A Gift of Song

Entry posted by atari2600land November 19, 2010

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A month or so ago you may have remembered my musical composition I'm making called "My Butt Hurts Part 3". Well, I finished that. In case you've forgotten, all three parts of My Butt Hurts together equal about 47 minutes of music, each clocking in at around 15 minutes. Part 3, which you can download in MIDI form here is 15:56. I was going to give this as a Christmas gift to my sister and dad. Some song parts have been floating around in my head for the past years, while others have been newly composed. At about the 8:26 mark when that part begins, I experimented with the different percussion instruments the MIDI format had to offer. I really experimented with it at about 13:50, which I feel gave that part a Mexican flavor, so I named that part "Let's Eat Tacos". Not very often you hear a Hammond Organ in a Mexican musical composition. The finale is a mixture of parts of two songs I put together. I used a website to convert the MIDI files to MP3s so I can burn them onto a CD. Why do this? Mainly because I was bored, and another reason was to see if I could replicate my songs I've written to actual sheet music. A few man-hours was spent listening and relistening until I got what was in my head exactly as I wanted it to appear on the MIDI. (Another few man-hours was waiting for the slow computer to actually DO something!) The first part, titled "Jackdaws Love My Big Sphinx of Quartz" actually has lyrics. Everyone sing!

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz

They put it it in their mouths

As they fly down south.

Now that I think of it, it's amazing that IMO I can repeat that for about 4 minutes and not make it sound repetitive. Originally, I was just going to leave it just as its own MIDI, but then I thought that it could be the beginning of part 3, so it is now. So, why 47 minutes? Because 47 is my favorite number. There was a site on the Internet (I don't know if it's still up) called "The 47 Society" and explained that 47 can be found anywhere. It had its own e-mail newsgroup thingee I joined where people could tell other people their sightings of the number 47. It really is odd how many times the number 47 can be seen if you look for it.