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BEETHOVEN FOLKSONGS Arranged by CF for voice and guitar ensemble
I have written a few songs in popular styles, and have extensive sketches for a rock opera based on a Medieval story strategically chosen to be compatible with Gothic sensibilities. Besides the songs here, there are sketches for perhaps a half dozen more, and fragments of many more than that. A lot would depend on the kind of interest that were shown in this stuff. Where there are lyrics they are my own. The arrangements include the usual popular minimum of guitar and bass parts and a melodic line for at least the first verse.
There was no music in the home in which I grew up, so the only source of musical exposure was the popular music of the 1960s. Mostly I "jammed" by myself with records, chiefly along with the Cream, only occasionally did I play lead guitar in garage bands. I abruptly ceased to be involved with pop music when I learned the extent to which some of my peers were involved with "alternative life styles," which for a high school kid meant drugs. This abrupt shift actually had a salutary effect, since it then became possible for me to follow my more genuine interests, and these led me immediately to Beethoven. I heard the B9 chord in the crux of the Eroica Symphony the first time I heard it and knew that that was what the Third Symphony was all about - it was no surprise to me when I later learned this is entirely true, and I understood the "crux" of Sonata Form in a flash.
As a teenager, finding Beethoven led me to buy the Walter Piston ORCHESTRATION book (I had to order it specially at Beer's Book Store in downtown Sacramento) and before I entered the UOP Conservatory I had completed two pieces for strings, along with my idea of Classical guitar. The revival of my interest in popular music began when, at about the same time in 2009 I began taking notes for my book ROCKS IN THEIR HEADS, about the music of Rock music (in contradistinction to its war stories and similar ephemerata), I received a gift of a Fender Stratocaster copy, the first electric guitar I'd owned in almost 35 years. I have since bought an Epiphone (One of Eddie Van Halen's luthiers and I have agreed that's pronounced "Epiphany") SG Prophecy, complete with the high E... who knows what will come of this?
This first song, WIZARD, was written one day as a distraction while I was working on my symphonic piece THE RECOGNITIONS. There are other pieces like it that I would like to work up and publish here. The other pieces were written more recently.
WIZARD, Version for tenor, violin and/or electric guitar, bass, and piano
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SCORE
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REALIZATION
WIZARD, Version for tenor, four strings (including violin and/or electric guitar), and piano
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WELCOME TO THE FARM - A Taunting from Lucifer as Provacateur
MARIA - Praise of the magic of a past love
QUICKSILVER FLOW - Homage to musicians who influenced my youthful imagination
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Uploaded 7/6/11.