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WIth the holidays rapidly approaching, and with the speed of music production getting faster all the time, I'd like to challenge anybody who is willing to write a new Christmas song. Or, if you steer clear of the ones that are still under copyright, I suppose you could remake an existing carol. There are hundreds of Christmas songs that are public domain.
But it would be particularly interesting to see what original ideas people come up with. One things for sure, there is always a market for Christmas music.
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Journeyman
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Every year I want to write a Christmas tune and without fail, every year I don't. It's usually because I get saturated with commercial tracks banging me in the head for a month and the busyness of the holiday in the first place. If I ever do write one, it'll be in JULY! By now, there's just no time. Good luck to those who do though!
Dan
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A co-writer and I actually wrote one this past July. LOL. Problem is I'm still in the love hate relationship with it so I don't know if it'll be finished in time or not. But you're right there's lots of PD songs.
It's great idea Pat. I love Christmas. I'd be one of those people whose house is lit up like the Griswald's in Christmas vacation if I could.
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We keep having christmas at our cabin and there's no power so we still cut and bring in a balsam fir, but no lights. Just the kerosene lamps. And the woodstove. At -30C you just need a fire watch, the firebox is good for about 2 hours and then refill or else freeze to the floor. Anyway, you are 100 percent having the lake frozen to 15 inches of ice and 20 inches of snow. One year we had 7 feet of snow, don't take off the snowshoes or you end up neck deep trying to get them back on..... Too bad I had to cancel that for this year. I hope to get back next year. Beaver liver stuffing, yum. Pike head soup. The outhouse is a tad cold some nights, but the Northern Lights mean you don't need a flashlight at night This is the almost #1 Canadian christmas song: Takes a few minutes cause we've lots of time in the winter. It's only snowed 2 times this winter...or fall, or winter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEbUtpPQihM&feature=player_embedded
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Quote:
Every year I want to write a Christmas tune and without fail, every year I don't. It's usually because I get saturated with commercial tracks banging me in the head for a month and the busyness of the holiday in the first place. If I ever do write one, it'll be in JULY! By now, there's just no time. Good luck to those who do though!
Dan
alas, you and me both, Dan. :-(
(That's why I'm tryin' to work up some inspiration here...)
Oh, and thanks to the video John posted about the 12 days, special points will be awarded for anybody who goes the exra mile and makes a video to go with their Christmas song. Even more points if it's a funny video.
Speaking of which.. Josie, if you let your cat chew on the wiring as in the Griswald movie,better not put that in your video. Somebody might object. But if the neighbors chew on the wiring, do try to record the results...
Last edited by Pat Marr; 11/08/10 04:17 AM.
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John,
When you mentioned your cabin it reminded me of your video you posted a few weeks ago. For me, it doesn't just look like a place I'd like to visit, ...... it looks a like a great place to live! (And no, I'm not asking to move into your cabin! LOL.) That's the kind of place where a person could actually get in touch with themselves. Christmas there would be a blast. Even with having to "stoke" the fire. That's the way I grew up, so it wouldn't be new to me. A fireplace in the living room and a coal burning stove in the kitchen. Outhouse out back and a well where you had to "draw" your water, one bucket at a time.
Now to Pat's post. While I find writing songs to be a pretty easy thing to do, writing Christmas songs almost seems to be "anathema" for me!
I know it isn't, and new Christmas songs should be written, but for me Christmas is all about "tradition". I want to hear the classics. And not "updated" versions of the classics with a new beat and "scatting" or whatever.
Just those wonderful old songs, sung the way they were written. Now if they're done as instrumentals, I'm open to different styles.
Think "David Grisman's Acoustic Christmas". Great CD. No vocals, but hearing it play in the background will really put you into the Christmas spirit!
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There is a movie, No country for old men. That cabin, we were going to spend a year there when the wife retired, except for a few months 'south' (meaning like Florida). When I was hospitalized and started to feel like I might pull through I wanted to go to the cabin. So many good times. I prepared by walking around the block here, a month and I could leave the cane at home. I wasn't really well enough, we went for 2 weeks in September. It was uneven ground, no strength to use the chain saw and deal with the wind thrown trees, not enough omph to split 'big wood', just kindling, and somedays the trip to the outhouse was a mile. No phone. No Tv. My hearing was shot and I had no hearing aids yet, no birds were singing for me, just for those who could hear. I couldn't hear the otters splashing and go down and watch, I had to rely on the wife to hear them. Even the loons were almost silent.
No Country for Sick Old Men. I aged 30 years in 3 months.
On the other hand the compensation for hearing loss thing has been my sense of smell is 10 times better/ The grocery store is weird, I can smell way too much. Don't go down the aisle with cleaning products, man that smells harsh.
We have spent 3 to 4 weeks a year at that cabin since it was built about 15 years ago. Before that 10 years running around north america in a tent trailer, except for CA, OR, NV and Utah. (I think I did a few miles in the latter).
But my favorite place was always that cabin, just north of Temagami.
I've spent 8 winters in bush camps. Sometimes home for Christmas, but at one camp I had a house in because I was in charge on holidays and weekends. My 2 oldest kids were raised there. 40 miles to town if the road was open. Someone would come back from town and say they had a new TV at the Hudson's Bay store. We'd all go in to see it. 1 tv station, now I have 800 or something. Still nothing on.
I live 2 blocks from the regional cancer treatment place. Until things are 1 year clear, I'm staying close. I could move north we have land, we have trees to haul to the mill to make the lumber, the neighbour to our cabin owns a cement company and I cut the trees that die along his right of way so the foundation would get done, but it's 30 miles to town to the doc, and a 4 hour drive to see any kind of specialist or 8 hours to go for cancer treatments. I didn't have the energy to drive a few blocks the last 4 weeks I was in daily radiation, so I guess I'm staying put until things sort themselves out.
l
I have advice. Do what you can now. Stay up late and make the grand kids a CD. Go places and do things. Saving for the future, I did that. Enough air miles for the wife and I get 12 (24 actually) return trips to Europe. A paid up house. I'm just waiting for the test results to come back on the 19th. And for the bad part of the chemotherapy to go away so I can walk, or reach out and grab something. I can live with the hearing aids, the ringing in my ears, but I want the walking to come back. I find out on the 19th. Until then....well I'll go and inject some morphine into the gut tube and see if I can get some sleep tonight, though I slept almost all day...
John Conley
Musica est vita
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John, your posts are truly moving of late, especially this one. Thank you for hanging in there, and in here. And this passage of yours would make a wonderful Christmas song: "I have advice. Do what you can now. Stay up late and make the grand kids a CD. Go places and do things. Saving for the future, I did that. Enough air miles for the wife and I get 12 (24 actually) return trips to Europe. A paid up house. I'm just waiting for the test results to come back on the 19th." Christmas songs don't necessarily have to be happy, about chestnuts roasting and reindeers with roseate noses. Here's one of my very favorite Christmas songs, by the late great Stan Rogers, another Canuck for the ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTMOuuUZi4Best, Daisy
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thanks for that...I catch Garnet Rogers (his brother) when he comes through here a few times a year.
Anyone who listens to that should scroll down and listen to Barett's Privateers. That's standard fare for almost every open mic show here, and most bars with a single or duo or trio they play that at least once a night.
I can play the guitar for that one...you just slap it for a drum...he wrote it when it was said 'no one can write a sea shanty'..and we got that gem from Stan...
And I'm sure working at hangin in....or on.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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I am working on an original Christmas song now. Will share it with the forum in a couple of weeks.
-rob
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Daisy, That was a beautiful song, although pretty darned sad, (but you warned us). When I was listening to it I noticed an old John Prine song over in the list that I hadn't heard in years. John Prine, "Christmas In Prison" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G28ApRNb-7U&feature=related
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Pat, I've taken the "Christmas song challenge"! I've never written a Christmas song before, but I just finished my first one. I listened to the song Daisy posted, and noted her comment that "Christmas songs don't have to be happy". She's right. I then listened to the two John Prine songs I posted and decided to write a Christmas song. It's a sad one, but unfortunately it's about Christmas as it exists for way too many people. I didn't set out to write a sad one, and the first couple of lines could have gone either way, but that's the way it ended up. I guess that says somethin' about my current state of mind.   The name of the song is "It’s A Really Bad Christmas, Under The Bridge Tonight". I'll try to get it recorded and posted by early December. If it goes as planned, the only tracks from BIAB will be bass and drums. I don't have a bass or I would do that too. Thanks for the idea, or should I say the "Christmas song challenge"!
Last edited by bobcflatpicker; 11/10/10 06:19 AM.
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Well, I sort of did this 2 years ago. I did a version of The Huron Carol - one of my favorite Christmas carol melodies. I probably went a little overboard with it. I tried to do the song in the original Huron language - of which supposedly there may be only one or two people left on this earth that can speak the language. I took my pronunciation cues from Bruce Cockburn's version of this song from 20 or so years ago. My version is slower. Good thing about singing in an ancient language is that there's nobody around to critique pronunciation. Credit to online friends for adding in tasty fretless bass and wooden recorders on some of the verses. Credit to Freesound.org for the various nature sounds (actual credits in the .mp3 comments). Listen here: http://rockstarnot.rekkerd.org/songs/2008/0812_rockstarnot_huron_carol_dec8edit.mp3or also available in my SoundCloud link in my signature (cool player app that allows commenting right on the song timeline) -Scott
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Scott, That was a beautiful song and very well done. It has a great melody and a very "haunting" feel to it, but it also sounds Christmasy. I don't have a clue what it's about though! 
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Quote:
I am working on an original Christmas song now. Will share it with the forum in a couple of weeks.
-rob
Rob,
I look forward to hearing your submission!
Quote:
Well, I sort of did this 2 years ago. I did a version of The Huron Carol - one of my favorite Christmas carol melodies.
Nice job! I didn't even know there was a Huron version of that song! That is one of my favorite Christmas songs in terms of the way the melody works with the chords
Quote:
I've taken the "Christmas song challenge"! I've never written a Christmas song before, but I just finished my first one.
I'll try to get it recorded and posted by early December. If it goes as planned, the only tracks from BIAB will be bass and drums. I don't have a bass or I would do that too.
well, there I was, all ready to listen to it NOW, then I find out it won't be ready for a couple of weeks. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.
Quote:
Thanks for the idea, or should I say the "Christmas song challenge"!
given how well the user forum has been received, and how well most people enjoy the holidays, it's a wonder we haven't done something like this every year. What a way to build enthusiasm for the upcominmg release of BIAB 2011...
I hope a lot of people find time to submit something.
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Quote:
Scott,
That was a beautiful song and very well done. It has a great melody and a very "haunting" feel to it, but it also sounds Christmasy.
I don't have a clue what it's about though!
Bob,
Here's Bruce Cockburn's translation into English:
http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/ia.html
Thanks for listening.
I have to give credit to my online collaborators: Andy McRory from San Diego did the fretless bass parts. http://andymcrory.com/home.html
Victor Eijkhout from Texas did the wooden recorders. http://www.eijkhout.net/music/NAF/naf.html
I played and sang everything else (classical guitar, electric piano, drum programming, synth lead, sound effect selection and so forth).
-Scott
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Pat,
I should make it clear that I didn't do any of my stuff with PG products. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but in your last post you talked about building support for BIAB2011.
-Scott
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Hi guys,
What's the best way to find out if a song is Public Domain, or still under copyright?
Cheers,
Keith
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You can use Harry Fox Agency to purchase licenses for your cover songs. Fee is based on the number of cd copies that you produce : http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jspA google search found this public domain database: http://www.pdinfo.com/-rob
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