I remember running into that all the time as well with German.

(Wherein that same sentence I just quoted becomes Ich spiele Piccolo, Flöte, Gitarre und der Bouzouki, according to Google Translate, but I must be dubious about that sentence slapping a ‘der’ in there when none of the other nouns get one.)

I just bought the ebook edition of the book 501 French Verbs (the print version of which userinfomaellenkleth very kindly sent me!), and it tells me ‘jouer’ is considered an essential verb for students. Certainly it is relevant to my interests! And present tense conjugation looks pretty easy. I will need to see if I can practice this one!

All of which should warn y’all that I’m going to be Frenchgeeking periodically on this blog, as I inch my way into trying to figure out more of the words of all this Quebecois trad I’ve been listening to! Again, mad props to userinfomaellenkleth for pointing me at that verb book, and I’m on the hunt for French translations of any of my favorite SF/F authors as well. If I can get hold of any French editions of anything by userinfojimbutcher, userinfomizkit, userinfokatatomic, userinfocmpriest, userinfoandpuff, or Julie Czerneda, that would be particularly awesome. :D

ETA: Fixing the spelling of jouer up above. I keep making the typo joeur, oops! Thanks to userinfollachglin for the catch!

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Day of Bouzouki Player Awesomeness, Part 2

So yeah! Those Beaudry boys? Making a powerful showing today. But they have their work cut out for them when it comes to the OTHER bouzouki player I adore. ;) (Well, the other one who isn’t like, y’know, my partner and stuff, she said, looking meaningfully at …)
Y’all saw my post asking for Newfoundland band recs, right? So this morning, I think to myself–what the hell, I’ll go straight to the source. Alan, Bob, and Sean are on Twitter, I’ll ask them what THEY think we should be listening to while they’re on hiatus!
This was the result. \0/

What what wait that actually WORKED?
What what wait that actually WORKED?

The Doyle Has Spoken
The Doyle Has Spoken

I leave it as an exercise for you, O Internets, as to exactly how high-pitched my squee went. (Remember: I’m a piccolo player!)
I proceeded to get in several more Newfoundland band recs from Twitter folk as well, but as promised to The Doyle, I went and promptly checked out The Once. They are notable because Mr. Bob Hallett himself is their manager, so of course big ol’ GBS connection right there. I’ve now listened to the samples of their first album on iTunes, and yeah, I’ll be buying this. Their lead singer has a lovely voice, and while they don’t have the kind of raucous energy I love so much about the B’ys, they are very, very good. They remind me a lot more of oh, say, Solas, and that’s good, because I like Solas! And I’ll be making a definite point of checking out their new album when it drops next month!
For general reference, the other artists and bands that have been thrown at me on Twitter to check out are: Amelia Curran, Jim Fidler, the Novaks, Matthew Hornell, Hey Rosetta! (who I actually already previously knew about but had not checked out in depth), Andrew James O’Brien, Tarahan, and the Navigators (who I again also previously knew about).
Many thanks to @GBSIndyFan and @barbekresla, who threw me the Twitter recs!
Not all of these acts are trad–the Novaks appear to be more rock, and iTunes seems to think Jim Fidler is reggae. Dunno about Matthew Hornell or Amelia Curran yet either. But I’m going to give them all a shot! (Though in the case of the Navigators, I’m apparently going to have to work a little harder because their albums are not on iTunes.)
So yeah! Great big pile of Newfoundland band recs! And a tweet from The Doyle Himself! What a way to end a week! \0/

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Newfoundland vs. Quebec: FIGHT!

Okay, all you bands over there in Newfoundland? You b’ys aren’t going to take this MIGHTY QUEBECOIS INVASION of my iTunes playlists lying down, are you?
My fellow Great Big Sea fans, especially those of you who live or have lived in Newfoundland, or who are otherwise well-versed with Newfoundland music: I call upon you: who are the Newfoundland bands I should be investigating, to continue this whole delightful theme of “other bands I should check out while Great Big Sea is on hiatus”? Here are Newfoundland bands I already have albums by:
The Irish Descendants (Across the Water, Rollin’ Home, So Far So Good, Southern Shore)
The Fables (all of their discs)
The Punters (Certified Trad. Music, Songs for a Sunday Morning)
Shanneyganock (Volume VII)
Recommendations for any specific other albums by any of these groups welcome!
Also: the Navigators have already been brought to my attention, but so far I haven’t been able to find their albums sold somewhere where I can actually get them. Recommendations on that also welcome!
And, anybody not on this list, I want to hear about them. Bonus points if they’re anyone GBS has had dealings with, extra bonus points if there are bouzouki players involved! GBS-like style–i.e., high energy, with big full harmony on the vocals, the more people in a band singing the better–is ideal, although I’ll take smaller groups or solo artists too!

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Several awesome things make a post

I’ve been total Scattershot Girl when it comes to blogging for some time–like many, I’ve found most of my day to day online communication shunted over to Twitter and Facebook. But that said, I’ve had several recent lovely things happen that are worth sharing with you all in longer, blog-based form. So! In no particular order:

  • Finally saw The King’s Speech, since userinfospazzkat got it via Netflix. That was a very satisfying film, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s spawned so much fanfic across my various Friends lists and such. Everyone in that film did an amazing job, and I have much increased respect for Mr. Colin Firth now. Also, mad love for the scene where the speech therapist’s wife comes home and discovers the King and Queen in her dining room. :D

  • Also, as of today, finally saw Source Code with userinfosolarbird. Mad, mad props to userinfomamishka for recommending that! It’s a nice, tight little SF flick, and if you like alternate-reality type plots, try to catch this before it vanishes entirely. If you’re local to Seattle, it’s still playing at the Meridian 16 downtown, and it’s running at the Crest as well.

  • I have finally found a way I might actually read more comic books: the Dark Horse comics app for the iPad. I installed this on the grounds that a couple weekends back, Dark Horse had a sale of all its digital versions of Serenity and Firefly comics. Since I didn’t have Shepherd’s Tale yet, I thought what the hey, I’d buy ’em all. The iPad is definitely more suited to digital comics reading than the iPhone, that’s for sure, although the iPhone does actually talk to this app as well.

    Also on the iPad, I have a shiny new app called TunePal, recommended to me by Marilyn, one of the fiddle players who attends the weekly session userinfosolarbird and I have been going to. Those of you who know the Shazam app will find the way this works familiar; it basically identifies songs. But in this case, it identifies traditional Irish tunes! You can play them at the app on an actual instrument, or, it’ll identify ’em if you’re playing them in iTunes as well. Then it goes out and hits up a big ol’ database and yoinks back several guesses as to what it thinks you just played it. It’ll show you sheet music for its guesses, and it’ll play the sheet music for you as well. And, you can add tunes out of the database manually by searching for them as well. You can’t import your own tunes, which is my only complaint about the app, but it’s otherwise very, very cool. Any of my fellow music geeks out there who are interested in trad tunes, you should be checking this out.

  • Speaking of the iPhone, my coworker Joe pointed me at my new favorite iPhone game: Tiny Wings. You play a birdie with, of course, tiny tiny wings, and the object of the game is to get the birdie to fly as far as possible by tapping. It’s super-cute and only 99 cents, so check it out.

  • FOLKLIFE! Well, that deserves a whole separate post, but I’m noting it here anyway.

  • And while I am still technically on book buying hiatus, I’ve picked up a few freebies. And I will unrepentantly, UNREPENTANTLY I TELL YOU, break hiatus wide open to buy userinfoseanan_mcguire/Mira Grant’s Deadline this week. Because GIMME. Seriously.

  • My friend userinforavyngyngvar is sending me a Blu-Ray of a-ha’s last concert in Oslo! Thank you, Yngvar!

  • I am sorely behind on Doctor Who posts, and will shortly be doing a catchup post. It’s an indicator of how much I’ve not been paying attention to the net lately that I totally missed that BBC America did NOT air the second half of the two-parter on Saturday, to wit, bah. I did not however give enough of a damn about this to actually try to find and download the episode; it’ll air next week as far as I know, and I can wait that long. Especially given that we’re about to have the mid-season hiatus anyway. Just nobody spoil me, mmkay, those of you who’ve already caved and downloaded the ep anyway?

  • And because it’s always worth saying, mmmmm blackberries of my marketboys mmmmmm.
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This past Wednesday's session

Writing this now since I haven’t had a chance or the brain to blog about it until this afternoon, but here we go!
There were a couple of extra fiddlers at this past Wednesday’s session at A Terrible Beauty–people who turned out to be stunningly awesome, a couple of professional performers, Andrea Beaton and Glenn Graham. What really sold me on Andrea and Glenn’s playing was its liveliness and the excellent foot-stomping rhythm they had going at the same time–very, very familiar to me from all the listening I’ve been doing to La Volee d’Castors and La Bottine Souriante and Le Vent du Nord. It turned out that the reason their music resonated so strongly with me was because they are in fact Canadian, Cape Breton specifically, so no wonder. :D
I’d already been pleasantly challenged trying to keep up with Matt and Annie, as I’ve written before–but trying to keep up with Andrea and Glenn? WHOA. WHOA AND DAMN, people. I’m just this fortysomething chick who likes to noodle around on her guitar in her living room, y’know? And there I am in the session trying to provide a decent rhythm line underneath two hardcore fiddle players, who, I might add, proceeded just last night to go perform with Matt at Benaroya Hall for the Mastery of Scottish Arts concert.
I have been in sessions now with people who have performed in Benaroya Hall, people!
Only by focusing with laser-guided intensity on every motion of Glenn and Andrea’s bows was I able to keep up, and more than once, I lost track of their key changes. But I was at least able to come back around when they jumped back to a key I could recognize. A lot of what I’ve been doing at the sessions so far has just been playing the same six or seven chords in different keys and strum patterns, just trying to be decent rhythm backup for all the people who actually know the tunes. But these two took it up a whole extra order of magnitude for me, and I haven’t had so much fun on a guitar in ages.
Afterwards a couple of older gentlemen came over to say hi to Dara and me, and to admire the General! I got asked what kind of Taylor it was, and I was happy to say it was a 210, and I thanked the gents nicely for the kind things they said about my playing. I also went over to Andrea to make a point of telling her how awesome their playing was, and she was very gracious too.
I am so, SO outclassed at these sessions, it’s kind of scary! But in a good and exciting way, one which is making me go OH SHIT I’d better practice. So this afternoon I whipped out the piccolo, worked my way through an octave of scales, and then tried to stumble my way through “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Morrison’s Jig”, and “Drowsy Maggie”. I made it through the first two, more or less, before my embouchure fell over and started sending me “you haven’t played piccolo in a long goddamned time, have you?” signals.
I’ve also gone through my songbook and yoinked out the little sheet music bits of the various tunes GBS have used as bridges on their songs, in the hopes that I can then track down fuller versions, and use those for practice fodder. I have “Si Bheag Si Mhor” too, along with “Fisherman’s Frolic”, which those of you who read the TGM Jam Reports may remember as our outro to “Acres of Clams”. I have a LOT of source material to learn from. And it’s awesome to be able to have a reason to use it.
ETA: OO OO OO and I forgot to mention that when called upon to do a song by Matt, I stood up and did GBS’ arrangement of “The Night Pat Murphy Died”. *^_^*;; I cannot roar it like Séan McCann does and I really need to learn to project, but at least I managed to go through the whole thing without falling over. And when I went DARA, Dara whipped into the bridge on cue; she’s been practicing the Bitchin’ Bouzouki Solo.
Another practice assignment I want to do is to see if I can whip up a proper version of “As I Roved Out”; the arrangement I’m most familiar with is the one by the Fables, but I can’t sing it in their key so I’ll need to finagle it some.

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Reminder to Jamming group: Jam is ON on Sunday

For those of you on my jamming group’s mailing list, if you haven’t already seen the reminder I sent earlier this week, don’t forget that we are JAMMING on Sunday at the Murkworks! Be there or miss out on seeing my shiny new guitar. Not to mention nomming of tasty, tasty pie!

Please sing out if you haven’t already told me you’re coming, so I know how much tasty, tasty pie to get!

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That promised post about stuff besides books

So yeah, I’ve actually been doing things besides purchasing books lately, I swear!

The Great Enshrinkening of Anna proceeds apace, even if not quite as quickly as initially planned. As I enthused on Twitter and Facebook this morning, I hit 164 pounds today! Which is well and easily the lightest I’ve been in five years, and which gets me into territory before I’d started the Walk to Rivendell in 2005. (Which was when I started regularly tracking my weight.) 162 pounds is the 30 pounds lost mark. I’m still aiming for 150, so I have 14 pounds to go!

It’s a bit amusing as well to realize that if I count from my actual high point of weight last year, I’m actually down 29.5 pounds, not 28. But I’m still counting from when I actually started using the LoseIt app, so!

Work’s been a bit crazy lately since we’re hardcore face down on a huge project for the next few weeks–and my team’s having some QA shuffle going on as well, so we’re essentially down to two full-time QA people right now. But so far it’s all still good. And on Friday, we even finally got us an official Big Fish Games sign in front of our building! Check it out:

userinfosolarbird has gone to Oregon to play a gig down there, and I shall miss her, but wish her luck as well! In the meantime userinfospazzkat and I went to have tasty sushi in Woodinville tonight, saving me from having to figure out what the hell to make myself for dinner.

I am very, very happy that the heat wave from last week has passed. I don’t mind the hot so much, but I do mind the part where I don’t sleep well in heat waves. Today was lovely, though, once the clouds cleared up, and I had a great walk down to the shops.

I should also mention that userinfospazzkat has been getting into Leverage lately and I’ve quite enjoyed what I see of it so far. I can even tie this into Great Big Sea by noting that in the promo photos associated with the new album, Alan looks suspiciously Christian-Kane-like. This is not a bad thing. ;)

And speaking of GBS, NEW ALBUM COMING OUT ON TUESDAY! <3 <3 Brace for the squee, folks. You know it's coming!

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There is not enough squee in the world for this!

Russell Crowe, joy of my movie watching and delight to my musical ears, announced on Twitter yesterday and to his fan site of choice that there are plans afoot to take the current incarnation of TOFOG (The Ordinary Fear of God) on tour next year! They’d been hoping to do August of this year as that’s ten years after TOFOG 1 (30 Odd Foot of Grunts) played in Austin–but that ain’t happening. They appear to be eying next May for a target range of dates, though–and best of all, Russell’s saying they will be bringing Alan. AND that Portland is among the cities in the US they’re eying.

My reaction to passing The Crowe on the streets of Portland in 2001 is fabled in song, story, and LJ post! (userinfoflashfire, userinfossha, userinfomamishka, and userinfokathrynt all still do give me periodic shit about it, too! ;) ) Given that, and given how I could barely manage to talk to The Doyle the couple of times I’ve encountered him, I’m figuring the chances of my brain exploding before the concert even starts are very, very high. Hell, the sheer thought of Alan and Russell on the same stage where I can actually see them perform may make my brain explode RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT.

Because if this happens, my children, I am going to this. Oh yes, I am going. And there will be massive, massive squee. Better brace yourselves now.

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Song prequel giggles

Those of you on Twitter may have seen the #songprequel trending topic, wherein the idea was to post titles of songs that came before actual songs. Much hilarity ensued!

With a hat tip to userinfotechnoshaman, userinfospazzkat, userinfosolarbird, and userinfofredpdx, here are the Great Big Sea ones we all came up with so far:

  • Young Brown’s Mother
  • Acting Third Lieutenant Taylor
  • The Day Pat Murphy Got Sick
  • Nagging Girlfriend
  • Showing Up At the Kitchen Party With Mrs. White

Dara and Paul and I also came up with these:

  • Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Bedtime” and “School is Just Starting”
  • Simon and Garfunkel’s “Construction Crew Arriving at Bank of Troubled Water”
  • Elvis Presley’s “(You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) OMG PUPPY” and “I’ll Do Anything to Get Into Some Blue Suede Shoes”
  • Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the Colonies, I Was”
  • The Day the Music Bought a Cheap Ticket on a Small Plane in Bad Weather
  • Slightly Darker than Usual Day of the Heart
  • Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star
  • From O Brother, Where Art Thou?, “Boy of Periodic Sadness”
  • Kenny Rogers’ “You Picked a Fine Time for Our First Date, Lucille”
  • Duran Duran’s “Peckish Like the Wolf Cub”
  • Kiss Him Hello (may be more obvious if you sing “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, HELLO”)
  • And last but definitely not least, from Dr. Horrible, “Misbehaving Pony Solo”

Got more? Drop ’em in the comments!