Songfrenzy

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. And it looks like my comics have started appearing on the NaNoWriMo site, though the site itself is getting so much traffic right now that everything is WAY slow. Hopefully things will pick up once participants start focusing on writing their novels. :-)


And HEY (!), I just noticed at this very moment that I'm the featured NaNoWriMo Daily Q&A. It will only be up for today.

I was catching up yesterday on some friends' blogs and found the coolest Hallowe'en costume ever, made from scratch by Laura and Peter for their son Jon, to fit over both Jon AND his wheelchair. You can see how they constructed the costume in their earlier entries. You can find out more about Peter and Laura at their Doodletronics Web site.

I finished the lyrics to my J.K. Rowling song last night, just need to finish the tune for a second bridge. This song has a limited shelf life; you'll understand when you hear it. Urban Tapestry is only going to be able to perform this at GAfilk (in concert) and FilKONtario (possibly in open filk). At present, those two conventions are the only ones that all three Urban Tapestry members are scheduled to attend next year. Scheduling and finances make it likely that 2007 will be low-key for us otherwise. I'll be going to Consonance with Jeff, but in mainly listener mode.

Anyway, Allison, Jodi and I be debuting our new J.K. Rowling song, the Chocolate song (to be performed with Summer and Fall, hopefully), and our new filk community song at GAfilk in January. Hey, and I've started to co-write a song with Jeff Bohnhoff. :-)

Mary B. has some great OVFF pics up on her Flickr account, for those who haven't seen them yet. These include:

-- A fun and goofy shot of Allison, Jodi and me performing the Paul Stanley Kwinn song in an open filk circle.

-- People waving my baby bunny signs around during the Paul Stanley Kwinn song. HA HA, including Paul himself! Just noticed that now.

Below: Tom Jeffers and Urban Tapestry in Ohio.



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Creative frenzy, chocolate, and Pegasus Awards

Above: A photo that Beckett Gladney took of the Sunday night folk-rock jam at OVFF. I'm in the lower left part of the photo beside Allison & Jodi, sitting on the floor with Michelle, Taunya, Batya, Eloise, Carol, Judi and Jordan (A note to other con report authors: Jordan prefers her full name over "Jordi" these days, I believe). I love Beckett's comment on Flickr about this photo: "Very cool to be in a room with so many people who are all singing along and really just enjoying the music and the companionship. And that's really what filk is all about." You can see more of Beckett's photos in her Flickr account.



My cheque for the Writer's Digest webzine article came yesterday. Yay for cheques! Yesterday I did some novel writing and finished the comics for the NaNoWriMo Web site. I also finished recording two flute tracks for Seanan McGuire to use on a track for her CD; I figure she can pick and choose the bits she wants to keep. I may send more if this first part seems to go smoothly, which it isn't. My problem is getting them to Jeff Bohnhoff in California, who has kindly offered to extract the instrumental bits from the Garageband file.

I've tried YouSendIt.com and DropLoad.com but both services seemed to hang on me when I tried uploading. The file is about 37 MB. I'll try again today. I may have to send a CD with the file by (*gasp) snailmail.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, the student newspaper at Concordia University is going to be reprinting one of my Will Write For Chocolate NaNoWriMo-themed comics in this week's issue; they've promised to mail me a copy. My Inkygirl cartoons are being used in several writing courses, including Kaplan University. I keep forgetting to mention stuff like this; if I was more organized, I'd be adding these to my work portfolio site.

In theory, my comics should start appearing on the NaNoWriMo Web site every weekday starting tomorrow, until the end of November.



After dinner, I finally finished the Chocolate Song, yay! It's a fairly short song, but with five vocal parts; even when compressed to an MP3, the file was 7.4 MB. Now the challenge is to communicate it properly. I think it'll be easiest if Allison and Jodi learn it first, record their parts, then I send that file to Eva & Crystal (who are in Germany) along with the soundfiles containing just their parts, lyrics/chords & and musical score of their parts.

We won't have a chance to actually rehearse together until next January at GAfilk, of course. You ARE all going to GAfilk, aren't you?!?

Hey, this is the third song I've written in a few weeks. Now I just need to get my J.K. Rowling song finished before this week's practice.



This new home recording studio set-up is making it SO much easier for me to write songs. Not having a real piano (the electronic keyboard is a pain to lug around each time I want to hook it up; I have to figure out a better layout) and not being able to play the guitar for more than a few minutes at a time made songwriting a frustrating process for the past two years. I used to always do my songwriting with guitar in hand, or at the piano.

Now, I can at least use the built-in MIDI instruments and the computer keyboard to play a simple bass line on which to build a melody. I supply the chords to Allison and leave it up to her to come up with an appropriate guitar part.




But back to another OVFF highlight: the Pegasus Awards concert. This is a performance of all the songs that were nominated for an award. You can find a list of this year's nominees here.




I've always found the Pegasus Awards concert to be an excellent chance to get an overview of different types of songs being performed in filk as well as a variety of performers. Sometimes, in cases where the regular performer of particular song isn't able to attend the convention, a different performer is chosen...this is always interesting because it's often a performer who doesn't normally cover the song.

Many thanks to the Pegasus Committee for administering and coordinating the Pegasus Awards: Daniel & Melissa Glasser, Trace Hagemann, Steve Macdonald, Seanan McGuire and Erica Neely.

And congrats to this year's winners:

Best Filk Song:
The Girl That's Never Been by Michelle Dockrey
Best Classic Filk Song:
I Want To Be Peter Lorre by Tom Smith
Best Performer:
Judi Miller
Best Writer/Composer:
Cynthia McQuillin
Best Battle Song:
March of Cambreadth by Heather Alexander
Best Torch Song:
X-Libris by Talis Kimberley

For more info about the Pegasus Awards, please visit the official site.

All we want to do is eat your brains

Above: Rand and Erin. I was delighted to find out that Erin is thinking about starting to sing in front of people. She's apprehensive, so please do go over to her blog and encourage her.

Yesterday, I posted about an odd peanut snack courtesy my friends Alison and Jeff. Turns out that some of you don't think this nutty offering was as strange as I did.



From ldwheeler:

"Ah, that Peanut Patch label stirs up some memories ... my father was born and raised in south Georgia and throughout his life was a connoisseur of South/Southeast U.S. cuisine -- collard greens, cornbread, grits, blackeyed peas and so forth, and he considered boiled green peanuts to be the candy of the soil. Though he preferred to buy 'em from roadside stands or farmers throughout Georgia and north Florida whenever he could, most family vacations ended with clearing a big hole in the trunk of the station wagon for two to five cases of Peanut Patch product. (At least one of the cases was for Peanut Proselytzing purposes, an endeavor in which he wasn't all that successful. Which was all to the better: More peanuts for him!

He's been gone nearly 11 years now ... and until a few months ago, I still had a can of Peanut Patch sitting around in the cupboard. I finally fired up the brine and ate 'em. Not something I'd want to have every day (though he would have). But still mighty good."

From surrdave:

"I do like boiled peanuts (properly, the i is pronounced as another long o). The roadside stands are the best, though they have them at the ballpark as well. Seasonal, though. And downright unpleasant when cooled off.

The recommended method is to squeeze the shell until the soft pea shoots down your throat, while the brine runs down your forearm. Food as a sport isn't confined to the way it's cooked."

Wow. :-D While the "recommended method" sounds appealingly messy, I'm not sure if I'll get any chance to try this soon. I do admit I'm intrigued, though.



Hey, I just noticed that Tony Fabris has his OVFF pics online. Some fun pics here, and I especially like this one of Paul leaning on me during a concert. He has also a GREAT video of Paul's reaction when he walked into the restaurant and saw the rest of Puzzlebox waiting for him (2nd row down, 3rd over).


Tony was a great Interfilk guest at OVFF this year, and I very much enjoyed hearing his concert as well as his performances in open filk. My only complaint is that the songs he sings are so catchy and infectious that they tend to stick in one's head WAY too long. :-)

I especially had trouble getting his Zombies song out of my brain (especially the silly chorus line: "ALL WE WANT TO DO IS EAT YOUR BRAINS!"). Tony says the song was written by Jonathan Coulton. Here's a Quicktime video of Coulton teaching the chorus to an audience before performing the song (WARNING: don't blame me if you get the chorus stuck in your head, too). There's also a YouTube video where you can hear the lyrics more clearly. I really really want to see this guy in concert! You can find more Jonathan Coulton songs at his Web site.

Anyway, Michelle Dockrey joined Tony on many of the songs in his concert. Michelle, whom I have raved about before, is as an amazing harmony singer as she is a lead singer. Michelle and Tony will be GoHs at FilKONtario in 2008 (not next year, but the year after).

You can find out more about Tony Fabris at GeekHackFilk.com.

Below: Tony and Michelle.



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Baby bunnies on his underwear

Don't forget to put your clocks back, everyone!

Above: Excerpt from a Garageband file I'm using to help me write a song for Urban Tapestry (Allison, Jodi and me) and Summer and Fall (Eva and Crystal from Germany) to perform at GAfilk in January.

This is the first time I've written a multi-part song this way, making up each vocal part by singing it onto a recording, writing the lyrics/chords as I go in a separate text file. I usually write the music out on manuscript paper and then record it to see if all the parts sound okay together. The advantage of the recording method is that it's more spontaneous...it's much easier to experiment with twiddling different vocal parts and then hearing how they sound against the others right away. This way, I can also send files to the singers with ONLY their vocal parts as well as the song as a whole, to make it easier for them to learn.


The disadvantage is that I don't have a written score; that's something I would have to do manually. This is only something I'd have to worry about, though, if the singers need the written score or when I start working on the next Urban Tapestry songbook.

Anyway, I completed about half of the song when I got very discouraged about how it was going. I very nearly decided to scrap the whole thing, but decided to send it to Allison and Jodi to see what they thought. Both of them were HUGELY encouraging and excited about learning the song, and suddenly I was re-motivated as well. Incidents like this make me especially grateful for my music partners.



While I was waiting for their feedback, however, I decided to give a shot at writing another song. I ended up writing the entire thing in a couple hours. It was one of those songs that kind of pours out of you all at once; I love when that happens. It's also a song I needed to write after some of the negativestuff that's been happening in the LJ filk community recently. Looks like we might put it in our GAfilk concert.

Speaking of GAfilk, I went around at last weekend's convention with the Kathleen Sloan cookbook I mentioned in a previous Blathering. 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, and Michelle Dockrey. If you added a cartoon and I didn't list your name, please let me know! Yes, even a feeble cartoon. :-) I've also been adding cartoons, and will be adding more.


Filkers added horrible puns (esp. Mary Crowell! She has such a wonderfully twisted sense of humour), pseudo recipe reviews, "corrections," helpful pointers etc. Filkers who have signed so far include: 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. :-) If you did sign the book and don't see your name above, please let me know!

I will bring the cookbook to GAfilk for more people to sign, and will donate it to the Interfilk auction at the convention. Meanwhile, I'll be posting choice excerpts from people's contributions from OVFF between now and GAfilk.



Just over two months until GAfilk, woohoo! VERY much looking forward to this convention. Speaking of Georgia ... Jeff and I went to a lovely dinner party last night, hosted by our friends Alison and Jeff, where Alison let us sample some Green Boiled Peanuts she had picked up at some peanut festival in Georgia recently. I seemed to be one of the only ones who liked them, though I admit I wasn't as crazy about them after they cooled down, plus the slimy exterior (from being boiled in brine, I think) is definitely a turn-off.

But back to OVFF. Especially Paul Kwinn.

Paul is the main reason that all three Urban Tapestry members finally made it to OVFF this year; he was Toastmaster at this year's convention. We've been close pals with Paul and Beckett for many years, and Allison & Paul are especially good friends. Paul is a member of Puzzlebox, and he was disappointed to find that his group members wouldn't be able to attend OVFF.

Or so he thought.

It turns out that things worked out so that they COULD attend, but they decided to surprise him. Check out the look on Paul's face when he walked into a restaurant on Friday afternoon for lunch near the convention hotel and saw Alisa, Luis, and Taunya waiting for him:



Heh.



A few days before the convention, a burst of inspiration hit me and I wrote a very silly song about Paul in about an hour. Feeling a wee bit guilty (I knew both Jodi & Allison were busy), I sent the lyrics/chords and soundfile to my music partners and grovelled. Especially to Allison, since she had to learn a new guitar part in addition to the melody. :-)

And yay! They both learned the song...we practiced it for the first time at the hotel before going up on stage at the one-shot and performing it. We sang it again at the Sunday Night filk because Beckett hadn't heard it yet, and this time a lot of people sang along on the chorus, and those sitting around Paul were waving baby bunny signs. I was very happy.

Anyway, here it is:

PAUL STANLEY KWINN
By Debbie Ridpath Ohi
Oct/2006

CHORUS (singalong):
Dm     C     Dm       C
Paul, Paul, Stanley Kwinn
Dm            C             Dm            C
He's a technonerdboy and we love his evil grin
Dm     C    Dm      C
Paul, Paul, Stanley Kwinn
A             Dm
He has a hairy chin! (HEY!)


Dm   C         Dm   C
When Paul was two
Dm         C     Dm
He had a dog named Schmoo
C
(Jodi & Debbie: He fed it Jelly Bellies)
Dm    C        Dm    C
When Paul was three
Dm          C   Dm
He had a sock named Squee
C
(Jodi & Debbie) It was kinda smelly

Allison:
G                   F
He knew that he was different but he
Dm            C Dm C
didn't care!
(Everyone, waving bunny signs:)
G            F               Dm        C Dm C
He had baby bunnies on his underwear!



CHORUS

When Paul was four
he chewed on his front door
(and he got half-way through)
When Paul was five
he was still alive
(not like his dog Schmoo)
He knew that he was different but he
didn't care!
He had baby bunnies on his underwear!

CHORUS

Now Paul's all grown
With wife and kids and home
(of which he is so proud)
In Puzzlebox
No longer names his socks
(at least not out loud)
He knows that he is different but he
doesn't care!
Still has baby bunnies on his underwear!

CHORUS x 2

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Beckett's photos

Above: Beckett and Paul. Photo taken by Alisa on Beckett's camera, cropped by Beckett.


Congrats to my sister, whose book Clara And The Bossy has been nominated for a Blue Spruce Award! The Blue Spruce Award is a provincial primary reading program which brings recently published Canadian children's picture books to Ontario children ages 4 to 7 in kindergarten through to grade two. Students will read 10 nominated Canadian picture books and then vote for their favourite book. Based on student voting across the province, the best picture book is then selected and the author/illustrator is honoured with the Blue Spruce Award. Yay, Ruth!

My friend Beckett recently posted photos she took at OVFF in her Flickr account. Beckett is a fantastic artist and photographer, and has given permission for me to post some of her photos here. You can see Beckett's art at Artbeco.com.

Mary Bertke, at the Pegasus Banquet:





I love the gorgeous lines in the photo above (as gorgeous as Mary herself :-). Beckett is SO great at capturing the essence of people or a scene.

Me, Jodi and Allison:




I *love* this photo of Andrea:




Watching Mary Bertke's band Aisling perform; the fiddle and whistle players kept making funny faces at me because I was so excited:




Allison and Paul:





Luis and Alisa:




Alisa, Taunya, Beckett (photo by Paul):




Paul:




You can see more of Beckett's photos in her Flickr set.. And hey, I just noticed that she's uploaded some new pics...

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