John Ireland (1879-1962): Sea Fever Piano Accompaniment by Hector Valls (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0) This is a song composed by the British composer John Ireland to a poem by John Masefield. For a nice vocal performance of the song, see here: Link I am playing it as an instrumental on mandolin in the key of A minor, using a piano accompaniment pre-recorded by Hector Valls, which I was playing back through speakers in the room while recording -- no multi-tracking involved, what you hear is what the microphone picked up! Score and MP3 of the piano part are at IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Sea_Fever_(Ireland,_John) 1898 Giuseppe Vinaccia mandolin Martin
The word that comes to my mind is "melancholy." Whatever it is, you captured it, Martin, as did the singer.
Thanks, Sherry. It's a nice piece to play on mandolin -- it's more about the mood and the feel than technical complexity (although the triplets are a bit tricky in parts). Martin
You should use the Vinaccia more often Martin, it sounds great. At least in your hands.
Nice tremolo Martin!
Great timing!
Thanks Christian, Simon and Frithjof. It's an interesting setting -- the piano part is quite minimalist, consisting almost entirely of four regular chords to the bar with no passing notes or fills, so the entire triplet rhythm and phrasing is in the melody line and has to be supplied by the mandolin. Nevertheless, the piano part sets the mood so well that it gives much more support and guidance in that respect than one would think from the score. I hadn't known the song before I stumbled on the piano part at Hector's IMSLP page, but I really like it. Very evocative. Martin
