The Filk Community

I'm entering a song by Marilisa in the ConCertino songbook. The chords as she sent them include one which she calls "A0." My first thought was that it was intended as A diminished, more properly written Aº, but having such heavy use of a diminished chord in a song would be strange. A web search also turned up Asus2 as a possible interpretation (A with an open B string instead of a C or C#). I asked her and she replied:

I play the song on the mandola, and that chord is actually an open one (ie. no third - the notes are A-E-A-E on the mandola).

What's the best notation for an open fifth in guitar chording? Is A0 commonly recognized, or should I use something else?

*drumroll*

KICKSTARTER!!!!!!!!!!

That's right, everyone, we're revving up for our very first album!! Took us fracking long enough, but we're on the ground running! Come see what's happening!


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1547201902/ways-of-wind-and-water

The only tags allowed here are "argo" and "folk". I can certainly understand why our community's moderators want a restricted list of tags, but I wish we could tag

• filksong: posts of filks ("filk" = kind of song), as opposed to posts about filk ("filk" = kind of activity)
• instafilk or insta: instafilks specifically

and possibly a few others.

Thoughts, anyone? (Not me, I'm braindead.)

cakewrecks.com is a website about cakes: "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong". ysabetwordsmith posted a link to, as she put it, A very literal birthday cake:



I was not the only one to be baffled for a while (see comments). And the eighth comment, by "Sharyn", is a very appropriate instafilk (ignore misspellings). Apparently she's done this many times before, and it really is insta:

• (a number of comments like this one)
  "...how a star is born..." Great puns!!
  @sharyn -- thanks again for another great song!
  
• (sharyn's reply to a question)
  the only posts I've ever seen in advance are the couple I helped write. My 12 yr old son and I make up real-time alternative lyrics to songs on the radio -- usually about our cats -- so I get a lot of practice.

 Here's the early notice for our June concert, June 23, which will be a rare Friday night show. The massively popular Scottish band, Old Blind Dogs, hasn't been touring America for awhile, but until they do, we're delighted to have the return of OBD member Aaron Jones and his partner, Clare Mann, who also performed here in 2006. Aaron, originally from Poole in England’s Dorset, plays bouzouki, guitar, bass, and sings- he does most of the vocals for Old Blind Dogs. Claire is originally from northeast England, and she has become quite well known for her mastery of the traditional Irish flute and the fiddle. She also sings, plays the whistle, and is in demand as a session and touring musician. Together, they have developed a unique and exciting musical relationship, performing a mixture of traditional and original Scottish and Irish music and song. Their one CD, “Secret Orders” is a fine example of their work together, and they also record and perform in a band called Litha. Find out more about them at Claire’s web site, http://www.clairemann.com or at http://www.oldblinddogs.co.uk.

Tickets are $5 for Caltech students & children and $15 for adults. Call the Ticket Office at (626) 395-4652 to order. You can also get tickets for Patrick Ball and friends on July 7, Tom Russell on August 11, and Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands on September 7. Our web site is http://folkmusic.caltech.edu.

A last quick reminder that the Topanga Festival is TODAY, Sunday, May 20 and well worth a trip out to Agoura! See http://www.topangabanjofiddle.org for more information. Or, if you are sticking closer to the Pasadena area, consider Museums of the Arroyo Day, with free admission to the Gamble House, Heritage Square, the Los Angeles Police Museum, the Lummis Home and Garden, and the Pasadena Museum of History. If you go to Heritage Square, you might even hear the Folk Music Society's own Nick Smith tell a story! See http://www.museumsofthearroyo.com/schedule.htm for more information.

Also, radio station KPFK 90.7 FM has the fund drive going again and if you want to support the station and folk music on the radio, we urge you to make a pledge during Folk Scene, 6-8 PM tonight (Sunday) or next Sunday. To get an idea of what you are supporting, listen in the next 7 days to KPFK archives- http://archive.kpfk.org - for last week's show, featuring a great interview/performance with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the exciting African American old time band- scroll down to Sunday May 13 at 6PM. Where else can you hear something like this? Sorry we didn't tell you about this one before the broadcast, so you could listen to it on the radio.

Last night I had a writing session with one of my friends and mentioned how seanan_mcguire is up for four Hugos, three for writing and one for her FILK CD, Wicked Girls.

"What's FILK?" my friend asked.

I tried to explain. It wasn't clicking. So I typed "Banned from Argo" into YouTube and we watched the FireFly compilation. I was wondering of an actual video of the song exists, preferably with the lyrics embedded. Because I think he missed half the jokes as we quoted Firefly lines at each other.

Can anyone help me find the following? I'd prefer (legal) download, but CD is also good.

What I'm looking for is Cynthia McQuillin's Uncharted Stars, one of the only Filk albums to make me cry--once when first listening to it (even my memory of some of the tracks can make me teary) and again when my car stereo ate my tape. I found a CD once online, but when I tried to order it, it told me they were out of stock and they never got them back in so far as I've been able to discover.

Thanks!

[thanks to reedrover for mentioning this, too]

For the past 4 years, producer Kristoph Klover has been dedicating sweat, passion and countless hundreds of hours of late-night studio time on a quest to deliver Leslie Fish's most evocative and crafted recording yet, capturing Leslie's personality and her guitar wizardry at its best.

Titled Avalon is Risen, this project features newly crafted recordings of Leslie's best-known and most powerful Pagan and bardic songs. Songs that are thoroughly enjoyable by Pagans and non-Pagans alike.

And I'm thrilled to announce that it's finally at the duplicators, and ready for your pre-order!

By pre-ordering, you'll be first in line to receive the first CDs on June 15th. And thanks to the Internet, you'll also receive a full MP3 album download instantaneously.

Honoring the bardic tradition of these songs, we commissioned Celtic illustrator Bradley Schenck to create a 32-page, fully-illustrated color lyric booklet that's as beautifully crafted as the CD, designed in the tradition of finely ornamented Celtic books. (And did we mention an introduction by author Diana Paxson herself?! ;-)

As an extra bonus, your pre-order entitles you a 25% limited-time discount off any of CDs or digital downloads of our other albums (featuring Julia Ecklar and friends) -- and our gratitude for your support in making this independent music possible.

( Read more... )

I just got an e-mail from the Prometheus Music mailing list stating that Leslie Fish's new album has been released! Yay!

You can preview the entire Avalon is Risen album (and download 3 full MP3s at no charge): http://www.prometheus-music.com/avalon.html

If you'd like to receive the the special 25% discount pricing on our other CDs, please make pre-order from this page: http://www.prometheus-music.com/avalonpreorder.html

 (This is what comes of Googling for /Phrolicon/...)

Always on the lookout for interesting con names, old or new, I stumbled upon Phrolicon, a Philadelphia relaxacon that ran from maybe 1986 to maybe 1997 (Aug. 1-3, Phrolicon 13,    Mt. Laurel, NJ,  GOH Connie Willis. Source: SIGMA 136). And my minstrel wand'rings led me to a post on the Dandelion Report- Updates LJ, a query for Filk songs written for or about SPECIFIC FILKERS?, where jonbaker wrote "On a sillier note, Phrolicon Phire Phollies, from the last Philly Philk Phlash, loosely based on a bunch of people who stayed in a room at Phrolicon in 1989, including several filkers (Doug Ayen, Lisa Padol, Harold Feld I think)".

And I thought of my own filk "Nancy Buttons" and added another comment... even though the post was dated 2004-11-08, and the LJ hasn't been updated since 2005, and the FilkFAQ links in it are 404 & Co.

I've created a Filk page on Silk, http://filk.silkapp.com. At this point I'm exploring what their alleged "semantic web" capabilities are. If anyone's interested in being added to the project, let me know. I'll need an email address (at this point I have no idea whether Silk spams or not), so I'm screening comments to let you provide me one. Initially I'd like to keep the number of contributors small till it's clearer what it's all about, so ask to be signed up only if you want to edit content. Anyone can read the pages. I'll unscreen comments that don't have email addresses unless you request otherwise.

Back at GaFilk, someone handed me a piece of paper with that lady's name on it, along with the annotation "Gulf Bay Filk Group".

Unfortunately, whoever that was did not write down which state Ms. Dubuisson inhabits.

There are several Mary Dubuissons in WhitePagesOnline. Up to seven, some of the times I've looked. Some of them even live along the Gulf Coast. I tried sending a snailmail to the one in Slidell, LA, but never got an answer.

If anyone out there knows more about this subject, please give me feedback.

This one is not on the new album, but may well end up on the next if people like it.  Also the music director at the UU church told me she's interested in doing some of my songs over the summer, and this is one of the ones I'll probably offer.

I Am Like You
lyrics and melody by Catherine Faber 2012
a capella mp3 here

         D                     A
We are alike, in strength and need;
     G                 D                  G               A
The tears we shed are salt; if something cuts us we both bleed.
               D                 A
Our lives are dear, and all too brief,
    G                  D             D         A      G
We both reach out for happiness; we both must suffer grief.

 A            D                A
   I am like you, you are like me
              G              D                           A
   With our spirits held in common, in our shared humanity.
                  D                A
   We can choose love, instead of strife,
        G               D              G    A        G
   And work to bring together what we value in this life;
A             D
   I am like you.

We can give pain; we can give mirth
We can give comfort, love and knowledge, as a measure of our worth.
We live our lives, and take our shot:
Let's make this life the best we can, in case it's all we've got.

The world is wide, the sky is old--
Fairness, freedom, care, these fragile values I will hold
Our mayfly lives can heal or kill;
Our choices here define us as a force for good or ill.

XKCD commits filk.

Thanks to twwells for pointing this out -- I would normally have looked at it myself by now, but today had a major (planned) disruption.

Update: Errol has sung it on YouTube!

Today's (well, while I'm typing this anyway) xkcd has a filk in it. A fairly decent one, too.

( cut for being loooong )