Hey All,

There will be an extra rehearsal for the NIFPA performance at our Studio at 2935 Muir on Saturday January 30th, 10am. I figured if we had a morning rehearsal that would leave the rest of your weekend free. If you can make it work to be there thats great, if not, we'll be holding a dress rehearsal on tuesday. 

Here's an updated As the World Turns Mp3.... it was raining when I recorded it, so there are lots of little clicks really faintly in the background, don't worry, your speakers aren't blown if you hear crackling. Ian, I played a solo over the fiddle break just to fill out the sound, but I really like what you were doing in class, so don't feel you have to do what I did here. If you'd like a version with no solo let me know and I'll send you one.

Brother Drop Dead was sounding so good last night! Yeeeeehaaawww!

I'm hoping to get an Mp3 of the Gaucho arrangement together for ya'll today or tomorrow, I just need to organize my studio musicians to come in and lay down the parts. :P

Click the button below to be directed to the new summer camp we're putting on!
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cheers
​a

Wow! we've had 2 classes since the new year rolled in and 2 more to go before the NIFPA Performance... things are sounding great, I know I'm going to be one proud mama hen at the festival again this year.

I spent some time working on the Vocal assignments for A Love Like Yours, trying to make sure everyone got a chance to sing lead and back up through out the song. If you don't like the part you got, or you are unsure what your part is, I'm reposting the harmonies again, and we will review them in class next week. My plan is to teach the backup parts to the audience as well, hopefully we'll get the whole room singing along!

Its probably a good idea to write out a vocal roadmap for yourself, so that you know when you're singing what and what you're singing where... Some people are having to jump from harmony to harmony, do your best, and we'll sort it all out in class. If the part feels like its out of your vocal range and you need to switch parts please let me know so that I can make sure the parts are balanced.

we started writing riffs for this one last night, My thoughts for the festival as that we each would get 4 bars to play a riff, pre written or improvised (your choice) during the 2nd solo break. I've put together a recording and am posting 2 versions... the first has me playing an improvised solo on the guitar, then the fiddle, the second is exactly the same except I've left the solo area empty so that you can play along with the recording. I tried to make the recording as accurate to the arrangement as I could... the vocal map will be finalized next week. Remember that the melody on this one is pretty loosey goosey, So don't sweat it too much if you're not matching what I'm doing on the recording.... that being said, my entrances to the verses are counted out, so try to come in at the same time.
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Here's a version of Gaucho with some really cool trading of melody and harmony parts... 

See you next week!!!!

cheers
​a

​​HI Folksies!
 
Thank you for such a lovely start to the New Year. It’s really inspiring to have such a great group of musicians to work with.
 
I had hoped to do a more in depth/higher quality recording of the new tune today, (my working title seems to be “As the World Turns”) but I’m headed to Fort Simpson this weekend to teach at a fiddle camp, so for now there are 3 tracks, with melody & harmonys split and full 3 part. I’ll be adding more instrumental parts, verses etc as we go.
 
 
The lyrics are:
 
Every day sun comes up
Every day sun goes down
As the world turns around
Hold on to my voice we’ll sing through together
 
Cause music makes the world turn
Takes the burn in our hearts and lights a fire
Music makes the world turn, lonely as it seems
Hold on to my voice we’ll sing through together
 

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The tentative set list for the North Island Festival of Performing Arts (NIFPA) is as follows:
 
A Love Like Yours
Brother Drop Dead
Gaucho
As the World Turns

the actual performance is on February 4, 6:30 pm... location TBA

We did some work on arranging Brother Drop Dead last night, changes will be made to this road map, but this will get you started. There are charts and Mp3s posted from september if you scroll down a bit on this page.
 
The road map so far is:
 
Intro: (Chromatic Descending)
 
Lines 1 & 2 - Solo
Lines 3 & 4 – Solo
Line 5 – Gents
Line 6 – Ladies   (rhythm: single shot on Brother)
 
Intro
Lines 1 & 2 - Solo
Lines 3 & 4 – Solo
Line 5 – Ladies  (when HE popped the question)
Line 6 – Gents  (Rhythm: single shots – only, brother)
 
Group solo/transcribed instrumental
 
Lines 1 & 2 - Solo
Lines 3 & 4 – Solo
Line 5 – Every one
Line 6 – Every one (Rhythm: Double shots)
 
Improvised solos/Riff solos
 
Verse 3 – Small groups sing each line, everyone sings last line plus tag
 
Intro 

We'll be doing a new arrangement of this one for the festival, but if people want to brush up on it and download the Mp3s/lyrics check out the archives from February 2015, (Located on the right hand of this page just under my bio at the top of the page)

Here's where my disappearing to Fort Simpson at the last minute makes things a bit difficult... I don't have the music for Gaucho, but if you don't have it and you realllllly want to get started on it this week, you can send me an email at [email protected] and I'll forward your request onto Wendy or Bob and get it to you, If you have their email already then just ask them directly.

hope to see you all again next week as well as new folks too! 

all the best,
​Ali