Interfilk donation items

Above: Cover of a CD that Urban Tapestry is donating to the Interfilk auction at GAfilk next weekend. For more details about the contents of the CD, see this Blatherings entry. Summary: we recorded 16 songs at one of our recent practice sessions, none of which have been included on our previous albums. Playlist: Sing With Me (I wrote this with some help from Dave Clement), Paper Boats (by Eva Daele-Hunt), Hey J.K.!, Livejournal Shanty (by Brooke Lunderville), I'm Gonna Make a Rocket Ship, Paul Stanley Kwinn, Into The West, Another Round (by Juliane Honisch), Bilbo's Last Song, Ode To Kathleen Sloan, The Question, Me And Babylon Five, All The Pretty Little Ponies, Good Riddance, Wo Ist Der Bahnhof (Our German Song), and Come Down To GAfilk (which I wrote with help from Matt Leger, David Weingart, Bill Roper, Scott Snyder, April Leake, Larissa March, Melissa Glasser, Margaret Middleton, Annie Walker, Bill Sutton, Rob Wynne, Gary McGath, Ellen McMicking D.I., Gary Ehrlich, Alan Thiesen, Emily Raftery, Phil Parker, Andrea Dale, Erica Neely, Marilisa Valtazanou, Mary Bertke, Sherman Dorn, Michelle Dockrey, Mary Crowell, Allison Durno and Jodi Krangle).



I was experimenting with my new home recording studio equipment; it's still a learning process for me, and I quickly discovered the disadvantages of only having two microphones for three singers and one guitar (and occasional flute and tin whistle). Don't expect pristine studio quality recordings here, but do expect better quality than our old "stick a microphone in the middle of the room" method. :-) There are intros to every song where we explain where the song came from, plus for the GAfilk package, we're including lyrics/chords to the songs.

Proceeds from the GAfilk package will be used to help raise funds to fly n'Early Music Consort to FilKONtario next year. Please note that this CD will NOT be available for commercial sale. After GAfilk, one copy of the CD will be donated to each of FilKONtario, the British filk con D'Zenove, and Filkcontinental in Germany to help raise money for Interfilk and overseas filk funds.

We will also be donating a cookbook to the regular Interfilk auction; I have mentioned it before in an earlier Blathering: it's a collection of Italian recipes by Kathleen Sloan who is actually not the Kathleen Sloan some of you know. I took the book to OVFF, where participants added graffiti consisting of interesting comments, useful advice, "corrections", and a wide range of artwork.

If you are attending GAfilk next weekend, you will have the opportunity to sign the book on Friday, after which it will be donated to the Interfilk auction. Kathleen signed it and several filkers added illustrations and cartoons, including Beckett Gladney, Seanan McGuire, Adam English, Taunya Gren (?I think she added pics? though I might be wrong), Gary Ehrlich, Allison Durno, Jodi Krangle, and Michelle Dockrey. If you added a cartoon and I didn't list your name, please let me know! Yes, even a feeble cartoon. :-)



Filkers who have signed so far include: Kathleen Sloan, Amy McNally, Alisa Garcia, Tom Smith, Paul Kwinn, Adam English, Rand Bellavia, Erin Nappe, Luis Garcia, Becca Leathers, Cat Faber, John Caspell, Graham Leathers, Jan di Masi, Jane Garthson, Sue Posteraro, Tom Jeffers, Gary Ehrlich, Sheryl Ehrlich, Deanna R., Brooke Lunderville, Michael Blair, Mary Crowell, Mary Bertke, Sue, and a number of other filkers whose signatures I couldn't decipher. :-)

Here are just a few excerpts...

From Seanan McGuire:



From Michelle Dockrey:



From Paul Kwinn:



Only a few more days until we leave for GAfilk!



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Urban Tapestry recording session

Above: homemade Christmas ornament from Allison! It was part of the Christmas ornament exchange I participated in this year.

If you're having trouble sending to my Inkygirl.com e-mail address, please do re-send to my Gmail address and let me know you had problems. Thanks!

Allison, Jodi and I had a great Urban Tapestry practice yesterday afternoon at my place; we blitzed through a bunch of songs, recording them for a special Urban Tapestry "Live From Debbie's Living Room" CD (which will NOT be commercially released) to be donated to the Interfilk auction at GAfilk and a few other conventions. Funds from the GAfilk donation will be used to help bring n'Early Music Consort to FilKONtario. For more info about this filk community effort, please see this page.


Photo by Kirstin Tanger.

None of the sixteen (16!) songs below have ever appeared on our CDs before:

Come Down To GAfilk: I wrote this with help from Matt Leger, David Weingart, Bill Roper, Scott Snyder, April Leake, Larissa March, Melissa Glasser, Margaret Middleton, Annie Walker, Bill Sutton, Rob Wynne, Gary McGath, Ellen McMicking D.I., Gary Ehrlich, Alan Thiesen, Emily Raftery, Phil Parker, Andrea Dale, Erica Neely, Marilisa Valtazanou, Mary Bertke, Sherman Dorn, Michelle Dockrey, Mary Crowell, Allison Durno and Jodi Krangle.

Paper Boats: A beautiful song that Eva Van Daele-Hunt (of Summer and Fall, who are Interfilk guests at GAfilk) wrote. Eva says she was inspired to write this song after listening to our version (the original was by Ookla The Mok) of "Tiberius Rising," especially the line about paper boats.

Hey, J.K.!: All of us brainstormed on the lyrics for this musical plea to J.K. Rowling, then I wrote the music. Lots of fun to perform.

Sing With Me: I wrote this after OVFF a few months ago, with some help from Dave Clement. "Sing with me, let the circle take you home."

Livejournal Shanty: A song by Brooke Lunderville. We identify way too much with this. :-)

I'm Gonna Build A Rocket Ship: My first kids' song! Also the first song on which I sing lead all the way through. *gulp*


Photo by Paul Estin.

Paul Stanley Kwinn: Our tribute to one of our favourite people in filk. Heh.

Bilbo's Last Song: Allison found this on the BBC radio drama of "Lord of the Rings." We first worked this up for a Tolkien convention several years ago.

Another Round: We first covered this wonderful round by Juliane Hönisch at Filkcontinental last year.

Into The West: Our cover of the song from the Lord of the Rings movie.

All The Pretty Little Ponies: Our cover of the Kenny Loggins song.

Wo Ist Der Bahnhof?: I wrote this in honour of our Filkcontinental visit.


Photo by Kirstin Tanger.

Ode To Kathleen Sloan: A song I wrote for Kathleen Sloan in revenge for a certain Interfilk item she donated years ago.

Me And Babylon Five: My attempt to write a song about a television series I've never watched.

Good Riddance: Our cover of a Green Day song!

The Question: My Lord of the Rings song addressing a very important issue.

The CD also includes brief spoken introductions to each song talking about where the song came from, inspirations, etc. We'll also be including lyrics/chords for all our songs on the CD, hopefully some of the covers as well (once we get permission).

This was another opportunity for me to play around with my home recording studio gear, and it was a good learning experience. I'm gradually getting better; Allison & Jodi are very patient with me. :-) I'm finding it a challenge to be managing the recording equipment AND performing; I definitely need more practice. I also REALLY need one more microphone; we'll be buying one with UT funds after GAfilk, I think.

Anyway, the CD was fun to make ... we basically just sat around my living room and played through one song after another. See Allison's LJ report.

Less than one month to GAfilk, woohoo!

Below: quilted Christmas ornament from Margaret M.:

Link O' The Day (courtesy Ray)

Winterbells Christmas game




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Illustration Friday: Thanksgiving

I created the above for Illustration Friday. This week's theme: Thanksgiving.

However, I was so entertained by your responses to my caption challenge for the Peter Pan comic that I thought I'd pose another. What caption ideas do YOU have for the above comic? Please answer in my LJ comments section.

I'll post results in an upcoming Blathering.



Allison, Jodi and I had a great Urban Tapestry practice at Allison's yesterday. In addition to going through our concert set for GAfilk, we ran through potential songs for a media theme circle. The latter will be a circle open to anyone interested in performing or listening to songs based on movies or television shows. For open filk, we've worked up a fun version of Brooke Lunderville's Livejournal Shanty. Brooke and John now have their own Web site, by the way, so do check it out.

Closer to GAfilk, we plan to record a practice or two to donate to the Interfilk at the convention. In this "Debbie's Living Room Recording" we'll be including songs that we have covered in open filk and concert over recent years, but are NOT on any of our CDs/tapes. If any of you have requests, please do post them and we'll try to include those songs (but no guarantees...our focus is on GAfilk repertoire right now). Please note that at present, there are a bunch of songs which we've have had to drop from our repertoire the past couple of years because I'm no longer able to play guitar reliably, including Library Boy, Marvin The Martian, Duct Tape Man, and Homecoming (which is on Sushi and High Tea). Anyway, I'll be posting a playlist of the songs on our Interfilk item closer to the convention.

Although my tendinitis is much improved, and I can type normally now as long as I'm careful to take enough arm breaks throughout the day, I find that playing guitar for more than a few minutes at a time is still tough. At first I was immensely frustrated and a bit depressed; I had been gradually improving my guitar skills, and it had become an essential tool in my songwriting.

I wallowed in self-pity a bit, but then kicked myself out of the doldrums by focusing on the musicalstuff I CAN still do. I've also found ways to get around the lack of guitar ... I'm learning to use other means to write my music, for example, like using my computer keyboard and Garageband to mimic instruments to help me compose. And I rely on friends to play the songs I can't.

:-)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Erin and Rand visit (Part 1)

Had a really wonderful weekend with my friends Erin and Rand, who visited from Buffalo. I'll post more when I've had a chance to catch up a bit with work, but meanwhile you can see photos from the weekend and read Allison's report from Saturday.

One note, however: E & R convinced me to watch the first episode of Heroes and I'm totally, completely hooked.

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Urban Tapestry practice

Allison, Jodi and I got together for an Urban Tapestry practice this weekend at my place. It was an intensive session; we were all dead tired by the end but happy with what we'd accomplished, including putting together some new songs we had never performed together before, including:

Hey, J.K.!: All of us brainstormed on the lyrics for this musical plea to J.K. Rowling, then I wrote the music. Lots of fun to perform.

The Chocolate Song: Song that we're hoping to perform with Summer & Fall. It's short but pretty dense with counterpointstuff. Allison and Jodi recorded their parts this afternoon. I'll be sending Crystal's and Eva's parts to them by e-mail soundfile. Hopefully it all comes together at GAfilk. :-)

Sing With Me: I wrote this song pretty much in one sitting.

Paper Boats: A beautiful song that Eva (of Summer and Fall, who are Interfilk guests at GAfilk) wrote. Eva says she was inspired to write this song after listening to our version (the original was by Ookla The Mok) of "Tiberius Rising," especially the line about paper boats. Eva works as a criminal judge in Germany. You can find out more about both Eva and Crystal at their Web site.

The above songs will all be performed in our concert at GAfilk in Atlanta, GA this January.



How we usually learn a new song:

We go over the basic melody/structure of the song.

Find the right key. Sometimes Allison has to transpose all her guitar chords if a straight capo change isn't enough. She had to do this several times this afternoon. Jodi and I are very grateful to Allison. :-)

Figure out an arrangement -- who sings what, if instrumentals are needed and where.

We record the main melody. If others have already figured out their harmony and counterpoint parts, we record those as well. If not, we all take away the practice recording to work with.

At the next practice, we continue to put the song together, tweaking a harmony here, adjusting a lyric there, tightening timing and harmonies. We record a new version of the song.

As the song becomes more polished, we focus more on ways we can improve our performance and make it more entertaining or satisfying for the audience.

We've worked together for so many years that sometimes we find ourselves suggesting the same tweaks in the same moment, or making adjustments to a melody or lyric during performance at the same time without planning it ahead of time. We now refer to this as a "UT Telepathy Moment."

:-D



(Above: Allison and Jodi in Germany before Filkcontinental last year.)

This is the first time I've used my new recording gear to record a UT practice. I'm proud to report that I managed to unplug everything, bring it upstairs to the living room, reassemble it...AND IT STILL WORKED! I'm finding that tweaking is needed for every song, depending on the type of music and arrangement.

I'm still figuring out how to quickly gauge optimum Gain levels on the Firebox and the pre-amp. Still haven't figured out exactly how the Output levels on the pre-amp fit into all this, but I'm gradually learning through experimentation. Also experimenting with microphone placement with multiple performers.

For just a practice recording, I just piped everything into one track in Garageband to keep file sizes down. At the end of the session, I converted all the songs into MP3 format and burned them onto CDs for Allison and Jodi to take home.



(Above: Summer and Fall (Eva and Crystal) who are flying from Germany to be Interfilk Guests at GAfilk in January!)

As always, I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of a group like Urban Tapestry. I find the creative encouragement inspirational and working together hugely satisfying. Plus we have a lot of fun just hanging out. :-)

Only two months until GAfilk!

Below: Cat Faber, Paul Kwinn and Urban Tapestry in Ohio.


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