This is a tune from the English Tunes Harmony tunebok where older English tunes are arranged for three instruments by David M. Brown and Mickie Zekley. There are some compositions by Mickie Zekley and his wife Elisabeth. One of them is A Waltz for Corwin, that Mickie wrote for his fiddle playing son Corwin on the Golden Gate Bridge: This is also notated in three part harmony, but I tried it just Mandolin & Guitar.
Lovely and melancholy melody well suited for a mandolin and guitar. Well done!
A beautiful tune and so well played, Christian. Your guitar/mandolin combination works so well on this one.
Lovely, Christian! I have attempted this waltz in the past but never quite got it to a recordable shape -- it looks easy but is quite tricky to make to flow. Yours certainly does! Mickie Zekley used to own "Lark In The Morning", and I think he and his wife are still running Lark Camp. Martin
Nice recording, congrats.
Thanks Michael, John, Martin and dustyamps! The composer of the tune, Mickie Zekley, is a real multi-instrumentalist. He plays harp, hurdy-gurdy, nyckelharpa, guitar, banjo and different types of flutes and recorders. On the Zekley family recording of this piece, he plays a bass flute.
You did a really lovely mandolin version of this beautiful waltz, Christian. Thanks for posting the Zekley family recording – amazing! (Nice mandolin in the left corner.)
Inspired by Christian's recording and Mickie Zekley's own interpretation, I have now also recorded this lovely waltz -- I think the reason I couldn't get to grips with it earlier was that I was playing it too slowly. This is roughly the same tempo as the composers' own version and it makes more sense to me now. My recording is based on the four-part setting by David M. Brown available in this free PDF from the Lark In The Morning website (same source as mentioned by Christian): http://www.larkinam.com/EnglishTunesHarmony.pdf I'm playing the tune twice: first with only mandolin and tenor guitar and then with added second mandolin harmony and mandocello bass line. I've used my Embergher mandolin as it's been a bit neglected lately. 1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin (x2) Suzuki MC-815 mandocello Vintage Viaten tenor guitar Martin
Fine recording, Martin! The Embergher sounds nice. The second part is OK, but when you have a tenor guitar playing the chords, adding a second mandolin maybe makes the sound a littltle muddy, three instruments in about the same frequency range. The bass line on the mandocello adds some important bass notes, but the second mandolin seems a bit superfluous to me, it kind of distracts from the melody...I like the first time through a little better, it's somehow a bit clearer.
Thanks, Christian! That's why I recorded it both ways -- to see how the harmonies fit in. I quite like that the harmony line is fairly independent of the melody rather than just parallel thirds, but that makes it harder to record and mix without muddying the sound. In the B part, the harmony is simply a descending sequence of sustained notes, C-B-A-E-C-B-A, and I like the effect of playing this as a tremolo sequence underneath the single-stroke melody. Martin
This was my tune of the last two weeks. Due to Christians advice, I recorded the second voice with bouzouki. For accompaniment I made use of ChordPulse. Pictures of San Francisco taken during a vacation trip back in October 2008.
What a lovely tune and all impressive renditions. Thanks for sharing the notation, Martin, as this piece is a must for my to-do list.
This should have been the title track for The Streets of San Francisco instead of that funky Fusion muzak. Fine mandolin playing and the bouzouki fits in very well. Nice photos to boot, Frithjof. What is chord pulse, how does it work?
Thanks, Christian. ChordPulse is a nice accompaniment app (NFI). It allows an easy creating of play along tracks with drums, bass and chords. Fun to experiment with different styles. Unfortunately it runs only on PC. Look at my video of Limehouse Blues or some more instructional vids of Jess alias JL277z.
Love the varity of versions here! Well done by all! Looks like it was a great visit Frithjof. You should try the northeast coast !
It's on my list.
Or Texas.
I like the melody line of this waltz, nicely played CC and Martin.
