So it occurred to me...
I've been very busy in the past year or so with music, and I think I've talked now and again about that, but I don't think I have ever, ever posted any of the results of it. And they do exist, so I'm not sure why this has just never occurred to me.
Anyhow. Correcting that...
The most recent concert I did was at 7Pi-Con, a local con that's in the Pioneer Valley, with our chapter of Sassafrass. We sang a set of I think eight songs? Something like that. A few of them are up on YouTube, like this one, for Gift of Life, which has been one of my favourite songs since we started working on it for the concert. (All of my contributions in this group, Sassafrass, are singing, and we have a YouTube channel for our Boston chapter here.)
Not too long prior to that, a subset of both groups I'm in did a short set at Concertino 2012 (a filk convention, which is one portion of a set of cons which run up and down the east coast, with specific names depending on which city it lands in). Anyhow, Nat, who is the guitarist, primary composer (or at least I would say he currently is that, though that might not have been true in prior iterations), vocalist and all-around amazing person in Stranger Ways, and who has been helping Sassafrass out by doing a lot of sound editing work (seriously, blessings rain down on Nat's head), signed up for a concert slot at the con, and invited those of us who were able to make it to come and perform with him.
We did a cover of Joan, by Heather Dale. That is one of the best songs ever, and if you aren't familiar with Heather Dale, I'd suggest giving that song a listen, as it's awesome and brilliant. In my unbiased opinion. :P (I love a lot of Heather Dale's stuff, but this is definitely in my top three.) Anyhow, it was a lot of fun to put together in short order and to play, in addition to other stuff we threw into the set list, that's in our normal repertoire.
And speaking of our normal repertoire, I don't think even going back to the beginning of the year, I ever posted about videos from Arisia 2012, where both Stranger Ways and Sassafrass played.
Though I love a lot of what we did, I think in terms of how things came out, I was happiest with Boys of Bedlam, which is also one that I just love doing. I get to both play flute and sing on this one, and honestly that's usually a shortcut to making songs I like doing. :)
Stranger Ways actually put out a new album at that concert, which I think I may have linked before, and it's available on Bandcamp here: http://strangerways.bandcamp.com/album/guilt-angst-fairy-tales It's not perfect, but on the whole it makes me happy, and it has "I'm Judging You" on it, which the world clearly needed out there as a song. :P
A lot of time is still going toward both those groups. In Sassafrass, we're working on recording a new album, which mostly is already written, but which some of us are learning music for, and others are just trying to get down good recordings of. We're going for a higher quality CD than has been made before by the group, and ye gods, it's an adventure.
In Stranger Ways, we're sort of at the step before that. We've been working on writing a concept album for most of the year now. Almost every song we intend to be on there is started, a few are finished and we've rehearsed a few times, but many more are only about halfway in, or are further along with lyrics than music, or vice versa. It's been an interesting voyage of discovery in terms of how we all write music, how we collaborate, what strengths we have, etc. For the most part, I'm really enjoying the writing, though it's always dispiriting that I can't always make the music go on demand. Anyhow, I have done so very little lyrics writing before, so this has been a real challenge, but also really an awesome growth type thing. Learnings; I can haz them.
So now you know what like 10 - 20 hours of my week has been going to for the past year and a bit.
This entry was originally posted at http://sandrylene.dreamwidth.org/4926.html. Feel free to comment here or go there and comment at http://sandrylene.dreamwidth.org/4926.html?mode=reply.
Anyhow. Correcting that...
The most recent concert I did was at 7Pi-Con, a local con that's in the Pioneer Valley, with our chapter of Sassafrass. We sang a set of I think eight songs? Something like that. A few of them are up on YouTube, like this one, for Gift of Life, which has been one of my favourite songs since we started working on it for the concert. (All of my contributions in this group, Sassafrass, are singing, and we have a YouTube channel for our Boston chapter here.)
Not too long prior to that, a subset of both groups I'm in did a short set at Concertino 2012 (a filk convention, which is one portion of a set of cons which run up and down the east coast, with specific names depending on which city it lands in). Anyhow, Nat, who is the guitarist, primary composer (or at least I would say he currently is that, though that might not have been true in prior iterations), vocalist and all-around amazing person in Stranger Ways, and who has been helping Sassafrass out by doing a lot of sound editing work (seriously, blessings rain down on Nat's head), signed up for a concert slot at the con, and invited those of us who were able to make it to come and perform with him.
We did a cover of Joan, by Heather Dale. That is one of the best songs ever, and if you aren't familiar with Heather Dale, I'd suggest giving that song a listen, as it's awesome and brilliant. In my unbiased opinion. :P (I love a lot of Heather Dale's stuff, but this is definitely in my top three.) Anyhow, it was a lot of fun to put together in short order and to play, in addition to other stuff we threw into the set list, that's in our normal repertoire.
And speaking of our normal repertoire, I don't think even going back to the beginning of the year, I ever posted about videos from Arisia 2012, where both Stranger Ways and Sassafrass played.
Though I love a lot of what we did, I think in terms of how things came out, I was happiest with Boys of Bedlam, which is also one that I just love doing. I get to both play flute and sing on this one, and honestly that's usually a shortcut to making songs I like doing. :)
Stranger Ways actually put out a new album at that concert, which I think I may have linked before, and it's available on Bandcamp here: http://strangerways.bandcamp.com/album/guilt-angst-fairy-tales It's not perfect, but on the whole it makes me happy, and it has "I'm Judging You" on it, which the world clearly needed out there as a song. :P
A lot of time is still going toward both those groups. In Sassafrass, we're working on recording a new album, which mostly is already written, but which some of us are learning music for, and others are just trying to get down good recordings of. We're going for a higher quality CD than has been made before by the group, and ye gods, it's an adventure.
In Stranger Ways, we're sort of at the step before that. We've been working on writing a concept album for most of the year now. Almost every song we intend to be on there is started, a few are finished and we've rehearsed a few times, but many more are only about halfway in, or are further along with lyrics than music, or vice versa. It's been an interesting voyage of discovery in terms of how we all write music, how we collaborate, what strengths we have, etc. For the most part, I'm really enjoying the writing, though it's always dispiriting that I can't always make the music go on demand. Anyhow, I have done so very little lyrics writing before, so this has been a real challenge, but also really an awesome growth type thing. Learnings; I can haz them.
So now you know what like 10 - 20 hours of my week has been going to for the past year and a bit.
This entry was originally posted at http://sandrylene.dreamwidth.org/4926.html. Feel free to comment here or go there and comment at http://sandrylene.dreamwidth.org/4926.html?mode=reply.