At the Mid Hour of Night

I'm finally back to making music after the holidays, so here's a new song for my public domain project. "At the Mid Hour of Night" is an Irish folk song from the 5th volume of Moore's Irish Melodies. The poet, Thomas Moore, and arranger, John Stevenson, selected old Irish tunes and wrote new words and piano accompaniments for them. They began publishing these in about 1807 and the volume with this song was first published in 1813. I used the 1882 edition available at the Petrucci Music Library.

Many classical singers know this song from the collection of folksong arrangements by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), which is where I first learned of it. The melody is slightly different from Britten's arrangement, which used the melody "O Molly, dear!" collected by Edward Bunting from a harper in 1800. Petrucci Music Library has the Bunting Ancient Music of Ireland collection available, as well. Instead of using Stevenson's accompaniment – it seems a bit too reliant on tonic and dominant chords for this tune – I've made my own simple arrangement for baritone ukulele to highlight the haunting melody.

One Horse Open Sleigh (Jingle Bells)

Here's one more Christmas tune. This one will be very familiar to most people since Jingle Bells is perhaps the most performed secular Christmas tune (although it was apparently first intended as a Thanksgiving song). I arranged this version for voice and ukulele from James Lord Pierpont's 1857 publication, which you can view via the Library of Congress. The melody is a bit different from the one usually heard, and the chord progression is a little more interesting. Merry Christmas!

Dealing with Nerves During Performance

In this TEDxBoomington talk, Jeff Nelsen offers some great tools for dealing with nerves during performance. Everyone gets nervous when they perform. When you let that take over, it can prevent you from doing your best.

I try to help students cope with performance nerves during the lesson so that they have some tools to deal with it when it comes up in a real-life situation. I've found for younger students, the most important thing is that they know what will happen at their performance and they know exactly what to do. We practice announcing, bowing and what to do if they make a mistake. I also encourage them to perform for their families at home before they have a performance with a large crowd. As students gain performance experience, they tend to cope with nervousness better.

What Child Is This

It's been a while since I've posted a video in my public domain project. This one has double public domain credits. The original tune is a traditional English 16th-century melody called "Greensleeves." It was popular enough in Elizabethan England to be referenced in multiple Shakespeare plays. In 1865 William Dix wrote the poem that we use for the lyrics of the popular carol, "What Child Is This."

This is one of my favorite carols. The melody is what captures me -- it feels old and pagan -- perfect for a long, dark winter night.

Making Music Together Connects Brains

Here's another article on the way our brains work when we make music. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have hooked up classical guitarists to electrodes to look at their brain waves and they found some interesting things.

Anyone who has ever played in an orchestra will be familiar with the phenomenon: the impulse for one's own actions does not seem to come from one's own mind alone, but rather seems to be controlled by the coordinated activity of the group. And indeed, interbrain networks do emerge when making music together -- this has now been demonstrated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The scientists used electrodes to trace the brain waves of guitarists playing in duets. They also observed substantial differences in the musicians' brain activity, depending upon whether musicians were leading or following their companion.

This is fascinating to me. It's a confirmation of a phenomenon I've often felt during performance. Being on the same "wave length" is the difference between a good performance and a bad performance  -- and now we find that is true, literally.

You can read the rest of the article at Science Daily.