Category Archives: Albums

52 Folk Songs: the white album is now available to download.

This is an album of seasonal songs, mostly recorded between Advent Sunday and Twelfth Night. They’re not all religious, though: some are songs for the long nights and the turning of the year, and a couple are just there because they wanted to be.

The full track listing is:

1.   A maiden that is matchless (2:07)
2.  The holly and the ivy (1:49)
3.  Shepherds arise (3:22)
4.  A virgin most pure (4:08)
5.  In Dessexshire as it befell (3:34)
6.  Poor old horse (5:08)
7.  On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At (4:43)
8.  Come, love, carolling (2:08)
9.  The boar’s head carol (1:49)
10. Gaudete (2:49)
11. The King (1:26)
12. In the month of January (4:22)
13. The Moving On song (2:44)
14. The January Man (2:33)

Mostly traditional (the seasonal repertoire gave me a lot to work with) but not exclusively so; songs 8, 13 and 14 are modern (by Sydney Carter, Seeger/MacColl and Dave Goulder, respectively).

Tracks 7 and 13 are ‘hidden’ tracks, as you’ll see (or rather won’t see) if you visit the album page; they can only be downloaded by downloading the whole album (for the standard extortionate fee). However, I’ve decided I’d like to give the album-only tracks a bit more visibility, so you can play (but not download) them at the new 52fs: Extras page.

As well as hidden tracks, the white album comes with full lyrics, notes on the songs and even the odd picture. A few brief comments on the songs:

A maiden that is matchless is sung simultaneously in modern English and Middle English, with a flute part slavishly copied from Dolly Collins’s arrangement.
The holly and the ivy is not a pagan song. First attempt at four-part harmony. Took ages.
Shepherds arise More harmonies. Sing! Sing all earth!
A virgin most pure More Dolly, I think, this time on C whistle. Two-part harmony, partly my own.
In Dessexshire as it befell Yet more multi-part singing, plus a multi-part melodica break. A weird and nasty song set on Christmas Day(!), which ended up sounding seriously creepy.
Poor old horse Indebted to Rapunzel and Sedayne. Doesn’t sound much like them, but it doesn’t sound much like the John Kirkpatrick version that I learned it from either, and that’s largely thanks to R&S’s Old Grye.
On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At Not actually strictly a seasonal song as such; scientists have established that it can get pretty parky on Ilkley Moor at any time of year. Four-part harmonies, sung as written with a few modifications for singability (I broke it up into five or six separate lines). Also features simultaneous translation for the hard-of-Yorkshire.
Come, love, carolling A contemporary religious song by the wonderful Sydney Carter. Drums, melodica and anything else that seemed appropriate; based on Bob and Carole Pegg’s version on the album And now it is so early.
The boar’s head carol is not a pagan song either. Second attempt at four-part harmony. Took a bit less time.
Gaudete Would it make sense if I mentioned “Louie, Louie” at this point? As in, never mind Bellamy’s obscurities and Nic Jones’s rediscovered broadsides, this is where it starts – the simple, earthy, direct sound of a Latin carol from a medieval Finnish manuscript arranged in five-part harmony… no, it wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Anyway, the point is, this was more or less Folk Song #1 for me, thanks to Steeleye Span’s appearance singing it on Top of the Pops, so it’s always had a special place for me.
The King More Steeleye, sort of. I haven’t got the album and couldn’t work out the harmonies from the clip on the Amazon page, so I wrote my own. (Of course it’s on Youtube. Now they tell me.)
In the month of January After all of this part-singing it was a bit of a shock to the system to do a big unaccompanied number. This was fun, but harder than it looked – I’ll look forward to grappling with it again next year.
The Moving On song Not a massive arrangement – just drums, melodica and a couple of brief harmony vocal lines – but the texture of the (heavily-processed) melodica, the slightly over-fiddly drum pattern and the irregularity of the time signature make for an appropriately edgy, claustrophobic atmosphere. I like the way the melodica’s come out, but I’ll probably never be able to do it again – I was trying for something much simpler.
The January Man he walks abroad in woollen coat and boots of leather… What a song. With a big, plain song like this, you just need to practise till you’ve got it – you’re in trouble if the January man wears a leather coat, for example, or if the February man brushes snow from off his hands – and then resist the urge to do anything more to it at all.

Next stop, the Blue album: allmostly big ballads, alllargely unaccompanied, nolimited amounts of messing.

Week 19, and we approach the end of the seasonal white album with two January songs.

In the month of January is a beautiful Irish song; I bracket it with “When a man’s in love”, though they may be totally unconnected. This is after the singing of Sarah Makem and others. A lot of my ornamentation is after June Tabor; Sarah Makem’s influence is probably most audible on the swoops on some unstressed syllables. (That’s for any singers reading this. For everyone else, I just hope you like the song.)

Dave Goulder’s song The January man is one of my personal exceptions to the rule that there are no modern folk songs. This may not be a folk song, but the words and music make it sound like one, and it’s sung by folk singers who learn it from other folk singers. It’s a fine song, anyway, and deserves to be sung this and every January.

We mark the end of the Christmas period – and approach the end of the white album of seasonal songs – with two house-visiting songs.

The King is a song from the old post-Christmas custom of shooting a wren and displaying its body for luck. (The past is a foreign country.) Sung here in four-part harmony.

Poor old horse is a house-visiting song from the north of England; the ‘old horse’ would collapse and die towards the end, then spring back to life (and go on to the next house, presumably). Sung here without any harmonising, but with quite a lot of multi-tracking. The tune at the beginning and end is Scan Tester’s The Man in the Moon.

Two more Christmas songs – I’m taking the view that it’s still Christmas until we get to Twelfth Night. These are both religious (in rather different ways) and both feature multi-part harmonies. These particular songs also have a personal connection.

38 years ago, I heard an extraordinary song on Top of the Pops. As a direct result I became a huge fan of Steeleye Span (and a vague admirer of Shirley Collins, June Tabor and the Albions), and learned several traditional songs that I still know. A few years later punk came along, but that’s another story.

8 years ago, I heard an extraordinary song on Mixing It. As a direct result I discovered Anne Briggs and Nic Jones, which led in turn to Tony Rose, Shirley Collins (again), June Tabor (again), Peter Bellamy… and the journey continues.

These are two landmarks in my personal discovery of folk, in other words. Hope I’ve done them justice!

A merry Christmas from 52fs!

Here are two more seasonal songs to mark the last week in Advent. (The white album is all seasonal – they’re not all Christmas songs, but they’re all songs for the long nights and the turning of the year.)

Shepherds arise: a three-part arrangement of this Christmas Copper song (four if you count octaves). I was originally thinking of adding an instrumental part as well, but I decided the audio spectrum was quite full enough as it was!

A virgin most pure is a two-part arrangement, plus whistle and melodica. My source for this one is the posthumous Young Tradition album the Holly Bears the Crown, on which it was sung by Shirley Collins and Heather Wood.

On these two tracks I not only wrote harmony lines but sang them from the dots. I’m not boasting, particularly, just boggling slightly – I’ve never done either of those things before, & never thought I could. Amazing what you can do when you try.

As you may have noticed, week 16 was longer than average; I’m abandoning the Thursday-to-Wednesday week I started with and going for a more conventional Sunday-to-Saturday. So tomorrow, the 25th of December, will be day 1 of week 17 in the 52fs project. (I knew there was something I meant to celebrate…)

Getting properly into the Christmas spirit with a couple of old choral belters.

What else have these songs got in common? They’re both shortish (they’ve both come out at exactly one minute 49); and they’re both proper old – early-modern or even medieval old. Oh, and they both supposedly contain pagan and pre-Christian imagery, and if you want to believe that it’s up to you. There’s a lot more I could say about this line of thinking, and at some stage I probably will – not here, though.

The Holly and the Ivy is sung unaccompanied, in parts, in unison and at one stage in an echo chamber (unintentional, but I liked the effect so I left it in).

The Boar’s Head Carol is also unaccompanied, in four parts, most of which I worked out myself. I’m really, really pleased with the result – check it out. You may conclude that I’m really, really easily pleased, but no matter.