Here’s a screen grab from a video — just posted — of last week’s Maine Cooper book singing. (I’m sitting in the back corner, as far from the videographer as you can get.) This is Jesse leading 98:
Here’s a photo from today’s evening Cooper Book singing in Maine:
It was a little dusty in the pulling shed, but the sound was remarkably good, even with the very high ceiling. Plus it was a lot of fun to sing Sacred Harp in person.
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Bath, Maine, local singing
This afternoon, Carol and I drove up from where we were staying — in Sace, Maine — to Bath, Maine, to sing Sacred Harp on the gazebo in the center of Bath.
It turned out to be an excellent place to sing, which may show that a good singing space does not need walls if you have a wood ceiling and a wood floor. And with no walls, we were much less worried about transmitting COVID, especially with the stiff breeze that was blowing.
It also turned out to be an excellent group of people to sing with. As Carol said after the singing, “It was a really tight group.”
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Collection of tunes
I distributed a collection of 32 new shape note tunes at yesterday’s special Palo Alto singing. It’s downloadable from Google Drive.
I think most of the tunes are somewhere on this website (and one was printed in the old “Sing the Trumpet” publication). But some of the older tunes are significantly revised.
Can’t imagine anyone but myself will want access to these, but this makes it easier for me to access this PDF from anywhere.
Below are the minutes for the special half day singing in Palo Alto. This was a very enjoyable singing, with some strong singers.
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Palo Alto local singing
We’ve been having regular practice singings in Palo Alto since last summer — with a few gaps due to the various surges. I no longer write about every single singing, but I’ve been singing regularly.
Now we’re moving to Massachusetts, so I won’t be singing regularly with Palo Alto any more. This was one of my last local singings with these good people. I’ve gotten to know the other Palo Alto singers pretty well, and it’s going to be hard to leave. But the new job calls….
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Three new tunes
Two tunes that go together: Psalm 12 and Psalm 13.
Plus Yolo Bypass.
It was very good to sing in person at the Golden Gate All Day singing, after two years of lockdown. Here’s Susan leading:
After the singing, several people were kind enough to stick around and sing “Berkeley,” a tune I wrote in memory of David Fetcho. The class sounded great singing the tune. The tune itself wasn’t up to the high level of David’s own compositions, but I think it was at least reasonably competent, and would not have embarrassed David. I only wish I could have heard his lovely tenor voice singing it.
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Two newish tunes
The first draft of Jacob’s Star was written in 2019, but a test singing did not go well; it’s been completely rewritten. The first draft of Heavenly Phrases was from 2014; again, test singing didn’t go well, now completely rewritten.
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Rays of Comfort
I wrote the first version of this in May, 2020, during lockdown. The original version was meant for singing on Zoom. I wrote a 4-part plain tune, then broke it up into solos spread out over four verses. That way, each voice eventually got to sing every part. Here’s the second page of the original version:
I posted this to the Sacred Harp Friends Facebook page. As far as I know, no one ever sang it. But it made me feel better to be able to do something musical during lockdown.
I’ve now revised this as a plain tune.