New music for Christmas

Caroline, an occasional commenter in here (it was lovely to hear from you Caroline!)  reminded me last week that a couple of years ago I was hunting for sheet music for the Wheeler and James Australian Christmas Carols. I didn't have any luck finding them back then. So when she mentioned them this time, I went on another internet search and musicroom came through with the goods.

It arrived today. I've been having a lovely time playing my way through Three Drovers, Carol of the Birds, Silver Stars are In the Sky, The North Wind and other old favourites. It's great to have them all together in one book.

Just one teensy criticism (that's not specific to this music book) is that it's not spiral bound. Spiral binding makes page turning heaps easier if you're in the middle of a complicated sequence of notes. And if a song is only two pages long, then it would be great if it could be on two facing pages instead of needing a page turn in the middle. I suppose now that I own it, I could photocopy a few pages to fix that problem.

But otherwise, I'm very happy. I don't know if any of the words of these carols would get through our church music team's criteria for appropriate songs to sing at our church Christmas carol night, but I really love these old Australian songs so I'm happy to potter around playing them and singing them with the family at home.

Tim Freedman live

What a great night. He's an absolute magician on the piano.

He was performing at the Old Museum in Brisbane. It was my first visit there since back in the 1970s when it was the only Brisbane museum. Now it makes a pretty cool concert venue. The only downside was having to queue for ages to get in because there was only one person to check that all 500 of us had tickets in our hands (or on our phone screens).  And the woman who came on stage during the interval between the support act and Tim to ask what people were doing leaning on the back wall of the concert hall because there were seats available down the front. That reminded me a bit too much of high school assemblies.

But the singing was excellent. I could have easily kept on listening all night. Missed out on an autograph at the end because I was worried about the late hour and how our not too well baby might be coping back at Grandma's house. As it turned out, he was fine, and only woke up because we walked into the room and disturbed him.

Listened to The Whitlams all the way back home to church this morning in the car. Exhausted but happy. We don't get to do this kind of thing too often so it's pretty special when we manage to pull it off. We even made it there in less than 100% health ourselves (not to mention the kids with three snotty noses among the four of them) so it's nice to know we can do it.

Embarrassing confession

I'm listening to some Pet Shop Boys on YouTube. (To reward myself for updating my CV).

Not sure if I'm brave enough to post any of the videos...

More Eddie Ukulele Gold

No video to go with the song but isn't the album cover amazing?

Next song to learn on the uke, methinks....

Hard to believe, I know

But there appears to be a national shortage of trumpet valve oil (funnily enough, however, no shortage of trumpet valve oil images on Google...).

Chris has been to the local music shop twice now to try to buy some so that Aidan can't use the stuck valve excuse to avoid practising his trumpet.

Not only does the shop not have any, but the supplier also appears to be having trouble getting it in.

We might have to try a music shop further afield. The trumpet isn't sounding too bad when the valves are working properly. And Aidan is on the verge of making it into the school band. I'd hate for a lack of oil to be the thing that stops his promotion.

Don't you just hate it when...

...you just can't quite remember the tune for a song?

This Sunday I start a month of leading Sprouts, the kids program for the littlies (18 months - 3 years old) at church. The first topic is "The best book to read: the Bible."

So I am racking my brains here trying to remember the tune for the song that goes "The best book to read is the Bible, the best book to read is the Bible, if you read it every day it will help you on your way, oh, the best book to read is the Bible."

The boys have both sung it at Scripture in the past but neither of them are good enough to sing the tune back to me.

And if I can find a tune, I want to play it for the debut of the ukulele for the little people.

Arrgh. Frustration. I think I almost have it but it just doesn't sound quite right. I wonder if I could get away with what I've got...

Ukulele Gold

We watched this at the ukulele workshop I went to over the weekend. Amazing stuff.

The instructor said they have been trying to get these guys to tour Australia. That would be excellent.

They cover a lot of other great songs too. Check out YouTube and you'll find their versions of Wheatus' "Teenage Dirtbag" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Now back to what I'm supposed to be doing...getting an activity sorted out for RE at the special school on Wednesday. Jesus calming the storm.

NAPLAN week

One day of testing down. Two to go. And then on Friday it is the birthday of the child involved.

Big week coming up here. Looking forward to the ukulele workshop on Saturday....

Ukulele lady

Me! Well, nearly. Last night I signed up to do my ukulele course through Adult Ed in a few weeks' time.

And today I was so excited to have Simone and her family come to visit us. I got to try out one of her ukuleles and learned four chords (in fifteen minutes, so she was pretty on the money with how long it would take!). We ran through a couple of kids' songs for church as well. "My God is So Big" is a pretty easy one.

Now I can't wait to learn more and buy one of my own. The guy running the course sells second hand ones so I am hoping there will be a good settled in one that I can buy from him.

Good Friday

Learning to play this one at the moment. A great song for today.

Ukulele for beginners

I am thinking about signing up for a ukulele workshop at my local Community College. $150 + the cost of a new or "settled in" ukulele. It runs over two Saturdays in May.

A couple of weeks ago, Simone suggested playing the ukulele as an alternative to using CD music as backing for children's songs during kids' teaching time/Sunday School activities. Read about it here.

Because she told me she could teach me how to play the ukulele in ten minutes (perhaps a slight exaggeration?) I am not sure whether twelve hours of tuition is a bit much.

I checked out the tutor's website here. His name is Ukulele John and apparently he travels around the state teaching people how to play. Some of his ukuleles look very funky. I suspect they won't be the cheaper "settled in" ones.

It looks like fun. I think I will probably do it.

To applaud or not to applaud...

This song was performed this morning at church by our music team. Excellently sung and played, I should add. It was sung as an item to help us reflect as we prepare to celebrate Easter.

We don't have these kinds of performances every week in our services, but we have had one or two of them lately. They are always helpful. Today the words of the song were put up on the screen behind the singers. This was really good. It helped me think about the words and their meaning.

What I feel less comfortable with is the round of applause that happens at the end of a performance item. To me, this feels distracting. After an item/performance in church, I like to just quietly think about the words of the song and enjoy the fact that it was performed well. Others like to express their appreciation for the performance by clapping. I get both viewpoints. I would applaud any other musical performance outside of church without any qualms whatsoever. But doing that in church feels a bit different for some reason.

I think I fall into the quiet reflective camp because I was brought up in (generally) fairly conservative churches. There were a couple of more charismatic Uniting Churches that I ventured into and I was never comfortable when hands were raised, let alone when people started dancing into the aisles. I felt like I wanted to run away when I saw that happening. And then I married a guy who came from a church where only Psalms were sung and no instruments were ever used. So we both needed to shift positions to where we were both comfortable musically. Presbyterianism ended up being a good middle musical ground for us.

So I didn't clap this morning, but I really enjoyed the performance. The song is pretty catchy too. Maybe we'll all learn to sing it sometime.

We now have drums for church on Sunday

And that is good.

How to tune a trumpet?

We have added a new instrument to our household. Aidan is now learning the trumpet at school. So far he seems interested, but the practising can be painful to listen to at this beginners' stage. Playing in a jazz band, a stage band, or even the fledgling school band, seems light years away.

I would love to know how to tune a trumpet. I have absolutely no idea when it comes to this sort of stuff. As a piano player and in a previous life, a xylophone player, I have never had to tune an instrument before. I don't think it sounds right but can anyone tell me if I have it right that an E on the trumpet is not actually the same as an E on the piano because a trumpet is a Bb instrument? When he is playing what he says is an E on the trumpet, it is sounding like a G on the piano....

Learning to play this...

...for next Sunday's piano accompaniment while the bread and wine are being distributed.

This month's new song at church

We are learning this song at church this month. I like it. Keith and Kristyn's songs are pretty catchy.

The pipes are a nice touch. Sadly we don't have those at our church. We do have a flugelhorn player though. Probably not during this song but he is accompanying in some of the hymns that we sing.

Dream job #1

ABC Shop counter assistant. During quiet moments, I'd be sneaking a peek in the book section and popping on a nice classical CD. Or perhaps the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time.

Today I bought Holly Throsby's new CD for kids with my Christmas vouchers. It's called See! Very funky. Nice kids' songs that adults might also enjoy.

More music to calm the soul

Needed here after a hard day. I have been trying to teach myself to play this.

If you have a spare 9 minutes and 34 seconds

Listen to this. I think it's amazing. Chris has seen the movie but I haven't so I'm going to see if I can find the DVD anywhere so I can watch it over the holidays.

Learning to play...

Into My Arms (by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) on the piano.

A relaxing way to spend the evening.

And when I was reading about Nick on Wikipedia, I discovered he is putting out another album this year. Cool.