Just uploaded my first mp3 to Sound Lantern:

http://www.soundlantern.com/UpdatedSoundPa...BellRinging.mp3

This was a song that used to be a favourite in the Artichoke at Moulton (Northants, not Devon) when I was a member of Moulton Morris in the early 1980s. I can't remember the name of the chap who used to sing it, but he invariably ended the performance with the old "swinging the concertina around the head" routine.

This was recorded in my spare bedroom and you couldn't swing a cat in there, never mind a concertina...

Nice, although if you ask me that North looe lot are a bunch of smart alecs.

You've got great command over your voice and presentation. Probably the best singing of such stuff I heard in a long long time. Nice, warm, hear to heart, simple - professional in all aspects. I would doubt the necessity of second track, it does sound like it's your voice, and feels a bit funny. And I'd experiment with playing octave lower. I don't find squeaky accompanimnet is contributing to the musculine and assuringly hugging feel of your voice.

Glad you liked it - I've just stuck another song on (Just as the tide was flowing). I'm afraid the accompaniment on this is even squeakier as I couldn't manage it on the G row and played it in D instead.

Although that was before I read your comments, I did resist the temptation to try to put any harmonies in and I think it does sound better without.

Hmm. It still sounds good, but I do think it's not your key.
I just realized what made me doubt the accompaniment. It sounds as though concertina is played at different time or in different place. May be it's the reverb that is absent from the voice. It feels like a concertina is in some large empty hall far away from me, but a voice is right here, almost whispering in my ear. There's this feel that instrument is recorded separately, without good middle filling, that a voice has. So there is this disconnection, that's bothering me. But who am I? - some lowly dweller, one of millions.

No, you're quite right - the concertina was recorded separately from the voice (on both songs). I've only been playing since February and can't yet manage to sing and play at the same time.

Another problem with the Bell Ringing was that I was experiencing some latency on the recording, due to a recent Mac OSX update that messed up the USB Audio driver. By the time I recorded the second song, I'd found a fix that sent the driver back to the last version that worked.

Also, the first song had a GarageBand effect called "Live Performance" (slight reverb) on the concertina, whereas the second song was recorded "clean", without any effects.

So you have a very good ear and a missed vocation as a sound engineer (unless you are a sound engineer, of course).

Hi
I don't know about swinging his concertina over his head but Tony Rose was fairly well known for this song I believe
chris

Thanks for the tip, Chris - it seems the song was on the lp "Young Hunting", which, along with most of the Leader/Trailer back catalogue, is unavailable on cd (and the vinyl is long deleted)

However, there is a download available from here:

http://witchseason.blogspot.com/2007/05/ne...-nor-sober.html

Admin - Please feel free to delete this post if illegal in any way. I'm not sure how the law stands on downloads of music that you couldn't buy if you tried.

Unfortunately I do have good ear, it's killing me. But my wife has even better ear. It's awful. I'm not a sound engineer, it'd be swell, easy job, well paid, but too late for me, and i don't want to work with puffy cheek Hollywood "Artists".

............Dave, you have a really wonderful instrument ; your voice .
I thought the concertina sounded fine ABOVE your baritone voice. My only comment would be to say, try to make your accompaniment less "busy".............let your voice lead and your anglo be less prominent.
Listen to this masterclass.......John Roberts.
This is what I aspire to..........Robin

Thanks, Robin - Yes, I realise that my accompaniments are more or less matching note-for-note what I'm singing at the moment, which isn't very sophisticated. I do exactly the same if I try to accompany a song with the fiddle! I'm comfortable doing chordal accompaniments on the guitar, but that was how I learnt to play when I was 15 (rather a long time ago now).

I've never quite been able to fathom how guitarists like Martin Carthy and Nic Jones manage to play such complicated instrumental parts AND sing AND remember the words. I'm not sure I'd be able to manage any more than 2 out of 3 (and they wouldn't always be the same 2 either).

As I get more confident with the concertina, I'll certainly try to do less "literal" accompaniments to songs.

Really lovely voice! And I love the rhythm of the song.

I'm stuck here in the Portland, Oregon airport........my flight was cancelled and I'm sitting below a large flat panel display of a Nascar car race with lots of noisy engines....waiting for 3 hours for another flight. (But, it's close to the electrical outlet, so my computer isn't running out of juice.)

I'm wishing that I was playing my concertina, but one of the buttons is sticking so I tried opening the box this morning, and now it's worse :-(

So, listening to your song and nodding my head with the beat is greatly improving my spirits!

Keep up the good work.

Yvonne

Hi yfried - glad you liked the song and I hope you eventually got to your destination safely!

I've just put another song on Sound Lantern and I hope someone may be able to answer a question I have about it. Does anyone remember Bob Stewart? He was a Scottish musician in the 70s/80s who played the bouzouki and the psaltery (which I believe he made himself out of - as he put it - "Best quality plywood").

As well as writing his own songs and tunes, he wrote on a book on pagan imagery in folk song called "Where is St George?".

Anyway, his Scottish accent made it quite difficult (for me as a Sassenach anyway) to always make sense of what he was singing about. There's a word at the end of the 2nd verse of "The Song of the Green Man" which sounds like "smockaging".

If anyone has the original vinyl (I don't know what album it's from, unfortunately) or a tape, and understands what he's singing, I'd be really interested to know what that means! I'm guessing it might be Scots dialect but I can't find it anywhere on the web. It doesn't help that I don't know if it's spelt correctly, but that's what it sounds like...

http://www.soundlantern.com/UpdatedSoundPa...theGreenMan.mp3