Voici donc ma version du célèbre "la cigale et la fourmi". Vous pouvez:
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Voici donc ma version du célèbre "Le corbeau et le renard". Vous pouvez:
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In a previous life, Lucía sang me a few notes of a lullaby, that she remembered her daddy sang to her when she was a kid, to the non-sensical words "Rocky, Sabaki". I hadn't heard such a song before, but I promptly completed those five notes into a complete melody, that to me sounds as a most obvious continuation. Later, she would tell me what her dad had been singing to her really was that lullaby everyone knows and every baby machine annoyingly plays, which I identified as Brahm's lullaby, also known in English as "Lullaby and Goodnight". Therefore, from these misremembered notes, I had made a melody of my own. As I finally have a daughter of my own to sing it to, I wrote words of my own to this melody. And out of the rhymes that I originally rejected from the song, I could not resist writing a second stanza. Note that I often sing "Véra, my Véra" instead of "Rocky, Sabaki". Obviously YMMV.
As usual, you may download a PDF, the Lilypond source, or an autogenerated midi file, as well as this a cappella rendering: Rocky, Sabaki, take 2 (Ogg Vorbis).
Update 2014-10-13: Now that I realized that it's easier to learn the guitar than to find a guitarist to accompany me, I've modified the score so it shows actual guitar chords instead of chord names. I can also imagine an accompaniment with a harp, with sixteenth notes that descend the chords; but I'm not likely to ever be able to debug it, so I'll pass trying to write down a necessarily buggy version — though maybe I could recycle it as a piano's left hand part. Hopefully, at some point I'll get good enough at guitar to record a semi-decent interpretation.
Update 2014-11-25: As my fumbling at the guitar improved, I've updated the score to use 4-finger chords instead of 3-finger chords. This way, it's an improved song that I'm failing to play adequately!
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That tenth day of May 2009 (thank my archived PAA for propping me where my memory falters), I took Lucía on one of her dear (un)expected "surprise adventure days", biking with her to a surprise destination which happened to be the Arnold Arboretum's Lilac Sunday, a prototypical Stuff White People Like activity, that though it was free was attended by strictly none of the inhabitants of the nearby ghettos. It was a beautiful day indeed; we stopped for food in a dominican restaurant along the way, and choked on a Mofongo while Alex Bueno was singing Me va. On my way there, I spontaneously composed one song, and composed another song on my way back. Here is the first of the two songs, I like to bike to the Moon, with a few small improvements since the original version. I have only recently found a proper activity to pursue on the sea of Tranquility, with my inspiration rekindled by Becka. Interestingly, Lucía didn't like it then, for the same reason that Becka likes it now: because of its not-so-hidden sexual interpretation. Here it is, now transcribed using Lilypond (source, PDF). And to give you an idea, here is a recording of me singing it a cappella: I Like to Bike to the Moon, take 2 (in Ogg Vorbis). Yet another song that I'd like to record, with the proper band of merry musicians... |
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The most pleasurable dreams I experience are not wet dreams, they are musical dreams. Such dreams are rather rare, but dreamtime is the only time I truly and fully conceive music, with Melody, Harmony and Instrumentation all in place. However, when I wake up, I can only dimly remember one musical sentence, and by the time I write down the first few bars of melody, the rest is gone. Last March 22nd, I had a particularly vivid musical dream, involving a song, what more including lyrics, which is even rarer, as well as psychedelic hard rock guitar riffs. Though it was early in the morning, I was too excited not to get up, waking up poor Becka in the process, and kept singing the little I remembered of the song until it was all written down, all three-four bars of it. That day, I finished a stanza, then wrote most of another; I eventually wrote some ideas for further stanzas, all based on repetitions of the same musical theme, but never finished them. Indeed, whereas Melody to me comes most naturally, Lyrics are for me the hardest of things to write. I have a hard time with the associative emoting that makes for decent poetry and songs, as I am trained to enable a very strong bullshit filter all the time on things I pay attention to. Yet I have high standards for Lyrics: they have to have the correct meaning, they must rhyme, their scansion must fit the rhythm of the song, and there must be a high signal rate per syllable, using proper metaphors, double-meanings, alliterations, etc. But neither the French nor the English language is an intimate friend who'll share his secrets openly to me; to get answers from them, I have to keep questioning them, using torture implements such as dictionaries and rhyming dictionaries, or when offline, reciting the alphabet to find a rhyming word. Even then, they often remain silent, refusing to tell me what I want them to say. Now, last weekend, I was taken to a Burning Man Decompression party, and being the awkward self I am at public parties, I took out my Personal Analog Assistant, a Music Moleskine. I was intending to work on another song that I'm writing for Rebecca, about which I've also been stuck for many months, but the band on the stage was playing some psychedelic rock, and that set me in the mood to continue the dream song instead. Still unable to find the words I wanted, and not remembering exactly what I had written so far, I started to improvise melodies and counter-melodies on top of base being played. This got me inspired and found ideas for most the third stanza, and elements of a new, fourth stanza. The next day, I completed the four stanzas; But the last stanza didn't end on a positive note, and I didn't want the song to finish like that, nor did I feel like starting a fifth stanza. Now the counter melodies I had been dabbling with inspired me to add an epilogue to these existing stanzas, rather than adding more of the same. Two of the counter melodies had been inspiring a beginning lyrics, and while completing them, I found that the song was more balanced putting one of the counterpoint melodies in the middle rather than at the end. By the end of the weekend, the song was all written, except for minor subsequent corrections. Here it is, now transcribed using Lilypond (source, PDF). It doesn't sound as much without accompaniement, but to give you an idea, you can listen to me singing it a cappella, transposed down to D minor: FDGitS, take 2 (in Ogg Vorbis). Now to find a band of merry musicians with whom to record this and other songs I wrote... |
Lyrics from a poem by William Ernest Henley. Music by Faré.
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In the series You can download the PDF of the score, see or edit its Lilypond source or listen to a horrible MIDI file that was automatically created. |
Dans la série Vous pouvez télécharger le PDF de la partition, voir ou éditer son source Lilypond ou écouter un horrible fichier MIDI automatiquement produit. |
Écoutez-le: Le vase brisé en MP3 (1ère prise).
Vous pouvez télécharger le PDF de la partition, voir ou éditer son source Lilypond ou écouter un horrible fichier MIDI automatiquement produit. PS: D'autres avant moi ont mis ce morceau en musique: César Franck, Claire de Granval, Ethelbert Woodbridge Nevin, Émile Paladilhe, Charles Marie Jean Albert Widor, et Anton Stepanovich Arensky adapté d'une traduction en Russe d'Aleksei Nikolayevich Apukhtin. J'aimerais trouver toutes ces versions pour les comparer à la mienne... (et j'avoue ne pas envier les versions que j'ai découvertes jusqu'ici.) |
Play it: To Lucía in MP3 (take 3).
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Update 2015-07-27: more elaborate chord suggestions.
Play it: The Citizen's Creed in MP3 (take 4).
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Écoutez-le: Le Crédo Citoyen en MP3 (1ère prise).
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Play it: And a Pony! in MP3 (take 3).
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Écoutez-le: Et un poulain! en MP3.
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