Kesh Jig - Patreon Post, March 2023

Mid-March Patreon Post is up. 

Kesh Jig,  to give you a tune for St. Patrick's (month).

This is from a series of books by Hal Leonard that has parts for 3 guitars. (There are more books in the series - Beatles, Bach, more.)

The post has the main tune you can strum along with, also tips on chording. It's in F major which has Bflat as the 4th, so you can't really avoid it.

There are some technique videos. Also chord maps, including for uke (which handles F major easier than guitar tbh).

Here's the link to the Patreon:

KESH JIG

Harfoot Song YT post explainer

  

Couple of explanatory notes about this arrangement/production.

As discussed in MY PATREON POST  on this, the Harfoot Song is a working song.

That means it comes from the fine tradition of music that helps people to accomplish a tedious or physical task. Think sea shanties that help sailors haul ropes. Or I'm picturing a film doc I saw once of women felting cloth singing together in Gaelic.

In 'Rings of Power,' Harfoot Nori sings this while she pulls the family's belongings in a hand cart on their  migration.

She's going thru a lot of exertion to pull it, so her breathing is irregular - physical labour is baked into the song.

So try not to rush it - it should go slow.

Also it's a cappella. One small voice travelling into the unknown.

Applied to an instrument, it makes sense for it to be a small portable one. Think  of the violins settlers brought to the New World a la movie 'Red Violin.' Or mandolin. Small guitar could work. Ukulele works for size. It looks like uses were based on a small Portuguese proto-guitar. Small folk instruments could also work, like wooden flute or recorder.

(*This tune adapts well to uke for strumming, in the sense that it doesn't need fully barred chords.)

The song is long, the way a lot of shanties are with multiple verses. But it can get tedious to play on its own. So I made the 3 verses a little different for a guitar solo. V1 is straight up, V2 is in lower register, V3 has trills, lightening the tune as the day's labours reach an end. 

This piece ends up being more of a solo version.

Why Cathedral effect? The lyrics that first stuck with me were: 'My legs are so short and the way is so long.' Cathedral, which is an effect found in iMovie, gave the small voice in big universe I wanted. 

The visual filter also comes from iMovie - 'Dreamy.' The video shot in my home studio in 2023 just didn't work. I felt the Dreamy filter gave the idea of how the impulse to migrate comes from deep cultural memory.

The tune is in Bb major. So you have to practice your chording in these barred chords to strum along.

Recorded on a Denver 3/4 classical guitar. 

If you want to dig deeper into this tune, I tons more support files in the Patreon above - slower audio jam tracks without the effects, short how- to videos, sheet music marked up for guitar, more.

I've been trying to post a freebie element from each Patreon strudy. This is it!

Here's the link to it on YouTube: Harfoot Song on YouTube, LTG

Harfoot Song - Patreon post Feb 2023

Mar 3 is basically Feb 31, right?!

Finally got around to developing a lesson on Nori's song, 'This Wandering Day,' from the Rings of Power series on Amazon, prequel to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Song composed by Bear McCreary.

There's sheet music available out there for piano with guitar chords and piano melody. But not specifically for guitar. Or that break down strum, fingerings etc. for guitar.

My Patreon study has links to sheet music marked up for guitar, audio strum & melody jam tracks, short demo videos for guitar and soprano uke.

Also the usual performance notes, tips and list of gear, apps.

One thing I discovered while working this up is that the chord fingerings in this Bb major key signature is probably easier on uke than on guitar. 

The background on this song is that it's a working song to provide motivation for these tiny denizens of 2nd age Middle Earth, progenitors of the Hobbits, for loading up their belongings & migrating by push or pull cart. So a small portable instrument like a uke works well.  Even tho the song is an a cappella solo, for some reason I'm hearing a small ukulele orchestra in my head. Maybe a few around a Harfoot campfire at end of a travel day. Or perhaps a tribute in later generations to the endurance of their ancestors.

Here's the link to the Patreon post: 

Harfoot Song lesson, LTG Patreon

I've put a stylized variation up on YouTube as a playalong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGOxPUnl7W0&t=3s