Folksongs are your friends

In addition to learning to play the guitar, it's useful to check out a few music genres. I've always liked folk songs and so what more natural than to look for a few in C F and G. However, there are a few warnings to deal with in folk songs.

For example, portents about weather, particularly when delivered by an old sailor who is not currently chatting up a country maid, are always worth heeding as is the advice to avoid navigable waterways.

Don't let yourself be talked into going down by the wild rippling water, the wan water, the salt sea shore, the strand, the lowlands low, the Burning Thames, and any area where the grass grows green on the banks of some pool. The cliffs overlooking navigable waterways aren't safe either.

Broom, as in the plant, should be given a wide berth. Stay away from the greenwood side, too.

A fuller explanation is available from Making Light- Folksongs are your friends.

Tag: Music, Guitar, folksongs

nano post

Here we go again. Radio 4 just did a comedy sketch about MP3 players being upgraded before you can finish buying them. iPod is not quite that extreme, but certainly drives a rate of innovation. Interestingly, most of the pundits mis-guessed this announcement for today. The £139 nano is 2GB holding 500 songs and 4GB holds 1,000 songs which puts it in line with the first iPod capacities from a few years ago.

Tag: apple, ipod

Astronomy Domine

Lime and limpid green
the second scene
the fights between
the blue you once knew
floating down the sound resounds
around the icy waters underground

Jupiter and Saturn,
Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten

Winding signs flap
flicker flicker flicker flack;
Pow wow stairway scare
Dan dare who's there?

Lime and limpid green the sound
surrounds the icy waters on the
lime and limpid green the sound
surrounds the icy waters underground.

Tag: music, pink floyd

Michele sent me

Michele Agnew's site includes a great comment exchange. You post a comment, and get one back. On each comment you post to someone else, you say 'Michele sent me'. At the weekends (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays) you can enter as much as you like, but on other days you can only do it a maximum of once daily.

So - you add a comment to Michele and then comment to the person above you in Michele's blog. Easy Peasy, and fun.

The Needles

Trip to Alum Bay to say Hi to the Needles before heading for the Rex Bar. Then back to the Ferry. A great fun weekend.
Tag: Isle of Wight

Julia Margaret Cameron's Photography

And so to Dimbola Lodge for cream tea and a look at works from one of the great photographic pioneers. The gift of a camera in 1863 sparked an enthusiasm in Julia Margaret Cameron for this new art form. Within a year she had begun to present her friends with albums of her work and was elected a member of the photographic society in London. Dimbola Lodge served as both her home and, more importantly, her studio. It was here that the greatest of the Cameron photographs were made.

From Dimbola Lodge Cameron welcomed - and photographed - the cream of Victorian society. Tennyson, Darwin, Watts and Thackeray lived locally, and guests often included Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning, Holman Hunt, Palgrave, Edward Lear and - as here - the actress Ellen Terry.
Tag: photo, Isle of Wight

a rum conclusion

The evening finished back at Gotten Manor, with a few additional supplies including Mount Gay rum thoughtfully assembled on the table. Earlier we had met Michael and Judy at the Wight Horse and heard all about Michael's new business endeavours.

We'd also found a way to buy beer and legitimately get great free beer glasses to keep and amassed a useful stock in boxes during the evening.

Ventnor

Julie loves the beach at Ventnor.

And who can disagree, on a bright sunny day?

Tag: Isle of Wight

Wight Mouse and Badger

By this time it was around twenty minutes to nine in the evening. Our nearest local pub was the Wight Mouse. In a spring and a bound, we had ordered steak and badger pie, amongst other things. Suffice to say the badger is a local beer!


Tag: Isle of Wight

Gotten Lost

The next stage was to find Gotten Manor. Caroline's instructions were good, but we still had a minor navigational error which left us in a small lane next to a farmhouse. The friendly local farmer smiled as we said we were lost and gave us directions to another improbably small lane around 400 meters away. We bumped our way along this to the point where we thought it had become a footpath and then suddenly the sign for our destination appeared.

A slight problem; Caroline was out. However, we amused ourselves wandering around, listening to the wildlife until some headlights appeared and Caroline showed us to our charming rooms.

The Living Room

A bedroom with cookies.

A view into our breakfast area.

To the island

Julie had planned for us to visit the Isle of Wight, starting on Friday evening. We hurridly pushed clothes into bags and headed through the New Forest to Lymington.

Here we caught a ferry at around sunset across tranquil and blue seas to Yarmouth.

Chaos is a friend of mine

With Bob Dylan's documentary in vogue and me learning guitar, I thought I'd post one Dylan lyric; and preferably something playable and recognisable to most people. And I really like this early album from the early 1960s.

I know Dylan said,"People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas." but he also said, "The times they are a changin".

G Em
Come gather 'round people
C G
Wherever you roam
G Em
And admit that the waters
C D
Around you have grown
G Em
And accept it that soon
C G
You'll be drenched to the bone.
G Am D
If your time to you Is worth savin'
D D2/c
Then you better start swimmin'
G/b D/a
Or you'll sink like a stone
G C D G . .
For the times they are a-changin'.

G . . | Em . . | C . . | G . . | . . . | . . . | . . .

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'.
'Cause the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin


Guitar tabs to Dylan are here