Here’s a pretty instrumental I recorded on my Collings mandolin. It’s a slow version of a tune that’s usually done as an uptempo fiddle number for square dancing.
Lucas Gonze – Hollow Popular (MP3)
To the extent possible under law,
Lucas Gonze
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Hollow Poplar.
This work is published from:
United States.
The Joy Drops play a tune from The Sacred Harp.
The lyrics move me. This song is about humility, frailty, vulnerability.
The Joy Drops play a Charlie McCoy Tune.
This piece has a ton of charm, and it’s really straightforward. Just make the notes happen and it’ll feel good.
A couple years ago I posted a set of 11 short mandolin improvisations titled “homestyle mandolin sample pack”
They were targeted at remixers and video makers, not plain old listeners, so I put them in AIFF format, which is unfriendly for ordinary listening.
Since then one of the 11, #17, has become far and away the most popular. It has 1551 plays on Freesound, more than double the next most popular and about 15X more than the other nine. It has been used in about five videos; none of the others have been used AFAIK. It clearly deserves to be an MP3 for ordinary listening and to be accessible apart from the pack.
This one is the only one that in the future won’t have a number. It’s new name is simply “Homestyle Mandolin.”
Amy Waltz Nov 12 2012 (mp3). (00:49)
There are these three little waltzes that I’m in love with. They’re sort of classical music but simpler and more earthy, like stiff formal diction in a cowboy movie. I have recorded all three, and as time went by one of the recordings really bugged me. My idea back then, in the 2007 version, was to subvert and take it in an modernist direction. Over time this sounded like overacting, like a guy mugging for the camera instead of being honestly in the moment. So I have done a new version.
The name of the composition is “3 Waltzes.” It is by D. E. Jannon, who has no other works in the Library of Congress web site, where I found it, and left no other traces that I can find. It was published in New York in 1854.
I posted Ella Waltz on YouTube in 2010 and on Soupgreens on 2007 (mp3) . I posted Carrie Waltz on June 24, 2007 (mp3).
If you play them by using the Yahoo Web Player in my blog entry on Soupgreens, you’ll hear all three together, as a set. They don’t blend well yet; I need to do a remastered version with the three of them in one MP3, with normalized volume, EQ and compression.
Do whatever you want with this recording. It’s hereby in the public domain. You have permission to use my sounds for any purpose, anywhere, any time, and feel free to deep link to my web server. If you want to give back credit me by name and URL – “Lucas Gonze (soupgreens.com)” – and send an email to lucas@gonze.com to tell me about what you made.
For remixers, podcasters, and people needing soundtrack music I posted a slew of WAV files in longer and shorter cuts on Freesound: Parlor Guitar Matched Set. My idea was to provide a set of related sounds to tie a whole show together. Like a blog theme or an icon pack, this isn’t about any one recording. There’s a stinger, a long thing for a voicever, a high quality thing for a fadeout, etc etc.
Some keywords to describe the music for people using search engines: folk, woody, jittery, light, innocent, fast, parlor-guitar, sweet, happy, classical-guitar, americana.
To the extent possible under law,
Lucas Gonze
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Amy Waltz (Nov 12 2012).
This work is published from:
United States.
The first reuse of this recording that I know of is SMNG-A Architects Holiday Video 2012.
SMNG-A Architects Holiday Video 2012 from SMNG-A Architects on Vimeo.
I came across sheet music for the Victorian cliche classic “Home Sweet Home” in the June 1st, 1898 edition of S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal. It’s an arrangement for guitar and mandolin, and I have an American-made mandolin from 1900 and American-made guitar from 1890, so I took the chance to do a super accurate period recording. Also, I thought that it might be useful to people making videos to have a permissively licensed modern recording of this instantly recognizable number.
I found it in this publication:
The magazine had been in circulation for 14 years, but would only last a few issues more, because it carried sad news:
I didn’t know how to mourn the late founder, who I had just met and who had just died, 114 years before:
If you want to play it yourself, the guitar part is at http://soupgreens.com/wp-content/uploads/HomeSweetHome-guitar.png and the mandolin part is at http://soupgreens.com/wp-content/uploads/HomeSweetHome-mandolin.png.
The version I’m hosting above is MP3. If you prefer WAV, it’s on Freesound. You might also find the Soundcloud version useful.
In hope that my recording will be useful to other people, I have put it under a Creative Commons license.
Home Sweet Home by Lucas Gonze is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://soupgreens.com/wp-content/uploads/LucasGonze-HomeSweetHome.mp3.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mailto:lucas@gonze.com.
A rough rag with mandolin carrying the melody, standup bass way up front, and chunky rhythm guitar. The players are me, Ryan Shaw and Paul McCue.
Recorded live in the park on a sunny Sunday.
For easy reuse here’s a hi-fi 320k MP3 under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
[soundcloud id=’56802682′ color=’#ff7700′]
Here’s a slow rag I played on bottleneck guitar. I picture sitting on the porch with a lemonade on a day when it’s too hot to move fast.
There are plenty of blemishes left in the sound. Most recordings try to isolate the music and eliminate background sound. I am experimenting with doing the opposite, because being able to hear the moment and the context gives the music emotional kick. But I don’t know if that is distracting and annoying.
I learned it from Turner’s Banjo Journal No 10. The original was probably perky instead of slow. You can find the sheet music I worked from here: http://www.classicbanjo.com/tutors/TBJ/TBJ-10.pdf. This is probably from the early 1880s.
Here’s the sheet music for those who are inclined that way (chords added by me to make it easier to jam on):
I was inspired by “Dark Was the Night” by Blind Willie Johnson, the Ry Cooder soundtrack for “Paris, Texas”, Ben Harper’s and John Fahey’s weissenborn playing.
This recording is permissively licensed under Creative Commons Attribution. Have at it as long as you give credit. The best type of credit is to link back to this post, at http://soupgreens.com/2012/08/22/brooklet-schottische/ .
I have posted a YouTube recording of a 1903 vaudeville number called “Japanesa.”
The composition is credited to “Yama Sen (Arranged by J. A. Le Barge)”. I think Yama Sen is a pseudonym for Le Barge. Here’s him:
Thanks to paperclip design for the sheet music I learned it from:
Said the email about the video at nophoto.org:
At the free sound web page we have found your great “Homestyle Mandolin matched set” which we would like to use for a short vídeo which I am sending you. We are a photography collective and we have been asked by NOKIA to test their new N8 camera. We have made 7 short pieces and one of them is Matías Costa’s on his daughter birthday. The vídeo will be on the NOKIA page and their blog.
It doesn’t bother me that a business like Nokia is involved, by the way.
This same mandolin music was also used in mandolin love by gurdonark, which is a fun bit o’ honey that I posted about previously.
The instrument I played here was made in Boston in 1900. First posting of the music was homestyle mandolin sample pack.
