ClassicalCode

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.

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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In an attempt to find a way to put my multitracks on youtube, I came up with a neat idea. Show all four parts of a tag in sol-feg hand signs as it is sung. This could be a great tool for visual learners to both learn a barbershop tag, and hone their hand sign reading skills, a skill that is usually hard to practice without the help of another sol-feg nerd.

With the advent of limerickdb.com, which is full of nerdy limericks because it was started by the author of xkcd, I was inspired to author some nerdy limericks within my field of nerd-dom.

First the “Famous poem rewritten as a limerick” type*:

A man held his boy by his side
as through the dark night he did ride.
The boy’s health; it lessened,
The Erlkönig beckoned!
When they finally got home, the boy’d died.

And then the “Only funny to a small group of specific nerds” type:

When singing the minor mode keys,
in F# you must mind your ‘sis’.
Though vulgar and raw,
descending from ‘la’,
letter names are pronounced as: ‘fees ees’.

I have submitted them both, but have yet to see them appear on the site.

* For more info on “Der Erlkönig” check out it’s Wikipedia article, and Fischer-Dieskau/Moore’s performance of the Schubert song. Creepy.

Update: I looks like my submissions to the database have been denied. Not up to snuff?