For those of you who know me, I have been singing since I can remember. I grew up in a musical family, some trained and some not, but all held a joy for music, song and performance. I am no different. In fact, I relate the various memories of my life to songs around me. But this isn’t what this post is about. Let me get to the point.
About 2 years ago when I started working on becoming a Sergeant to the Baroness of Three Mountains (that is the area encompassing Multnomah and Clackamas counties near Portland, OR for the uninitiated), I had a performance piece that was required. For some reason, I found it difficult to start looking for period vocal music that wasn’t a madrigal or choral music and what I did find, didn’t have sheet music and I couldn’t find examples of the pieces recorded to work from. This may have been more of a problem with my research abilities than any true availability of what I was looking for, I seemed to identify a problem for a few other people looking for fun music as well. So I said, “I want to record some SCA appropriate music to make it easier for ‘non-musicians’ to be able to sing and participate.”
Well, life started going by fast and not long after I became a Sergeant, I then became a man-at-arms to a great Knight and soon after a Squire. This along with real life happening made time very tight. A few people had expressed an interest in participating in this project, but I hadn’t moved an inch. Well, I am changing that right now. So first I need to set a goal and some rules for this project.
- This will be fun!
- I don’t want to do it if it is no longer fun, and I don’t want people involved that aren’t having fun. Committed doesn’t count. It’s nice, but then it sometimes makes it all feel like drama and I like to enjoy my music and express drama in the song, not live in it.
- The goal is to create a product that is a learning aid.
- To help learn how to sing certain examples of period and perioid music (e.g. singing different parts)
- To provide a recording of the various parts of vocal pieces to provide a “background track” to sing with so you can learn a specific part.
- To help the uninitiated learn vocal music so they can be involved and feel a part of events in a way that can make people happy.
- To teach some of the basics to those who want to learn more about period and perioid music.
- To give reference markers for those people that wish to begin to research period music more in-depth.
- Unless agreed upon, there will be only two recording sessions a year to record the work to make available.
- Originally I thought that audio recording would be done but having worked in video, I am not opposed to shooting this for a YouTube channel or local cable.
- We don’t have to do more than 2 or three songs per session.
Just three rules! No pressure, and if no one is having fun, we all walk away and rethink or just walk away.
Who is down with that?
If you are, Mistress Arlyss has been so kind and provided the first recommendation for a song. It is called ‘The Keeper’, and I am told that it is a dialogic. I kind of have an idea about what that is, but want to learn more and this is exactly why I want to do this project: to learn more. You can find this song in the Elf Hill Song Book on page 80. I have also found it in a songbook called ‘An SCA Songbook’ on page 69 (though this one does not have the music, just the lyrics).
I am going to get to work on getting this into a midi file as soon as I can…give me a month or so. Anyone interested in helping with this project (to sing or advise on a song), feel free to contact me.
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