ClassicalCode

My birthday was a few days ago, and two different people, knowing my love of barbershop, sent me a Youtube video of a quartet singing “Happy Birthday”. This got me thinking about barbershop arrangments of the song.

Today is my friend Amanda Ortmayer’s birthday and I wanted to give her something, so I decided to arrange and multitrack “Happy Birthday” for her in the barbershop style.

Happy birthday Amanda, thanks for being such a constant, caring friend.

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The arrangement as a printable pdf: birthday.pdf

Update:
The Lilypond file used to render the above engraving: birthday.ly

EDIT (May 18, 2012): FML has changed their API to require a key, I have written them asking for such a key.

After experiencing the joy of following every FMyLife.com entry with a trip to SadTrombone.com I decided to throw together a mash up.

Sad Trombone My Life serves up endless doses of schadenfreude with comedy brass chasers.

Enjoy: Sad Trombone My Life

I know I am stretching this backwards-alphabet-songs thing, but I am at home in Petaluma and had time to kill.

Here I sing the alphabet song with the melody backwards, the words backwards while showing solfegge hand signs and conducting.

In my previous post I sang the ABCs backwards with solffeg hand signs. Now, out of curiosity and my eternal pursuit of the way of the nerd, I added a different challenge into the mix:

Thanks to Brandon for reversing the video, so that you can hear the actual melody.

Inspired to further acts of nerdome by the encouraging comments on my last post, I decided to learn to do something I have been thinking of doing ever since I saw Paul Kim do it at a party. Sing the alphabet song backwards. Not just sing the letters backwards, but the notes as well. So last night I sat down, figured out how it would go, and started memorizing it. This morning, to nerd it up just a little bit more, I leaned to sing it while showing the solfege using hand signs. I then took my new camcorder into Golden Gate Park and recorded myself doing it. The park has the advantage of having actual sunlight while still having some privacy and quiet. Also, it’s pretty. Here are the results:

Due to a bug in iMovieHD I was unable to reverse the video so you could here the original melody, but here is the audio reversed:

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I got a new Flip camcorder from Woot.com yesterday. To test it, I filmed myself singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” off by one word. By starting the song on a fictional pickup note, the alignment of the words and music gets off. So, I run out of words before I finish singing the melody which leaves the melody on the unresolved solfeggio “ti”.

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Edit (May 18, 2012): This project is no-longer online.

Since my brother introduced me to Found Magazine several years ago, watching the gutter and sidewalk for interesting things has become a hobby of mine. Unfortunately I was never able to find a good website on which to post the things I found. Found Magazine has an online section called “Find of the Day” but it only allows tiny images, and the wait to get your finds posted is interminable. Fed up, I designed, coded and published my own solution to this internet shortcoming. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: GutterGold.com. Feel free to peruse, rate and comment upon my finds, subscribe to the RSS feed, or post some of your own finds. Also: tell your friends!

From the site, “Training to Be a Spy“:

My girlfriend is sick, so I arranged and recorded her a song. I hope this helps you feel better Chelsea.

For Chelsea:

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This is my first doo-wop arrangement, and the first full song that I have multitracked. Unfortunately with five tracks at once, the noise on the recording becomes rather annoying. If anyone could help me reduce the noise, I would greatly appreciate it. I plan to write up the arrangement in the next few days (as an exercise) so you can expect to find that soon.

Update:

I typeset the arrangement using Lilypond, a wonderful open source program for engraving music. Here are the results:

The arrangement as a printable pdf: earth_angel.pdf

The Lilypond code: earth_angel.ly

My friend Joachim Luis came over tonight and started reading though the beginning piano book that was resting on my keyboard. Being the jock party animals that we are, we decided to try to sing a few of them as two part vocal pieces.

First we sight-read “Rondino” by Jean Philippe Rameau on movable “doo” with Joachim on bass and me on treble (this one is for my dad):

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Then out came the solfeggio. “A Farewell” by Henry Purcell with Joachim on treble and me on bass:

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And then out came the video camera. “Sarabande” by Arcangelo Corelli:

Apologies and thanks to David Xiques.

My friend Zane Fiala and I multitracked some barbershop tags today. He has a great home studio, that made recording much easeir than when I record directly into my laptop. After two hours, here is what we came up with:

We Love to Sing Those Close Harmony Songs:

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Somewhere (from West Side Story):

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