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
I'm putting a lot of tracks on here, and we'll see if we get to them all this season. Every week, I curate the flow of the session to match where the group is at and mix in new and old ones, so please no song requests during class!
My new favorite round. I learned this one from Kira Seto of the Open Hub singing community in Bend OR. I love the way the parts echo each other, great back pocket round for bed time.
Sweet rest
sweet rest descend to all
good night good night
time sends a warning call, sweet rest descend to all
time, time sends a warning call.
A sweet reflection on our interconnectedness, and our resilience. Sarina Partridge has TONS of awesome songs on Bandcamp, generally about natural cycles and gratitude. She has a particular style, with parts often echoing one another, and long droning bass lines.
I am of this Earth, I am of this sky
and the seasons turn, and so do I
I am made to change, I am made to bend
I am made to break and to grow again...
This song captures the essence of flowers, in their exchange with pollinators, and the concept of their generosity in offering beauty, sweetness, and magic. The three-part harmony overlay is pure bliss.
-Bright, reaching up to the sun,
feeding all who hover over your blossoming love
all unfolding ever...
-All the life you give in blooming we can't even know
This Epic arrangement comes from German composer Meinhard Ansohn. Suggestion for small groups is to try the melody plus both Alto parts, which could be Octaved down for low voices. That makes a nice three-part!
Evening rise, spirit come
sun goes down when the day is done
mother earth awakens me
with the heartbeat of the sea
Teaching Tracks
Debbie Nargi-Brown has been traching African Drum in Santa Cruz for decades, and is a powerhouse of a human, and an amazing song leader. If you ever get a chance to sing with her, you won't regret it. I learned this one as Song Village outside Santa Cruz this year, and she made it as a response to a deep conversation we had on the beach about hopelessness. The main text comes from the Emily Dickinson Poem. Her songs are less strictly parts songs, and more layers that can come and go organically.
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all
Based on the words of environmentalist writer Winona LaDuke, this song is a gentle but powerful reminder that we are responsible for our part in the care taking of this living breathing earth we are a part of.
You and I
drink this water
You and I
breathe this air
you andI
walk this holy ground.
You and I
Live here
Another awesome nature-based song from Bend, OR based song leader Kira seto, this one is rich in layered harmonies that come crashing together, and evoke the dance of pollinators! Some lyrics were also a collaboration with Ian Carrick.
A song that truly gives voice to the power of the full moon, and the feelings that can come out on nights like this! A truly epic and fun song, and one to have in your back pocket for the next time you find yourself staring at the moon!
-On a night like this, I swim with the moon flowing through my soul
-La Luna calls to me open to her ecstasy
-I wanna howl, I wanna scream! In this moon dance I feel all of me
-Let it out, Let it out, let it ALL out--shake it off--shake. it. off! Dance in your fullness dance in your fullness, beauty!
Shireen is another powerhouse song leader from the West coast. This song was birthed a year ago or so, and is a joyous anthem to the sun. "Giving me life" is a term for anything that gives you great excitement, like, "that outfit is giving me life!" so there are some layers there.
-The sun is giving me life, giving me life
the sun is giving me life giving me life
-Ooh the sun is lifting, lifting me up, out of the darkness, into the light Ohh!
I met Kjerston this year and was struck by her unique groovy songleading style. This one stood out to me as a special bop. It reminds me of classic funk. She likes to play with words, like "be-holdin'".
-Celebrate the beauty we behold here now,
celebrate the beauty we be holdin'
Classic Karly Loveling 3-part layer song, one that I heard years ago but only recently got to experience seeing it really take off. It's about how we all have an inner compass directing us, and ideally we can release to it and be directed in the right direction.
-I got a fire burnin inside of me
I got a fire burnin in my soul
-And I can feel that fire guiding me, telling me which way to go
-And I'm gonna feed it, I'm gonna feed that fire
and I'm gonna heed it, when it tells me which way to go
The big hit by Natural Voice Network's Sophia Efthimiou that welcomes and challenges us to be home in our bodies and in our unique and present song. Here is a ted talk where she teaches part of it, where you can get a taste of her energy. Finding home, at every level, I believe is one of the biggest challenges of our era.
Teaching Tracks
This is home, where I belong
In this breath, in this heart
This is home, where I belong
In this Voice, in this song!
Ilana Lowe is a friend of mine, and a wellspring of joyous celebratory songs. I sang Laurence Cole's "I am seeing you" song, and she said, "well, here is the response to that" and sang this quick-teach round.
-Oh to be known, to be seen
oh to be known to be seen!
Oh what a joy, oh what a thing,
Oh to be known to be seen
Ilana Lowe is a friend of mine, and a wellspring of joyous celebratory songs. I sang Laurence Cole's "I am seeing you" song, and she said, "well, here is the response to that" and sang this quick-teach round.
-Oh to be known, to be seen
oh to be known to be seen!
Oh what a joy, oh what a thing,
Oh to be known to be seen
The story behind this song is one of my favorites. The full story is on the Individual tracks page. It has come full circle as a chant of personal transformation, turned into a bluegrass song by a Hare Krishna-influenced hippie in the seventies, mistaken widely for an old southern gospel song, and ultimately reclaimed by Appalachian alternative types as a transformation chant again. Full-Circle! This is my arrangement/ distillation of the original into parts.
Practice Tracks
I'm goin' up on the mountain
ain't comin' down till the mornin
I'm goin up on the mountain
ain't comin' down in chains.
Magic. The more songs we can inject into our transitions, our arrivals and departures, our sleeping and awaking, our sowing and reaping, the more our world comes alive with music. Still looking for the source of this song....
So Fun to sing! Another banger from Yeomans. The words speak for themselves. Contemporary UK composer. Space it out enough for the response to have some room around it. In a small group I'd just do lead, Soprano, Tenor. Enjoy!
Every voice shall sing, every light shall shine.
Shine on, shine on...
Halleluia! Shine on Yeah! Shine on
Teaching Tracks
I found the album "the book of rounds" by the October Project years ago, but never really noticed this one until some songleader friends sang it with me this year. Another Mary Poppins gem. Sometimes a song doesn't pop in recorded form and it's worth singing songs with friends to see how it sounds in reality.
As the sun is rising to shine
over the ocean into the sky
the whole world, ancient and new
holds the beauty inside you
An English nursery rhyme, once featured on sesame street. I've heard various versions of it, but here is mine. The song asks a question and answers it, so it naturally should be sung by more than one person. Whither means "to where?" . Fun and simple, good for leading someone into the forest!
Come follow follow follow follow follow follow me
whither shall I follow follow follow
whither shall I follow follow thee?
to the greenwood, to the greenwood, to the greenwood greenwood tree!