Practice Tracks
~A note on cultural appropriation~
•Recordings are for your ears only! Do not disseminate. For real. It's illegal.•
•And bare with me on some of these, they're quite imperfect. Sometimes its flat by the end of the recording, or my voice is straining. But I hope these rough cuts get the basic parts across!•
•If a track glitches, try refreshing the page.
To search:
1. Create a shortcut to his page on your desktop
2. Use the search function to find the song you're looking for. ctrl. + F or cmmd. + F
Joyous and heartening song of welcome and inclusion. Great for the beginning of a party, conference, etc. Words are from Jelaluddin Rumi.
Come, come, whoever you are
wanderers, worshipers,
lovers of leaving
Ours is no caravan of despair
come, come again, come
Here is a classic Natural Voice Network move. Take a heartfelt singer/songwriter anthem, and arrange it for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass. Take a look at the original, and you’ll get more out of the meaning here. It’s a song about the power of the Love within us to bear us through life’s difficulties. Who can’t relate to that?
This love will carry
this love will carry me
I know this love will carry me
love will carry me...
Teaching Tracks
My new favorite round. I learned it from the choir leaders of the murmurations choir from New Orleans. Source unknown. I love the feeling of many vendors all singing about their wares!
Who Will buy my roses? Who will buy my posies? Who will buy my Lillies? Ladies, fair.
Taste and try before you buy fine ripe pears! x2
Clothes, clothes! Many old clothes for sale. Fine bear skins and rabbit skins. Many old clothes!
Another old haunting round, popularized by Libana. Here is their (again way more professional) recording. I've also heard this song, or a very similar version, attributed to being a Jewish Nigun, it could very well be all of these things.
This song is from a collection of music called "Friday Afternoons" made for a school choir, composed in 1932. Recently popularized by the Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom. Based on an old nursery rhyme, the lyrics and layers of sound create a creepy nostalgic feeling and image of this person who has passed on. Both lyrically and musically, this is a great example of doing a lot with a little.
Old Abram Brown is dead and gone
you'll never see him more
He used to wear a long brown coat that buttoned down before
A hypnotic and earthy offering from Heidi Wilson. Milkweed pods, edible when young, release a voluptuous unfurling of silken seed in the Autumn, and I chose it for the Spring session because it reflects our going out into the world in all our doings...
Go wind
carry us now
like milkweed silk
and send us out
send us out
A lovely and positive anthem from Sophia Efthimiou who wrote Singing Ourselves Home. Classic Natural Voice Network style.
A placid morning song. Invokes a misty morning in the forest by a pond or lake. It feels gentle and sweet, with the sun peeking, and being cradled by small sounds and stillness. I have it recorded kind of fast here, try it really slow onc
When the water is glass calm
the stillness cradles life
The sun rises slowly
peeking through the trees
bringing color to the sky
Listen listen
to the small sounds of this new day
Have you ever thought about how all matter and energy in the universe is made of vibrations? Everything around us can be likened to a great song. This is beautiful, and literally relevant.
All creation sings
We are created by sound
We are created by the song of the universe
Singing with the trees
Singing with the song of the universe
Singing with the whales
Singing with the honeybees
This song speaks to the rhythms in nature, and how the natural world tends to have integral cycles, and wonders why humans often insist on linearity, eschewing the cyclical nature of so much around us.
The crow calls
The sun falls
They know the rhythm
The rhythm of it all
We are the only ones
Who have forgotten how to listen
We’re the only ones who have forgotten how to listen
We’re the only ones who have forgotten how to listen
The earth is calling us to open up our ears
Put your hands in the dirt
Lets heal the hurt
The earth is calling
For us to do the work, do the work
A unique song comprised of vocables, in an overlapping four-part formation, similar to Nickomo's Heart to Heart. It is made to invoke a timelessness and ancientness, yet is not derived from any particular culture.
One of my all-time favorite songs, this ode to the new moon was popularized by Libana, and is a great example ofinterweaving parts with echoing lyrics and interesting timing overlaps. Once you get it going, it's hard to stop!
Dark of the moon new beginnings plant a seed
Dark of the moooooon come tonight
Dark of the moon new beginnings
Dark of the moon plant a seed tonight
Dark of the moon what we envision
will come to be by the full moonlight
Dark night starry night new beginnings
Dark night starry night will come to be
This song is a prayer that living life will transform us in the ways we need. It is also seriously groovy, and includes some chilling ooo's and aaah's.
Oh life move through me
Oooooh
Aaaaah help me love help me heal
Help me heal
Help me heal
Show me the way
Help me love
Help me heal
Oh life help me with the tending and the mending of my heart
Oh life help me with the tending and the mending of my heart
Help me see help me feel help me love help me heal
An awesome birthday song! Beautiful round. The person who wrote this melody mistakenly attributed the quote as a Navajo prayer. It is actually a loose translation of a quote from the fifteenth-century mystic poet Kabir.
When you were born you cried
and the world rejoiced
live your life so that when you die
the world cries and you rejoice
Don't we all need a beautiful three-part harmony to convey love sometimes? And what a joy to receive something like this! Heather's simple anthem here is an important back pocket song for when normal words fail. Perhaps you sing it to a snail on a leaf, or to an old friend leaving on a journey. Learn it with your closest friends and bust out a moment to remember for a lucky recipient.
You are so loved oh oh oh
you are so loved
you are so loved
you are so loved
An Israeli folk song and prayer for peace, envisioning a world where we bask in the abundance of the garden, and have no need for weapons. I learned this round at Quaker camp when I was young, and it's still an all-time favorite round.
And everyone 'neath their vine and fig tree shall live in peace and unafraid
And into plaughshares turn their swords, nations shall learn war no more
With love to your neighbor and love to the spirit of a life.
At maple sugar camp up north, trees are tapped for their sap, and there is the constant drip of all the sap rising and being extracted. Also around this same season (early spring) Skunks emerge from their Winter slumber, and perhaps encounter a group of intrepid sugar-harvesters in the forests of vermont
Skunks are comin' out, ooooh they're comin out. Skunks are comin' out to find some food
I can hear the creeks flowin' I can smell the sap boilin' I can feel the sun shinin' drip drip drip...