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willyminnix.com
www.willyminnix.com
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Water Moccasin Press
ISBN-10: 1494335581
Pages: 134
Copyright: Nov. 30, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781494335588
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Mandolin Dead Man's Tuning is back with a new Christmas Edition. This book is over twice the size of the original Mandolin Dead Man's Tuning book, and also in FULL COLOR! This book is destined to become a holiday favorite.
Learn over 30 Christmas songs, read lots of interesting trivia about the songs and enjoy the bright holiday photographs.
Mandolin Dead Man's Tuning is back with a new Christmas Edition. This book is over twice the size of the original Mandolin Dead Man's Tuning book, and also in FULL COLOR! This book is destined to become a holiday favorite.
Learn over 30 Christmas songs, read lots of interesting trivia about the songs and enjoy the bright holiday photographs.
Like the original, this book includes both sheet music and tabs that allow anyone from beginner to advanced player to get something enjoyable out of this book. Included are beginning, intermediate and advanced arrangements for solo and duet mandolins, or if you're a violinist or fiddle player, DDAD tuning will also work for your instrument as well!
Also included are guitar or piano chords for many of the songs so you can play along with other musicians. And just like the original, there are many chords and picking advice included. And one final thing that every Christmas book needs, a discussion on modes is included to help you better understand some of the more obscure songs.
Merry Christmas from Mandolin Dead Man's Tuning and Willy Minnix!
Excerpt
This volume was meant to be the fourth installment of the Dead Man’s tuning series, but as life takes funny twists and turns, a great deal of volumes 2 and 3 were lost when a computer crash happened, and the backup files were not as far along as I had hoped! Oh well. At least all of the info in this volume was saved.
Hopefully, you will have volume 1 which gives a lot of details about how to play in DDAD or ADAD tuning. If not, begin by tuning to one of these tunings and follow along with the tablature in this book! Christmas music has long interested me. It seems to be the one genre of music that crosses over all labels and styles in modern classifications of music.
Turn on any given radio station at Christmas time and you will hear songs that are modern, rock, country and contemporary Christian, as well as styles that were popular in years gone by, early rock and roll, jazz and various styles of vocal groups. But it doesn’t stop there, because you will also find songs rooted in the romantic tradition of Beethoven, and the classical tradition of Mozart and J.S. Bach. But even there it doesn’t stop, you will often even hear music that predates modern sheet music notation reaching further back into the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, with Gregorian Chant, and Plainsong and other ancient styles being revisited by modern artists.
And even some of the earliest Christian tunes such as the tune for “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” reaching back to the very earliest reaches of our modern musical memory. Even some of the later songs, such as “Joy to the World,” Isaac Watts’ classic hymn (originally about the Second Advent rather than the First Advent of Christ), find their basis in an even earlier style of song, the Psalms, of King David.
Christmas is truly a time when anything goes in the music world, and is much like the smorgasbords of food that line many tables at Christmas time. This fusion of styles reflects the various cultures where the story of Jesus the Messiah took hold, and where lives were changed by the hope of redemption, and forgiveness that comes with the Gospel message.
As I was completing this volume and preparing I noticed a funny thing that wasn’t planned. I found that I had 32 songs, one of which had two different versions the English version and the Celtic Version of Greensleeves, bringing the total to 33, the same number of years that Jesus lived on this earth when He was here the first time. I actually had far more songs that I wanted to include, but couldn’t fit them all in this volume. So don’t be surprised if you find another volume of Christmas songs coming up in the future.
In the end, I tried to pick several songs that not only are popular, but also ones that I find melodically interesting, historically interesting and some of them that are just strange to me. An example of the latter is the song “Down in Yon Forest.” I’ve listened to several versions, but I just can’t seem to gain an appreciation of this haunting melody.
The modal quality of it is very unsettling to me, but it seems appropriate because it too reflects that tone of the gospel message: we are at odds with God, but Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross offers us a free bridge to access God, but in order to cross the bridge we must acknowledge our sins, and turn from them, following after Jesus. I have tried to include several different levels of songs, some of them are easy such as the simple version of “O Christmas Tree,” or “Jingle Bells.” But other songs took me a long time to work on and are not for the beginning mandolinist. A good example of this is “Für Elise” by Ludwig van Beethoven. This tune is not really a Christmas carol at all, but in popular culture has become associated with Christmas because of the penchant of Schroder to play it for Lucy on the Peanuts Christmas specials. I included a mandolin version of it for those who enjoy playing in Dead Man’s but are ready for a challenge.
Likewise is a mandolin version I transcribed of J.S. Bach’s “Wachet Auf” or “Awake O Sleeper,” also called “Sleeper Awake.” This, like Watts’ “Joy to the World,” is really a song about the end of the world, when all righteous people rise from the dead in the rapture of the church which happens at Christ’s Second Coming. It occurred to me that these two events Christmas and the Second Coming share so many commonalities that the connection should be explored, if only in the linkage of popular tunes at Christmas time.
Along the way, I have tried to explain details not only of how to play the pieces and embellishments that you can add to various passages of the tunes, but also different chords and portions of chords that will allow you to play either alone, or with another mandolin player or with a guitarist. I have tried to add chords where appropriate so that a guitar or piano player could play along with a mandolin player with ease. And I have added lyrics to each song where appropriate so that carolers could sing along as well.
In my family, one of our traditions each holiday was to play and sing music together. Nearly everyone in my family either played an instrument or sang, and every year there was a great time singing and playing Christmas songs together. I remember a really old Christmas song book that my dad had which he found somewhere in an old dusty book shelf. The songbook was very small, but contained not only all of the well-known lyrics to popular Christmas carols, but also even some of the more obscure lyrics that everyone forgot. But it also was decorated with beautiful paintings of the ideal Victorian Christmas. Each picture was bright and inviting, as if beckoning the caroler to join in with the people who were singing in the paintings.
In putting this volume together, I tried to keep in mind the feelings that I had towards that almost forgotten carol book. I hope that this book will be similar to that one, a Christmas carol book that families could cherish for years to come. I would love it if this book found its way into someone’s Christmas box wedged in between the Leg Lamp and the Peanuts Nativity set! So without further ado I give you “Mandolin Dead Man’s Tuning Christmas Edition!”
Merry Christmas, Willy Minnix Christmas 2013
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