Monday, August 13, 2012

Witchypoo's Soukous Surprise, by the Fool

Sarenade sent me some lyrics and asked me to write a tune for them. So I did. The song is called "The Witch's Vale", and the lyrics can be found at the end of the abc file. But not at the end of the mp3 file, which doesn't have lyrics at all. Funny that.

I tried to write a Soukous song. Soukous is from the Conga and is sometimes called Congolese (or African) Rhumba, as it can sound a lot like ... well... rhumba. It's characterised by a number of things, including a distinctive shuffle rhythm on the percussion, a high repeating guitar line, and complex bass lines much like reggae. A typical chord pattern is I-IV-I-V, which I've copied here. It just goes over and over and over and over again, with that twangy guitar and a pounding beat. Pretty cool stuff, really. My darling wife is from the Congo and so I've listened to a LOT of Soukous over the years. I've never played it though, so I don't really have a good feel for it.

Anyway, it doesn't work very well in LOTRO, but hey, at least the song came free so Sarenade can hardly complain. I got lazy on the horn solo and just made it rather boring. I was sick of Witchypoo by then, so a quick solo and out. Run while you still can.

4 comments:

  1. Aha, so that's the reason for the fun chromatics in the solo! Genius really X 3, for real, Fool.

    ~BB

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  2. Oh Aegthil, you just made me dance round my hobbit hole :)

    Saffyyre

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    Replies
    1. Scuse me, I meant Aegthil's FOOL, of course. The guy who writes some of the best music in Middle Earth.

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