Playing BALLAD OF SERENITY @ THE FILLMORE

POSTED BY: noplace
UPDATED: Monday, June 28, 2004 06:34
VIEWED: 1708
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NOPLACE

Monday, June 28, 2004 5:12 AM

Guitarist Henry Kaiser here.
see:
http://henrykaiser.net/

Being a musician and a big FIREFLY fan - I’ve been sitting around the house playing The Ballad of Serenity for most of this year for my own personal enjoyment. A very cool song that compresses a lot of content into a tiny slice of time. It also has a really odd metrical structure - if you try to play just as it is in the show's opening credits....

Here is how the bar structure works out on the TV version:
4/4 3/4 2/4 4/4 3/4 3/4 4/4 3/4 2/4 4/4 3/4 3/4
4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 3/4 2/4 3/4 3/4

My band and I learned the song tonight to play at THE FILLMORE AUDITORIUM in San Francisco, where I will be opening for my pal Richard Thompson, this coming Sunday, July 3.

see:
http://www.thefillmore.com/artist_detail2.asp?event_id=201968
http://richardthompson-music.com/

I am lucky enough to have the great steel guitar bluesman, Freddie Roulette in my band.
see:
http://www.well.com/user/wellvis/roulette.html

Freddie sounds just great singing the words to Serenity, as his lap steel sings along with him.

It’s such a short little song - but really fun to play. I hope there will be someone in the house at The Fillmore who will appreciate it! We have tried to make it our own - while preserving the odd metrical structure of the original score version, we added a few extra bars in the musical interlude for soloing. And it's in a medley that leads into something else that I will leave to be a surprise....

After the show, I’ll try to make an MP3 to post somewhere, if we are lucky enough to get a good board tape that night.

bestest, HK (noplace)

CALIGARI

Monday, June 28, 2004 6:34 AM

This is so astonishingly wonderful! By all means, let's hear a mp3 of it! And I, for one, will try to get down to the Fillmore to hear it live!