justira

Part of the Song a Day Project!

Yes, seriously. I never watched the show, but I always loved the opening. There's a full version, but I've always liked the shorter opening theme cut better =)

Youtube Link: Gary Portnoy - Where Everybody Knows Your Name [Cheers Opening]

Sometimes you want to go
where everybody knows your name


( Lyrics after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

Youtube Link: Sum 41 - We're All To Blame

And we're all to blame
We've gone too far
From pride to shame
We're trying so hard
We're dying in vain


( Lyrics after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

Happy Pi Day!

I'm pretty damn fascinated by the connections between math and music. I've heard a lot of attempts to make music out of pi (including an interesting one converting pi to base 12 to match a 12-note system), but this is my favourite so far — I have a pretty huge weakness for compositions like this, with video showing the mutliple instruments (expect more like this later on!). For now, enjoy the sound of pi.

Youtube Link: Michael Blake - What Pi Sounds Like

Part of the Song a Day Project!

Like a lot of other folk, I learned about this song through Naruto; it's the music for the anime's first ending theme. To this day, it's my favourite ending: I LOVE the visuals, love the song, love how they work together. So above the cut, I'm posting the Naruto Ending 1 version because man I really want people to see the beautiful visuals paired with the song; but as that only uses about a third of the full song, I'm also including a full version below the cut. The lyrics are for the full version.

Youtube Link: Akeboshi - Wind [Naruto Ending 1]

Don't try to live so wise
Don't cry 'cause you're so right
Don't dry with fakes or fears
'Cause you will hate yourself in the end


( Lyrics and full-length song after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

I could do with some industrial metal. German, even. Nothing like the growl in German.

Youtube Link: Megaherz - 5. März


( Lyrics and translation after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

So Abney Park is something like steampunk industrial? Which I think is super neat. It's one of those bands that has changed a whole lot since its inception: they started out as a goth group, then some years later their membership got shuffled around a lot before they found a new identity as a steampunk group, complete with fictional backstories as the crew of an airship. Pretty cool!

As for this particular song? I basically cannot resist string instruments combined with non-classical music, as well as sweet clean vocals combined with a rougher voice. ...but mostly yeah, it's the strings.

Now! I am embedding just the studio track above the cut. However! I also want to show what the band actually looks like because there are vials on their violin so yeah. So I recommend listening to just the track first, but after the cut I'll have another youtube vid showing one of their performances.

Youtube Link: Abney Park - Sleep Isabella


( Lyrics after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

So hey! Guess what. Steelbands, or steel orchestras, are really freaking sweet. Unfortunately, it's really the kind of thing you need to experience live — so, if you have the opportunity, y'all should look up and see if there is a steelband in your area (there are lots about!) and see if they're doing any public performances soon! TOTALLY WORTH IT.

However, in case you do not have that opportunity and/or need convincing, I tried to find some steelband music. The thing is, steelbands don't really inhabit recording studios — it's really public, live performance — so good recordings are hard to find! (If you know of some trove that I do not, please share!) I did my best, so here is a pretty neat arrangement. Be warned, lots of steel numbers are pretty damn long — when you're there, you just float on the music, it's great. It takes you out of time. I'm not sure that experience can be replicated in anything but a live performance, though :(

To try and get a little sense of the energy, I really recommend watching the video so you can watch the band moving and how energetic they are. You can see their instruments and technique, too; very neat!

I hope you enjoy =D

Youtube Link: Buccooneers - Surrender



No lyrics besides a few repetitions of "surrender!" during the intro =D

Part of the Song a Day Project!

So I really love historical music. Once, while I was at college, historian-musicians came to talk to us about music in Ancient Greece. They crafted reconstructions of ancient instruments and tried to recreate tunes that they found described or even transcribed in ancient texts. It was really freaking cool. The Mediæval Bæbes don't really do that — they take historical texts and poems and set them to music of their own composition, sometimes using period-appropriate instruments and sometimes not. But I still really love the historical flavour.

The lyrics to this song are in Middle English, ~15th century or maybe a little before (with a bit of Latin for the chorus). This was before the Great Vowel Shift, which forms one of the biggest differences between Middle and Modern English (though of course there's also been a bit of morphological and syntactic change since then). By the way, did you know that my degree is in linguistics? Social linguistics, not historical linguistics, but man I LOVED that course.

So I think all of this is fascinating, and I think it's really neat to see the connection between this and our modern variants of English — how different they sound and yet how easily you can show the common root (haha, including for the Latin). So I'm doing something fun with the lyrics today — I'm providing the original Middle English, a translation into Modern English, and also a kind of middle ground version that tries to preserve the structure and word-use of the original. (For those of you out there who would get the joke: Kind of like Lattimore and Fagles versions.)

Oh by the way, the music is pretty too. The meaning's actually pretty interesting, too — tell me your interpretation! There are some interesting comments on this other upload, about halfway down the page.

Youtube Link: Mediæval Bæbes - Erthe Upon Erthe

Remember, O man, that you are ashes
And unto ashes you will return


( Lyrics after the cut )

Part of the Song a Day Project!

I had always meant to start the project with this song, as it's so appropriate. That almost worked out, but the way it fell out was pretty great anyway.

Between the song and the video, this song was always full of summer for me. So now, as the weather's starting to turn for some, and summer's wrapping up for others, I think it's a great time for this one. Everyone looks so gorgeous in the vid; I love it.

Youtube Link: Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

You're gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow


( Lyrics after the cut )

Hey guys I am having a terrible day so that means it's time to pull up the Make Me Smile Files again. Fun fact: both songs/videos features to far have parenthetical subtitles!

But seriously this is awesome. I think my favourite is the skateboarding girl: her helmet is the best thing ever and she is just so unrepentantly feminine while doing her skateboarding thing. So awesome.

Youtube Link: Patrick Stump - Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia)

They might try to tell you how you can live your life
But don't, don't forget it's your right
To do whatever you like, you like


( Lyrics after the cut )


Hat tip: general_jinjur pointed me to both song and vid.