ClassicalCode

With Chelsea traveling all over the country on her graduate school auditions I had both the time and motivation to record her a little song. Although this one is not original, it is the same style as the two previous ring tones I made for her. The song has four electric ukulele tracks and one electric bass track.

Playing electric ukulele on the couch with Chelsea

The song is “I Love You Truly” a 1901 song by Carrie Jacobs Bond. The lyrics (which are not present in this recording) are as follows:

I love you truly, truly dear,
Life with its sorrow, life with its tears
Fades into dreams when I feel you are near
For I love you truly, truly dear.

Ah! Love, ’tis something to feel your kind hand
Ah! Yes, ’tis something by your side to stand;
Gone is the sorrow, gone doubt and fear,
For you love me truly, truly dear.

Download as .mp3

As part of the “Backyard Sessions” which I posted about earlier, we also recorded this take of my solo ukulele version of Never on Sunday.

I take my ukulele with me everywhere I go. One day when I was sitting in the back of a bus on Height street I struck up a conversation with a guy who apparently also played. I let him take my instrument for a spin and he played this tune (which I new from the Chordettes recording). I loved the way it sounded on ukulele so I went home and figured it out for myself.

Video credit: Beau Lambert

Update (9/16/2012): When I first posted this recording, several people asked if there were tabs available. At the time I said I would write them up, but I never did. Shame on me for being a bad citizen of the internet. However, better late than never. Nearly a year later, I found the few hours to write it out. Thank you for your patience:

Never on Sunday ukulele tablature (pdf)

Chelsea’s videographer friend Beau Lambert was recently staying with us and graciously offered to record a few songs. Beau set up his camera in our backyard and Chelsea and I thought up a few songs that we could record. We only did one or two takes of each one, so the whole ordeal was really just informal and fun. Hopefully you will enjoy. Oh, make sure to pay attention to Chelsea’s hand-drawn title cards!

Chelsea’s parents, Tom and Grace, wrote the “Nammies Song” to help their kids go to sleep at night.

“The Diaper Changing Blues” was written by Chelsea’s mom Grace, for Chelsea’s little brother Thomas who was not fond of having his diaper changed.

“The Beard Song” was one of the first ukulele songs I fell in love with on Youtube. It was written by Rocky and Balls. Check out the original.

Wanda and George’s Garden. Photo Credit: Chelsea Hollow

Years after my grandfather died, my grandmother reconnected with an old friend from Ohio. George was an old family friend and a widower. A youthful romance followed. I will always remember George’s kindness, good humor and most of all the spry young love he had for my grandmother Wanda.

I arranged this mostly as a way to spend some time alone with my memories of George. Whenever I think of George and Wanda, I think of the beautiful garden they kept together. I sang this hymn at my Grandmother’s memorial service so it seemed like a fitting tribute to George.

This video was recorded in my backyard here in San Francisco.

Mp3 Download
Tablature Pdf file

Hymn: “In The Garden”

By Charles Austin Miles
Arranged and played by Jordan Eldredge
In honor of George Morris.

Lyrics:

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

I built a data-driven website to help opera singers find roles which are likely to suite their voice. The name is a questionable pun based on the German fach system for classifying voices. I present to you FachMe:

The fach system is widely used to help singers find opera roles which will “fit” their voice. The problem is that human voices are infinitely variable while there are only a set number of fachs. My goal was to create a service that would bypass the limits of the fach system and allow singers to find roles which are suitable for their voice.

How does it work?

FachMe uses a database of the recording careers of over 15,000 actual singers to recommend roles which are statistically likely to suite the users voice. When the user arrives, they are prompted to supply a list of roles which they know suite their voice. We then search the database for other singers who have sung these guide roles and create a profile of the user. We can assume that the user’s voice is somewhat similar to all of the singers in their profile, so we pull all the roles that the singers in their profile have sung. We then sort this massive list of roles, which are at least tangentially related to the user, based on which roles appear most prominently. The results are a list of roles which are most similar to the roles input by the user.

It’s been over half a year since my last post, and I’m back with something very similar. Chelsea was in San Diego, and while she was gone I finally was able to get something recorded for her. The number of ideas, over the past months, that never made it is staggering, but this one made it, thanks in no small part to it’s brevity and lack of lyrics. Despite it’s diminutive length, it still took me nearly an entire day to write, learn and record. Oy!

It consists of the following tracks:

• Rhythm electric ukulele
• Lead electric ukulele
• Harmony electric ukulele
• Electric ukulele harmonics
• “Slap yourself in the chest” bass drum
• Electric bass

Have a listen! (Or download the first bit of it as an iPhone ring tone)

Download .mp3
Download .m4r (iPhone ring tone)