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bardic Pennsic SCA songwriting teaching

Spring Update

I know–I don’t write, I don’t call… What have I been up to?

  • Getting ready for Wars of the Roses, where I plan to debut TWO new songs: my first adaptation of a period piece, “Tam Lin of the Elves” (Romantic! Epic!), and my first historical piece, the long-planned Richard III song “The Last Plantagenet” (in progress). As always, I will post the songs publicly after the event.
  • Listening to the work in progress cut of my first bardic single, “The Bastard’s Tale”, on repeat. I’m pleased to say I listen to this recording over and over and I keep liking it better. Will be finishing the vocals this weekend.
  • Getting ready for Pennsic, where I will be teaching my first class, “Songwriting to Tell a Story.” I’ve done as much research for this class as I have for the songs, and starting to put the notes together.
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album bardic mp3 Pennsic SCA songwriting teaching

Overdue updates – the site, performances, recording a CD (!!!), and looking forward

So I haven’t posted since December. Bad bard. Bad, bad bard. Well, busy bard. Which is good. (And it’s not like the handful of you out there aren’t catching all of this on Facebook anyway.)

Still, what’s the point of a “blog” about my “bardic career” if I don’t take the time to post about said “career” when I’m actually “doing things” in it? Probably because I have the grace to be at least uncomfortable with the implicit narcissism involved, but if I can deal with it, I trust you can too (or you’ll stop reading, and we’ll all just have to find a way to cope).

Continue reading “Overdue updates – the site, performances, recording a CD (!!!), and looking forward”
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mp3 songwriting

GarageBand recordings (including “House of Dancers”)

I’ve been playing with GarageBand a bit today, with a bit better understanding of how to get vocals mixed, and with the advantage of a USB microphone (thanks, love, for getting me “Beatles Rock Band” two years ago!). In addition to some actual Bardic work (to be shared when the time is right), I finally tackled the vocals for my hitherto-unrecorded epic rock song “House of Dancers”.

Now you can finally hear the song Spiny Norman was never ready to bring onstage, as best I can record it on my own.

MP3

Edit (2/3): Re-uploaded the file I’d apparently deleted when I was trying to improve the mix.  Don’t think I succeeded, but at least the s0ng is back on the site, and I corrected the links.

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bardic songwriting

Back to Bardhead

So I’ve cranked out another new song this week (“Changeling”), and hope to record an a version of it so that I can share it in the “Works in Progress” section within the next few days (still finalizing the tune).  It’s exciting to feel the rust coming off the hinges, as I’m starting to be able to compose new pieces in shorter order without having to be at an event like Pennsic to get the wind in my sails (O, the mixed metaphors!).  More are on the way.

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bardic songwriting

We interrupt our songwriting to ponder…songwriting

An intriguing thought strikes me, as I near the completion of the first draft of a new song.  To the extent that form follows content (yes, Mr. Sondheim, to the best of my ability), it feels right now as if process follows form.  My recollection of getting my handful of Bardic songs to date on the page, the process of working through each one feels as if it mirrored the nature of the song.  “The Bastard’s Tale” came out quickly, rushing to the page, hot, angry, and urgent, impatient to get to the point.  “My Thirst” lurched drunkenly to and fro during the writing, staggering for a day through the wrong tune, which had to be rewritten, shortening every line by a couple of syllables–this had the effect of tightening the jokes and making the song easier to sing as if inebriated, but at the time the rework was a touch like a hangover.  “Call Me Will”, whose concept had eluded me for over a year, was coy and required stalking for a few weeks even after it took shape.  It took patience and guile to lure it into place, but once I had it pinned, I was surprised at how little rewriting it actually required–it more or less sank right into the page in the end.

Continue reading “We interrupt our songwriting to ponder…songwriting”
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bardic general

New Song Brewing

I’m a little excited…for the first time since I started doing Bardic seriously, I have a second song percolating in the same year (the first one was “Call Me Will” back in May).  I’m hoping to have a completed set of verses to take with me if I get the chance to attend the monthly Bardic workshop up in Concordia next month.  I guess we’ll see.

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bardic SCA

Winter Nights: My first Bardic competition

I spent Saturday at Concordia of the Snows up near Albany, NY, for their Winter Nights event.  It was and incredible day dedicated to performance and (according to Toki Redbeard, the autocrat) very relaxed competition.  This was my first time entering a Bardic competition, if you don’t count the Depressing Song contest from last Pennsic, which was wonderful (and where I tied for first place), but a different animal: an entry level contest for new bards, who only needed to perform one song, with only the stipulation that it be depressing.  Winter Nights, by contrast, would be an all-day competition for Bards at various experience levels, with head-to-head performances, topic challenges, and multiple rounds of performing.  For those who are intrigued but unfamiliar with such things, as I had been, or who have been to other Bardic competitions and are curious how Winter Nights is structured, I offer some details of my (joyous!) experience there.

Continue reading “Winter Nights: My first Bardic competition”

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bardic Pennsic SCA

Pennsic XVI, Part 2 (Gratitude)

(Okay.  So I managed to write this entire post up yesterday in Wordpad on my new laptop, had copied it to the clipboard and was pasting it into the blog to review, when the laptop battery died.  Didn’t go into “sleep” mode, just shut down on me.  So I lost the entire thing.  I’d spent two hours on it.  But what I had to say mattered to me, so here we go again.)

This is the second part of my Pennsic post, and this one will actually deal with what happened at Pennsic this year.  But while a lot of wonderful things happened to me at the war, what I was left with, even more than joy and, yes, pride, was gratitude.  So this post is going to be a series of thanks.  This war I really connected to the wonderful and generous spirit of so many denizens of the SCA who made space and offered encouragement, not just to me as a bard, but to my whole family.   I know going in that this list will be woefully incomplete, and I won’t remember half the people I should single out (and of those I do, I don’t know everyone’s SCAdian name and title, or in some cases their mundane names, or any name at all).  I nonetheless choose to do this imperfectly, rather than accept the excuse to not do it at all.

Continue reading “Pennsic XVI, Part 2 (Gratitude)”
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general mp3

Updates: Website and MP3’s

Certificate of RegistrationWanted anyone out there who’s following (cricket, cricket) to know that I registered the domain drakethebard.com, making the site easier to find and tell people about.  Also I was able to find and add a few MP3’s from my Spiny Norman days, and will add more if I find them.  (At some point in the near future, I hope to put together some simple recordings of the bardic stuff and post it here as well.)

And yes, I will have the rest of the Pennsic XLI post out in the next few days.

And finally, something in the mail brought a smile to my face yesterday…

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bardic Pennsic SCA

Pennsic XVI, Part 1 (‘Twas the Month Before Pennsic…)

So I just got back from Pennsic…and boy, is my everything tired.  My mind.  My body (though not that badly).  My heart.  Because it got a lot of exercise this past week.

(Oh, I should mention, this is going to be a long post.  I may have to do this in pieces.  I don’t know.  I have no idea if anyone’s going to read this anyway…I mostly chose WordPress so I’d have a place to organize and post my songs online, not necessarily because I wanted to become a blogger.  But I do have things I want to say, to anyone who has an interest, and there are people over the course of my life who have claimed that I write well and should do it more often.  And I definitely came out of this past week wanting to take some time and space to express gratitude to people.  I will get to that part at some point as well.)

Continue reading “Pennsic XVI, Part 1 (‘Twas the Month Before Pennsic…)”