Blog – Allain Lalonde

I don’t usually explicitly write country tunes because I find them silly. In this case, it fit the purpose exactly.

So, here’s my critique of Alternative Medicine in song format.

I hope you like it.

http://www.machete.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Glass%20of%20Water.mp3

Glass of Water by Allain Lalonde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Music, Songwriting

This is last installment of my song lyric odyssey. I had trouble picking a song as my last one so didn’t.

Instead, as I hoped it would, all this playing has made me itch to write again. So this week’s song is an original called “My My”. I wrote it Tuesday (the 2nd) and recorded it yesterday. I purposely built a chord progressions that at first sounds bizarre and then worked in a melody above it to bring it back in (I hope).

I hope you like it http://www.machete.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/My My.mp3.

Music, Personal, Songwriting music, Personal, Songwriting

This is week 4’s installment to my song lyric odyssey. I can’t honestly say I’m happy with this one, but this is the best I could get it with the time I could commit. I do love the song though, especially Johhny Cash’s version. Hopefully, I’m doing it some justice.

Peace.

Music, Personal

This is recording 3 of a 5 part self challenge.

After trying in vain to get my usual recording setup working, I decided to try out my new webcam and post this one to youtube (my first time).

It’s a Tim Minchin tune because Tim Minchin is awesome. More than that though, the imagery is quite powerful, making it easier for me to remember (though apparently not easy enough).

Music, Personal music, Personal

Here’s this week’s recording. I chose “Imagine” by John Lennon primarily because it’s a good campfire song. Not knowing the words to this one was an especially embarassing position to be in since I’ve been playing this song since I’ve been 17.

Without further ado: Here’s a link to this week’s recording.

I hope you like it.

General, Music music, Personal

It’s early. Last week I said I would post a recording before midnight on Nov 5th and it’s the fourth, but I had no choice. I’ve got a pretty bad chest cold and am losing my voice (I sound like a pubescent kid at some parts of the recording ). If I’d waited till tomorrow to record it, there’s a good chance it couldn’t have happened.

That being said, I’m happy with the way things turned out. I played the song from beginning to end without any lyric sheets or other visual aids infront of me! The day I posted my intention to learn the song my friend Bill Love sent me the following collage he’d made as a joke. Thing is, it worked! Very well too. Within a couple hours, I could play the song without even needing visual aids. Thanks a lot Bill!

So, anyway, without further ado, here’s a link to the recording: http://www.machete.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/I don’t want to grow up.mp3.

So to keep myself honest, again I declare that the next recording will be out by the stroke of midnight on November 14th EST.

I haven’t decided what song to do you yet, so suggestions would be welcome. I’ll decide by this Saturday what I’m doing and edit this post accordingly.

Thanks for tuning in

General, Music learning, music, Personal

Next blog entry in this series can be found here.

I don’t typically post personal blog entries on my blog, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t have a category by that title until now, so I hope you’ll forgive me for posting this one.

For the last 4 years or so I’ve been keeping busy with work and family. So much so that I haven’t made time to play the guitar and was too wise to try while the kids slept (anyone who’s ever seen a 3am child induced evil eye will understand what I mean). Now that my kids are sleeping better, it’s time to break out the 6 string again.

I have an admission to make though: I don’t remember lyrics. Ever. Not popular camp fire songs, not even Oh Canada. To make it even more embarrassing, I don’t remember the words to songs that I’ve written myself, including my wedding song (though to be fair, I can make my way through more than half of it from memory).

So, how can I fix this? Practice of course, but how can I make sure that I follow through with the practice? This blog, and the subsequent ones are my attempt. If it doesn’t work, this is going to be, gulp, awkward.

As a disclaimer, I have played before. It’s just been a while since I’ve done so at a level I’m happy with. I play guitar and I sing. Since I was paid 50 bucks once to play at a bar, I guess you can say that I’ve even done so professionally. But even then I was never able to do it without my idiot sheets in front of me.

So, here goes…

I pledge to post a recording of myself playing a song from memory once a week for the next 5 weeks.

First song will be posted by midnight on November 5th, 2009 and will be “I don’t want to grow up” by Tom Waits. I chose that one because I like it and I’d really like to know the words by heart.

If you don’t know the song have a look, and you’re welcome in advance:

So, tune in next week for this weeks exciting conclusion…

Edit: My friend Bill Love just sent me the following picture as a joke, but it might just be the perfect mnemonic for me! I can “see” the picture in my mind and follow along with it! Thanks Bill! It’s my desktop background for the rest of the week.

General, Music, Personal goals, music, Personal