»Coventry Carol

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I recorded a 'Christmas single' last year, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and it was pretty much the best thing I had done all year and I've been listening to it all through this year as well. So I had to do another one. Sadly, I couldn't just do God Rest... again, so I had a quick trawl of Christmas carols and was reminded of the bleakery that is the Coventry Carol.

After enjoying knocking out some drone stuff for the Quake theme, I decided to make this one droney as well. Again, I used the Korg sound editing programme and set up the Korg via MIDI.

I downloaded an SATB score for the carol. I found this ridiculously hard to play as I'm totally out of practice with reading bass clef. I had to swallow my pride and write down the notes as letters.

The piano takes care of the bass and soprano part. I then used two different sounds from the Micro Korg, one for the tenor part and the other for a combined alto/soprano part. This way the main tune is doubled up to make it more recognisable (only slightly more recognisable though, since the thing is so bloody slow.)

The click track was recorded at 24bpm, but realistically, the tempo is more like 96bpm. Interestingly, if the song is played at four times the speed, it takes on a rather cool, vaguely Greek sound. Check it out. Played at that speed, it's also more recognisable--if you thought I was just rattling through some random chords and passing it off as a carol.

I was going to add some extra sounds to the beginning of the song and maybe some drums but was tired of recording for two full days, so left it alone.

The thumbnail is a picture of Carol Vorderman from the eighties. Oh what a clever pun. Yeah, she isn't even from Coventry. As an aside, Carol Vorderman gets better every year. The world waits expectantly for the Nigella/Vorderman lesbian sex tape.

"I'm a little worried about being a slut."