Classic Funk

I found this mesmerizing!  I really like old movies and whoever synched this up is a pro!  I was trying to see how many I could identify.  It turns out that if you put on closed captioning, the names of each movies come up on the correct clip.



HT to Jenny over at Unremarkable Files.  She's just like me except she's way funnier, not home schooling, and she's Mormon.

Poem of the Week: Sumer is i-cumin in

We've been having very warm weather and it is really feeling like summer here!

 

Sumer is i-cumin in

By Anonymous 

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.

Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

Sumer is i-cumin in—

Lhude sing, cuccu!

Groweth sed and bloweth med

And springth the wude nu.

Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,

Lhouth after calve cu,

Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—

Murie sing, cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu,

Wel singes thu, cuccu.

Ne swik thu naver nu!



Modern English
 Summer has arrived,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
Seeds grow and meadows bloom
And the forest springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!-
The ewe bleats after the lamb,
The cow lows after the calf. ,
The bullock jumps, the billy-goat leaps,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo;
Nor will you ever stop now.

Fiddling Around

We've been on a bit of a music kick here lately. 

First Leena and Zorg wanted singing lessons.

Then the Emperor started guitar lessons.

Then I picked up my violin again.

Actually, I just realized that I've never even mentioned playing the violin! Playing the violin is a big part of why I home school the way I do! I must tell you the story!

I started learning the violin in my mid thirties because I wanted my kids to see me fail at something.  Well, not fail necessarily, just not succeed easily, perhaps not succeed at all.


My kids were all still young, and I could see that they were watching me.  I could read effortlessly. I knew instantly that 7 x 8 was 56. I could tie my shoes quickly - and they stayed tied.

Everything I was teaching them was easy for me, and hard for them. They never saw me struggling to learn something, so they were developing the idea that something was wrong with them if they struggled to learn anything.

I should mention that I do not have a great sense of pitch.  Or rhythm. And I have a hard time picking up new physical skills. I determined that success, for me, would be defined by playing a song recognizably at the end of one year. I wasn't sure I'd hit the goal, but I thought I might make it.

I figured that the kids would pick it up faster than I would, so Mxyl (6), Klenda (5), and I (33) all started together.

It was lovely.  And hard! 
We had a very patient and optimistic teacher. We actually all learned at about the same pace, although I had to work to keep up. 

The kids saw me struggle, make (lots of) mistakes, gradually improve, and have fun, even when I wasn't perfect.

It was such a blessing!

What was more, to my surprise, I liked it!   At a time in my life when I felt snowed under with the physical work of caring for my four young children, playing the violin was playing, even though I had to work at it.

Now, even though Mxyl and Klenda have moved on from the violin (and I had a lapse of some years), I am still enjoying playing. 

They learned the lesson that everyone has to work to learn new skills (and that work can be fun).

I learned the lesson that regardless of personal talent, 15 minutes of daily practice will eventually yield competence: at the end of the first year, I could play 52 songs recognizably!

Videos

Leena has shown an uncanny ability to teach herself new technology.  She has an idea and she figures out how to make it happen.

First she decided she wanted to make audio books.  But she didn't want them to be just her reading, she wanted her audios to sound like they were full cast productions, so taught herself audio editing with Wavepad.  She modified her voice for each character, then added in sound effects, and finally incidental music.

Then she got more interested in making her own incidental music, so she taught herself LMMS.

Most recently, she wanted to make music videos, so she figured out Windows Movie Maker.  Right now she's interested in Bionicles, so she is combining existing songs (not necessarily related to Bionicle) with existing Bionicle footage.  She works to put together a coherent story from many parts all while synching the visuals with the music.  It looks like this:



and this:

Guest Blog by Mxyl

I don't believe we've mentioned that the Zoomlians have started composing music.  While Klenda and I have made minor melodies, Leena in particular has finished an extraordinary piece of music: Cthra, a Zoomlian word that translates to "Storm."

Here, composed and performed by Leena: Storm!


A few words from the composer:

"I am very proud to have made up this 'Cthra' by myself.  My favorite part is at the 1:07 mark.  I hope you enjoyed it!"

Happy Music

I'm pretty sure everyone knows about the Piano Guys by now, but this always makes me happy!


It also gives the Zoomlians ideas about where we should put a grand piano and what they could do with it...

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

We love St. Nicholas (we don't really do Santa, as explained here) and today is his feast day!

Last night, the Zoomlians left their shoes out and are just discovering the candy inside...

Do you know why St. Nicholas is associated with presents? It's not like his feast is that close to Christmas - St. Lucy is much closer.

St. Nicholas lived in the 300s in the Roman city of Myra. There were two easy ways to become a slave in the Roman empire: be conquered or be poor enough to be sold by your parents. (Are we getting too far from Christmas for you?)

St. Nicholas was not poor (and he was a Roman citizen)! In fact, his parents had just died and left him fabulous wealth. But Nicholas wanted to give everything to God and, as his first step, decided to give away his money. He prayed for guidance and looked for opportunities.

He heard of about a poor man with three daughters. Back in the day you needed a dowry to marry, and he had no way to provide for any of his daughters so he had determined to sell them into the, er, worst kind of slavery.

St. Nick wanted to help the man, but mindful of Jesus' "not letting the left hand know what the right hand was doing", wanted it to be anonymus. So...

He put enough money for a dowry in a bag and dropped it down their chimney in the middle of the night... where it fell into a sock that had been hung near the hearth to dry... Sound more familiar? He did that three nights in a row and saved all three girls.

St. Nicholas is also the patron saint of children.

Best St. Nicholas site ever.

And, to fill your shoe, This Fabulous Meme!

If you were trapped on a desert island and it was Christmas and all you had was a small generator, Christmas lights for your coconut tree, an endless supply of Christmas cookies and eggnog, your CD player and 6 Christmas CDs , which 6 albums would you want them to be?

If you can find Amazon links, we can listen to snippets...

My answers:
1 Theatre of Voices, Carols from the Old and New Worlds
2 Paul Hillier, Traditional and Modern Carols
3 Canadian Brass, The Christmas Album
4 Anonymus 4, Wolcum Yule
5 Westminster Cathedral Choir, Christmas Carols (not in print)
6 A Very Veggie Christmas

Why 6? St. Nicholas' feast day is December 6th. Plus I started with 5, but couldn't whittle the list down enough. And I still didn't get Mitch Miller in there!

I will tag The Emperor over at The Inside Blog, The Queen of Carrots, Tracy at Organic Learning, Kate in NJ, and Melissa in the Bonny Glen

Gaudete

The Zoomlians have been going around singing this since last Sunday when we started bringing out the Christmas stuff. They only know the refrain, but they sing it over and over. I've been meaning to teach them the verses... after I learn them. Here is a you tube with many versions of the song, some of which I love (I hear Theater of Voices in there!), and some... well...not so much! (What were they thinking with the German rock version?!)

I find the different versions of songs fascinating in the same way I find word etymology fascinating. My advice, skip the versions you dislike.



Which reminds me of my other favorite Latin carol: Personent Hodie. Same deal:

Istanbul Not Constantinople

In case you have had this going through your head for the last few days/weeks/months/decades (for which we thank Organic Learning!), this video has a slide show of Istanbul with some stunning shots of the Hagia Sophia (high on my list of imaginary travel plans).

And here is an excellent explanation of why the name was changed to Istanbul. Yes, yes, I know it is nobody's business but the Turk's... The answer is long and complicated (well, um, it's Byzantine, actually), but it's worth it! I, for one, learned that the city had a different name for nearly a thousand years before it was Constantinople!

I also did not realize that the song was a cover from the 1950s. We watched a number of Jazz and Big Band versions on You Tube, comparing notes with the ubiquitous They Might Be Giants version (which itself must have a dozen videos). It was interesting to watch so many versions of the song and talk about different musical and artistic styles and interpretations: how and why do artists and musicians see the world so differently?