LRM V2 Notes

Laura Remson Mitchel - Volume 2 Notes

This volume includes five original songs that have lyrics (indicated by a * after the song title). I have tried to align the lyrics and notes so that they will display properly when played using the floppy disk drive in a PSR 740. (I don't know whether other PSR models read lyrics from a MIDI-0 file in the same way.) Unfortunately, I wasn't always able to get the spacing to display properly, but at least the words seem to be highlighted properly as the song plays on my 740.

Since these are all original songs for which no commercial sheet music is available, I thought some people might want to look at the music in the staff view of a MIDI software program like Cakewalk. So I've tried to edit the files to make the score easier to read, but it's been a very frustrating process. I often play notes a little before or after the beat, change the tempo slightly as I'm playing, or play notes a a bit shorter (or longer) for purposes of phrasing. Unfortunately, all of this can play havoc with the alignment of notes within bar lines in the staff view. In some cases, after I'd moved notes and changed a few note durations so that the "sheet music" view of the song looked better, the song playback didn't sound the way I intended. Sometimes, I just had to undo the changes, and other times, I wound up making some of the changes but not all of them. The upshot is that while I have made some adjustments, there still may be places in these songs where the "score" or "staff" view in a MIDI file looks like a mess.

Following are brief descriptions of the songs in this volume. Songs with lyrics are indicated by an asterisk (*). I wrote the lyrics to all the songs below except for "Crystal Citadel," which started out as a poem written by my friend Cara Rosenberg Alson. Unless otherwise indicated, these songs didn't use any auto-accompaniment style.

1. Diversity Prayer*. Based on an old Hebrew blessing for diversity. I suspect the blessing was intended to refer to the diversity of life on Earth, but I think we all need to be reminded that the diversity within humanity also is something to celebrate, and that is how I have chosen to interpret it. The first section of the prayer is a transliteration of the original Hebrew blessing. The second section consists of new lyrics that I wrote to give my "take" on diversity. And the third section is an English translation of the Hebrew section.

2. Crystal Citadel*. As I indicated above, this song was inspired by Cara Alson's poem. I added a chorus after the second and fifth stanzas of the poem and repeated the first word of the last line in each of those stanzas, but otherwise, the lyrics are all hers. (This song is Copyright 2003 by Laura Remson Mitchell and Cara Rosenberg Alson.) By the way, you can read Cara's poem in its original form online at http://motherbird.com/cara.html

3. Freedom Land*. Inspired by a human relations workshop for Los Angeles high school students that I attended in the 1960s. It was a wonderful experience that showed how people from many different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds could get along. The song was originally written for and performed on a nylon-string guitar, but I sequenced it using my PSR 740 so that I could have a MIDI arrangement/recording of it. [Makes use of Chords 1 and Bass tracks from a style I created.]

4. Justice for All*. This is the first song I wrote using a PSR keyboard--a PSR 420. It was intended as an anthem for the disability rights movement, with which I have been active for many years. I've tried several different arrangements, and so far, this is the one I like best, though I'm still not completely satisfied. I may come up with still another version in the future. I make a point of playing, singing or at least listening to "Justice for All" every July 26, which has been recognized as Disability Independence Day. The day commemorates the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. [Song uses PSR 740's Country Pop Style, #94, with all tracks except Chords 1 and Pad muted.]

5. Trav'lin'. I wrote this instrumental on and for my nylon-string guitar, then recorded/sequenced it many years later to create a MIDI file. This piece always made me think of riding on a train, which is why I called it "Trav'lin'."

6. Someone (with melody overlay)*. "Someone" is a jazz ballad I wrote in 1998 in the style of the 1940s. (I always loved the harmonies of songs from that era.) "Someone" was composed on the piano, but I liked the PSR 740's Jazz Ballad style and decided to try improvising a little to create a jazzy version of the song. I'm not very good as a performer, and I was trying not to stray too far from the basic melodic line, since only a handful of people ever had heard the original song. So this is by no means as exciting as authentic jazz can be. But I came to realize that even the little bit of improvisation I did in some sections could make it hard for a singer to recognize just which of the notes should be sung. That's when I decided to add a melody "overlay" (using a choir voice). This file indicates the phrasing I probably would use if I sang it--or at least the phrasing I had in mind on the date I last revised the file. (I tend to keep changing my mind.) If you want to hear how the jazz ballad sounds without the melody, you can mute out the choir track. [Uses PSR 740's Jazz Ballad style, #74.]

7. Haunted Carousel. I wrote this waltz at the piano, and I tended to play it with a lot of pauses and tempo changes to convey emotion, as well as a kind of eerie feeling. After I got my PSR 740, I tried playing "Haunted Carousel" with several of the 740's styles, but I just couldn't get the feeling I wanted when playing with any automated style. So intead, I built up this arrangement track by track, then went back and inserted tempo changes in various places.

8. Kickin' It Up. This song uses several types of guitar (including funk and overdriven), lots of pitch bend, a full rocker organ, and plenty of percussion.

9. Getaway. I wrote this a few years ago when I was getting very frustrated with my job and looking forward to a vacation. In short, I needed to "get away."

10. Still at It. This is another song with several kinds of guitar, a full rocker organ and a lot of percussion. I have a tendency to work on my music into the wee hours of the morning, which is when most of this was composed. So after everybody else in my family had gone to bed, I was "still at it."