A Music Room Christmas

This past Thursday evening we had a small gathering at the Music Room to run through some Christmas tunes from a book I've put together containing 31 songs in four part harmony with the guitar chords as well. Each instrument's book has all four parts transposed into its range. The soprano recorder would rarely play the tenor line, for instance, but it's there in case there are lots of instruments and it could double it one time through for variety. The guitar chords allow for higher pitched instruments to softly play the tonic (or third or fifth) while a lower sounding instrument has the lead. The guitar chords also allow for improv pros to add their jazz magic to the tunes.

One aim of the Music Room is to foster community socially as well as musically, so our hostess Karla provided lots of refreshments for when we weren't playing and were getting to know each other better.

We invited the Kenwood Players, the Kenwood Fun Band, and the Rapidan Pops, as well as friends and family of mine who have supported me musically down through the years. In the event well over a dozen people couldn't make it, but we had a quorum and had a good time.

The Music Room isn't really ready yet. All the dry wall still needs to be done for the new handicap access bathrooms, and until that dust has settled we don't want to bring in the carpets and drapes needed to dampen the sound. The people sitting out front said the sound was OK, but for the musicians it was sort of like those barbershop mirrors with infinite reflections bouncing off all those bare surfaces - keeping the beat unified was a challenge, but we did it.

We'd like to think this will be an annual Music Room event - and that by next year we'll have improved the acoustics and that we'll be able to be open to the public.

Many thanks to cousin-in-law Ed who took these pictures - and whose expertise in non-profits due to his work with The Art Center in Orange and the Virginians for the Arts has proved invaluable.

Performance Diary

Courtesy of my cousin-in-law Eduardo who volunteers at the Art Center in Orange, here are some pics of our Christmas sing along yesterday.

Here's the whole group:



















Here's our interpretive dancer taking a break:






































Here are Stephen on cello and Crawford on Eb tuba:



















Don on recorders:


Karla and Maryvonne, the international contingent:



















Here, to the right of Maryvonne, are Judy, Joanna and Sydney:

Performance Diary

Here's another great photo by Jeff Poole of the Orange County Review. The event was the lighting of the memorial Christmas Tree - which always follows the downtown Orange Christmas Parade organized by the Rotary Club. It was really cold, in the 30's, and much darker than the photo makes it seem. 

That's Crawford Harmon on the Eb tuba, Bill Burnside on the soprano sax and Pastor Pat Nabers helping out with the carol singalong. A musical highlight for me of the Christmas season was the singalong of Silent Night that night. I pitched it in F, which meant everyone could easily hit the high notes at the end - and because it was in everyone's comfort zone - the singing was strong and beautiful. I think I'll always be happier being a music therapist helping others make music than being a performer.

(If you click on this Orange County Review link - the farm pictured in the banner photo behind the search window is where I grew up and now live.)

The Old Hymns

Having never been a church goer, I never sang any hymns until becoming a hospice volunteer six or seven years ago. When I'm asked to sing hymns, it's nearly always the old hymns, many of which have been dropped from the newer hymnals (and never were in the Episcopal hymnal, with which I had a little experience as a young child).

Some of the hymns I'm talking about are "Sweet Hour of Prayer", "The Old Rugged Cross", "In The Garden", "What A Friend We Have In Jesus", "The Church In The Wildwood", "Trust and Obey", and "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior".

I've put these and others in flat keys for our group, and usually down a step or three to make them easier for people to sing. Every time we do them, a few people come up afterwards and fervently thank us for performing them and telling us they never hear them any more and that they mean a great deal to them.

As a therapist these hymns strike me somewhat as the service tunes and patriotic songs the community band plays on Memorial and Veterans Day. Through a lifetime of association, hearing them triggers an emotional reaction in some audience members that can never be matched by something they've not heard before. 

I can understand how church musicians and ministers want to always be exploring new material, but as a therapist these old hymns are a wonderful way to create therapeutic moments for people that grew up with them.

Familiarity

One of the reasons our performance at Gordon House was such a success had to do with familiarity in various manifestations.

* We've played there several times now, so I knew exactly what to take and how to set it up and arrange the players, the players knew how to get there and to come in the easiest way and the residents remembered us and had an idea of what to expect. There was none of the last minute adjusting and flurry of getting ready that can wear me out even before starting to play. 

* Having played in the room before, we were able to play well to its acoustics for the best blend of sounds at a volume level suited exactly to the environment. 

* All the studies showing how beneficial music is for the elderly and those with brain dysfunction talk about how familiar music can trigger all sorts of positive responses, and there's no music more familiar, and having more positive associations, than Christmas music.

* The current membership of the Kenwood Players has been in place since June, and we've met just about every Friday. The group has come together both socially and musically. We're used to playing with each other and have a good idea of what to expect and how to best contribute to the overall sound. The director of Gordon House is a church organist and choir director and he volunteered after we played that he was really impressed with the blend we achieved.

* By the time we'd rehearsed for the Art Center benefit, then did that, then rehearsed again after that, we were very familiar with the arrangements I'd done, so everybody had worked out little improvised riffs and accompanying patterns to all the tunes we did. There was a nice mix of the freshness of improvisation within the somewhat settled arrangements.

* For the final three numbers we did full sing along and I was able to slip into singing leader role, which is much more familiar to me than straight performing. People often mention how effective it is when I move around from person to person to encourage them to sing. If you're used to "performing", that can seem unusual, but for me it's straight performing that's more of a challenge, especially on flute and horn.

Keys for Singing

Leading a sing along with just guitar is relatively easy if you have a capo. As you get a feel for the range of the group you can adjust the key by simply using the capo on different frets. A G chord with the capo on the first fret is Ab, and is a Bb with the capo on the third fret. 

Adding in orchestral or band instruments complicates things because as a rule, most players can't transpose in their heads, and capos don't work on clarinets. So you have to print out the music ahead of time in whatever key you think will work. For the Christmas caroling I'd assumed that there would be mostly untrained voices, so took most songs down around a third, and used flat keys to make things easier for the Bb and Eb instruments.

Then a week before the event I found out a lot of choir and chorus members were being invited, so went back and put things in their standard keys, plus or minus a step or two to keep the key signatures in flats. (With very, very few exceptions, hymns and carols will be in the same key in every hymnal you find.) So for every carol we had a choice of at least two keys, and that worked out well as some folks were more comfortable with lower keys and others with higher ones.

The format for most of the arrangements was to have the melody line, the bass line and guitar chords. To play the guitar in Eb or F I usually used the key of D capoed on the 1st or 3rd fret. For Ab and Bb I used G capoed on the 1st or 3rd fret. The exceptions were when the ii, iii, and/or vi chords required too many bar chords, which I can play but would rather pay attention to leading the singing than complicated fretting.

One of the problems with sheet music is that if the key doesn't suit your vocal range you're out of luck. For my music materials to really be helpful I think all the songs should be presented in at least three or four keys using the melody/bass line/guitar chord format in smaller print for the extra versions. That would also be a spur to improvisation.

Mantra Mountain

Pliable at On An Overgrown Path recently put up this post on the CD I did with Lama Tashi and some friends couple of years back. He really understands what we were up to, has some very nice things to say about the project, and puts the CD in a context I hadn't fully appreciated before.

One of the aspects of music therapy I most enjoy is helping people use music for spiritual purposes, so making this CD was very satisfying. Pliable's coining the phrases "lean forward" and "lean back" to describe two kinds of music is very helpful. I think that for music to be successfully used in a spiritual way, on some level it needs to be "lean forward" music. For Mantra Mountain this is a subtle attribute, where when singing along with Just A Closer Walk it is much more evident.

The Exaltation of Channeling Music

Last night I got to lead three sing alongs, one in the first set and two in the second set of the Touch of Dixie performance for Music on Main Street. Every time I've had the opportunity to do this I've had the suspicion the amazing feeling I get is a one off thing that will wear off, but so far that's not happening. Leading a sing along with the banjo is old hat for me, but leading a sing along with the help of a Dixieland band is new and takes things up several levels.

Part of it is I don't have to work so hard just to create the music to be sung along with. And somehow, leading the band with the banjo has the effect of making leading the audience in singing much easier. Maybe it's the band modeling for the audience how the music should sound.

On a practical note, the simpler Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho, which didn't require a song sheet, went much better that Just A Closer Walk, which does require a song sheet. I've been working up a simple arrangement of Down By The Riverside, which has a simple refrain and call and response verses, and I think it could work well for the Dixes.