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| Some people like to sing in
the bath, but I love to sing in the woods sometimes. It's particularly
good of course to have the company of friends, who feel the same. I
learned a lot of chants and little songs sitting with friends around a
fire in a clearing amongst the trees on nice summer nights. With all of our fantastic hifi systems, countless radio stations, MP3's on the computer, we don't often get round to doing this tuning-in to yourself, each other and our environment. Yet, for long, long millennia, generations of human beings have gained immense joy doing just that: Making music and singing straight from your heart!! Of course, many of us no longer have a 'repertoire', which is suitable for these occasions: i.e. songs with simple words which are easy to learn and share, nice tune and easy to sing in harmony. So I thought it may be a good idea to create a Chants and Song Exchange in "The Sacred Grove". How?? I'm hoping to get a microphone for my
computer so that it will be possible to sing a particular song or chant
just once and make a digital file of it. Such brief 'music bites' should
not have too many kilobytes and would be easy to download. They can be
listened to, by whoever wants to learn the song, by setting their real
player (or other software) to repeat the file. The other way we can share songs here, is by scanning in words and music. Not everyone knows how to read music, but there are probably sufficient musicians amongst us to make this a worthwhile thing to do as well. Below is one example to start us off. I hope there will many more in time, so please visit again.
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Tall Trees
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EXAMPLE
OF POSSIBLE RHYTHM |
Tony's
commentary: This is a chant with a strong rhythm, with a very rare chance to use a tambourine on the off-beat, 4th beat in every bar. If you have several drums you can try the following: Tambourine: Play the top line (* in the 4th beat) Hand Drum: Play the rhythm indicated by the 'x' signs in the second line. Bass Drum: Play the *** on the bottom line. |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Tony
Wrench was one of the leading Muses for the influential Prana Group, who inspired
many of us to start singing and chanting ourselves a few decades ago. He has
many other talents too. Tony was a permaculture pioneer in this country and
build the beautiful roundhouse with an earthen roof in Brythdir Mawr, Wales from
recycled stuff and natural materials around him. Nobody noticed it for years, as
it fitted seam-lessy into its environment. One faithful day a plane
spotted the small solar cell panel glistening in the landscape below.
After a long battle with the planning authorities an order was made to destroy
this gem and Tony and his partner will be made homeless. The head of the architectural faculty of
Cardiff University said that the roundhouse was a building of great social and
cultural significance and should have been preserved in the Welsh Folk Museum!
Tony has a great website about the house: THAT
ROUNDHOUSE
Here is a picture for you of the house (with Tony on the left) scanned in from
the Western Telegraph of 15 Nov. 2002:
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