Music

Colbie Caillat Singing the Best US National Anthem I’ve Ever Heard

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My annual list of Best New Songs I Heard is usually reserved for songs I had never heard before. Sometimes, I throw in songs I had heard before, but never nearly as good that a version I just heard for the first time. This song falls in that second category, though it doesn’t quite have the gap for me to put on my list this year because of how many great versions I have heard in the past. Still,  it was good enough that I know, for me, it was the best rendition of this song that I have ever heard among the many I have heard.

The Star Spangled Banner is played at so many events I watch, on television or in person, that I am sure I have heard over 1000 renditions of it over the years. Naturally, there have been some outstanding versions among them, as well as some pretty grotesque ones. To me, though, Colbie Caillat’s version at the opening game of the National Football League season between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints was the best rendition of the song I have ever heard. Sorry, I don’t know the guitarist’s name.

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She sung it quietly and built it, without having to rely on volume power to peak. She didn’t need more drums or instruments to come in, or additional parts, either. She just rocked it gently a tad more each time and achieved the effect. That’s a hard thing to do!

The television footage of the players and crowd were also inspiring, and credits go to the NBC camera crew for capturing all that. Lots of players and coaches with hands over their heart, standing pretty still mostly, too. I also liked the shot of Jared Allen with the helmet held high. The New Orleans fans deserve credit for being in such solemn attention. A little cheer here or there in the right places can have just as good an impact as a roaring crowd all the way through like at some events. But you know, the right rendition will help you be like that to listen and be proud rather than not pay attention for any number of reasons.

All and all, I thought it was just superb. Too bad the online version I have above had the image and sound timing just a tad off to make it look like Colbie badly lip synced it.

I saw some online articles today on the rendition by Colbie Caillat. She’s got the Net talking about it, that’s for sure. There were likes and dislikes, and loves and hates, as to be expected. However, I’ve got to say the reasonings given for those who didn’t like it weren’t very sound. If the reasonings those people generally gave were valid, they should just go plunk it out on an out of tune synthesizer, or just get their computer to mechanically play it. They should appreciate how flexible their national anthem is that they could think so poorly of such a performance and yet, some people like myself think it’s the best rendition they’ve ever heard!

Leave me a comment with some other favourite renditions of the Star Spangled Banner if you care to share. Thanks!

Meanwhile, I’m going to look up some more of Colbie’s music. I had never heard of her till last night, but man, did she impress and got a new fan for that performance!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.5

Find Yourself, by Brad Paisley (Lyrics and Video)

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For the past four years, I have made it a habit to note songs I heard for the first time in those years which I really liked a lot. I share these with friends and family at the end of the year as a personalized gift, but more recently, I have blogged about them as well to share with readers who happen by. This is the latest on my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list.

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When you find yourself in some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly you’re becoming someone else
And then you find yourself

When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settling down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

Well you go through life
So sure of where you’re heading
And you wind up lost
And it’s the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

When you meet the one, that you’ve been waiting for
And she’s everything, that you want and more
You look at her and you finally start to live for someone else
And then you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

We go through life
So sure of where we’re headed
And we wind up lost
And its the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

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Brad Paisley

It’s the first country song that has made my list. Country isn’t my favourite genre of music, to say the least, but this song isn’t typically country. If you look at the lyrics below, you’ll see that the singer doesn’t lose anything. Rather, things were lost on him.

More shockingly, he finds something… and it’s himself!

In all seriousness, it’s a spiritual song, and those work for me if done right and well. I don’t care what genre it’d be in, whether country, rap or Martian Space Age punk.

If you’ve never heard this song, I hope you will like it. It’s easy enough to sing along and learn to play on guitar. I see chords for it are pretty simple. I will learn it and put it in PDF tabs for guitar and ukulele like other songs I have tabbed that way (with notes) on this site.

I came across this song flipping the channels just a few nights before this. It was from the Disney Pixar Cars soundtrack. It stopped me dead in my tracks, that’s for sure.

I wonder, though, is the rest of Brad’s stuff this good? I guess I’ll have to do some research to find out.

The last song which made my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list was The No-No Song, covered by Ringo Starr. Links to other songs that have made my list this year, as well as my list from some previous years, can be found through those past posts. Enjoy!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 4.4

Guitar and Ukulele Tabs for Goin’ Up Yonder (Walter Hawkins)

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It’s hard to tab gospel music, if you know what gospel music can be like to perform with all its passionate fervour, improvisation and such. This isn’t meant as a tab as much as a starting guide for you to create your own version of this popular gospel. The version below is a relatively quiet version from which I created the guitar and ukulele tabs found below that.

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Walter Hawkins

Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.

Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.

I picked the choral version above to tab because it was the most “practical” one to tab. You can document something reasonably similar to that version, aside from all the harmony parts you couldn’t sing simultaneously if you were to do this solo. However, if you’re adventurous, you can add your own touches to this song and make it as different from the version above as the version below… all 10 minutes of it! It is soloed by Tramaine Hawkins.

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It’s generally the same style so you should be able to use pretty much the same chords if you sing it using the notes in the tab PDFs. However, it has a complete different swing and swagger. You could add a reasonably facsimile with your singing and some funky strumming if you give it a try.

Enjoy!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 9.0

Guitar and Ukulele Tabs for The Water is Wide (Traditional)

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If you ever need to practice or familiarize yourself or someone with melismas (singing of a single syllable while moving between different notes), this song is a lovely example. Listen to the video below of Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and the Indigo Girls at Lilith Fair and see how many words with one syllables they stretch onto more than one note, or just any syllable having the same thing done to it. No need to count precisely. Just get an idea why I say this song is a great example of a song containing melismas, besides it being a lovely song rather than just some bad songwriting where the writer had to use melismas force things to fit into phrases. Here, the tune is simple and allows for “decorations” with melismas. It’s quite a difference!

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In tabbing this song, while I based it on another year’s Lilith Fair recording with the Dixie Chicks instead of the Indigo Girls (that sounded funny), I did not include all the melismas you heard. Unless you can sing like Sarah McLachlan or Jewel or some of them other gals, you’re not going to be able to pull off all those melismas anyway… and you wouldn’t be on this site scouring for music. 🙂

I just put in a few. You can add more if you like. The tune is robust enough to handle it. that’s why it’s been around since the 1600s.

With a tune around since the 1600s, there are also many lyric versions for it. Oddly enough, though, when I went to source some of them because I didn’t think the ones used in the Lilith Fair concerts were all that “cohesive” or “flowing”, I still couldn’t find a set I liked. So I wrote my own. Not completely off the path, but rather similar, with more cohesiveness and flow, in my opinion. You can read more on that on my poetry blog, if you care.

All you need to know is my reworked lyrics were generally meant for me. I’m not going to force it upon anyone, which is why in the PDFs you download of this song, there are also the lyrics used in the Lilith Fair concerts. It’s quite close to most other popular recordings of the song, too.

Furthermore, I’ve put each version in two keys, G and C, because you’re probably going to find one of them challenging pending your voice range. Either that or it won’t sound as good. I am challenged to sing it in C, with all those high notes, but the version an octave lower just sounds terrible. This ain’t Russian bass choral music, you know!

Anyhow, give this beautiful song a try. Give it some patience in working out some melismas. You’ll be glad you did!

Water Is Wide, Traditional Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Water Is Wide, Traditional Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

Water Is Wide, Traditional Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Water Is Wide, Traditional Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.

Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.1

Guitar and Ukulele Tabs for Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)

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Leaving on a Jet Plane is a fantastic example why tabs and chord files you tend to find online, without notes written out, can be so problematic. The slightest change in how you sing a phrase can cause a different chord to be used. But without the notes, you just see a chord. Unless you happen to sing the phrase the same way in terms of notes, the listed chords might sound quite wrong to you. Or singing by ear, you might find trying to fit the phrase into the chording given is rather awkward.

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John Denver

In my tabbed files below, I have two sets of chords for each file, though they are both in the same key. It’s just a matter of how you phrase the first line, and some subsequent lines like it within the verse. If a C is your high note, as John Denver sings it in the video above, then one set of chords works well for it. If B is your high note, just a semi-tone below that C, another set of chord works better. But if there were no notes written out, you’d be scrambling to try to figure it out. And you’d be wrong if you sang it with a B for the high note, if you were a purist to try to sing it “right”.

That said, though, on the ukulele, I would actually recommend singing the version with the B high note in that first line (page 2 of the ukulele tabs). The C chord is just too open for my liking in the middle of the phrase. But that’s just my take. You play what you want. Hopefully, having these two versions will give you one that’s reasonably close to how you would sing it. Any further deviations and well, you’re on your own, I’m afraid. 🙂

But this is a prime example of why I have notes written out with my tabs and chords, aside from helping you (and me) sing things correctly.

I also left out a few chords on the ukulele version which didn’t add as much colour as the chords in the guitar version did. Most noticeably, I left out a bunch of D7 chords in the ukulele version, or just used a D. They were arranged in the guitar as such to denote mid-verse and end verse points, leading to transitions or not. But on the ukulele, l;et’s just say I’m not the biggest fan of the D7 chord in the C6 tuning of GCEA. You get to avoid it if you use a ADF#B tuning like Chalmers Doane preferred his ukuleles. In this song, where the D7  is used, it follows a D. As such, then, instead of using the barred version of D7, I recommend just dropping your pinky (baby) finger on to the 3rd fret of the A string while hold the D previously with your other three fingers.

Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF

Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF

If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.

Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 6.6