Dear Folk of the Interweb,
Since finishing my
Master of Music degree in November and commencing FT work, my musical spirit has been a little sad. My lovely Joseph theorises that it's because I'm not doing any singing (except in the car), and he could well be right. Paying the bills is all well and good, but my heart needs to SING! So I've got two projects on the go.
The first is
Karaoke Secret Santa, a project dreamed up by Joseph Restubog in 2009. Details can be found at the Karaoke Secret
Blog. We're a small pool of enthusiastic karaoke singers who are intent on spreading good Christmas cheer to each other! So, on December 11, the
Elfster Secret Santa Gift Exchange will assign me a Secret Santa recipient, and, after perusing their musical wishlist, I shall choose a song to learn, and then video myself performing it! Upload it to
YouTube by Christmas Eve, and Bob's your uncle. Merry Christmas!
The second project I'm going to be working on is a personal project that I've been thinking about doing for awhile. I enjoyed learning the first verse of the Welsh National Anthem so much this year that I've decided to make it a goal of mine to learn ALL national anthems of the world. Now, the Wikipedia page has informed me that there are MANY national anthems, and not all of them are referred to as national anthems, either. That's perfectly okay. What I want to do is learn each patriotic song from each country, which is going to involve a lot of brainpower on my end to get all the pronunciations and translations right! I'm so excited. It's going to be a great project for me! So many different languages and cultures... Just the thing to keep my mind occupied while I dwell on the fact that I'm no longer studying singing full-time, and figure out what to do next.
I will be recording all of these songs, just on
my little digital camera, and upload them to YouTube, as a way of keeping track of the songs and letting you all hear what each different anthem sounds like! I'm trying to find non-naff karaoke versions on iTunes to download and sing to. Here's hoping I can avoid the really obvious MIDI-sounding tracks.
I'm going to start off easy, and the first anthems that I hope to learn/record are:
AUSTRALIA - "Advance Australia Fair" |
score
UNITED KINGDOM - "God Save The Queen" |
score
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - "The Star-Spangled Banner" |
score
WALES - "My Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" |
score
With each post and recording, I hope to give a brief background of the piece and teach myself a little of the history of that particular country, especially with regard to their patriotism and national song. I welcome suggestions on which national anthems/songs to embark upon learning after I've completed this first four! I will also welcome feedback and updates on my pronunciation of unfamiliar languages and the histories of various songs.
I'm excited! I hope you are, too.
Cheers,
Pam