O Canada!

[gurdonark]

In honor of Canada Day, I created this song, "O Canada". Happy Canada Day!
Click on the song below to listen. It's free to share under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to download and share it:

Watch on YouTube

Song and sample credits:

Poem in French written by:
Adolphe-Basile Routhier
Poem in English written by:
Robert Stanley Weir
librivox.org readers of public domain materials:
French:Christiane Levesque
English: Elizabeth Palmer
Samples from soundtransit.nl, all recorded in Canada:
1215 and 1217 by Kristen Roos, British Columbia
0104, Paul Thomson, Hornby Island
0985, Toby Sinkinson, Pilot whales, off Newfoundland
licensed under Creative Commons licenses
from the freesound project:
sample 2143, by Jovica, and sample 223, by erratic,
all issued under Creative Commons licenses
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
music: gurdonark

This work, "O Canada" is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution

license, attribution: Gurdonark, http://www.negativesoundinstitute.com

Comments

That's great, thank-you!

[nutmeggie.livejournal.com]

The bird songs are a great touch.

Re: That's great, thank-you!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I like the birds best of all, too.

[ensenchiridion.livejournal.com]

i remember when they used to play the french [canadian] anthem in the mornings at school and some students would just leave their mouths open and hum at the backs of their throats, looking around at each other as if it were some private joke that that day's anthem sounded a little muddled and undefined. i was living in alberta until grade six, so i was forced to hum also, not having any french experience whatsoever, but being fascinated enough to make it through the anthem first chance i could and achieve the only "a" in french at year's end. now i'm in a panic at how my few years of french have all but dissipated, how i want them back (and then some), and how so many people here don't even seem to care that they had the opportunity at all.

thanks for this entry. i liked it - and your efforts - very much.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I only speak the fragments of tourist French, picked up on a very few visits to France. This renders me able to order from most menus and to find a hotel, but unable to do anything much in the way of conversation.

If I were doing it all over, I'd learn Spanish, French, and perhaps latin, too.

beauty!

[dkeifer.livejournal.com]

This is terrific. The music is so plain and true. (Plain in the [very]good sense, that is.) An ideal--and very unconventional, I think--setting for an anthem.

Re: beauty!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I love to be plain in the best sense in anything I do.
Lately, I keep using a 25 dollar stand-alone softsynth called sawcutter 2.0 (www.cuttermusic.com, v 1.0 is free) as a composition device. It's fun to work out melodies in two octaves and four voices, particularly as the synth will actually sample small wave files, much more easily than other samplers I have known (great poem title: "samplers I have known").

I was just thinking today how it's time for me to make a youtube of Creative Commons Canada nature shots, with this as the backing.

[(Anonymous)]

Great stuff!

Since you're interested in the Creative Commons notion, have a look at www.soundsnap.com . Similar to freesound but better quality of sounds, and a lot easier to browse...

It has helped me a lot with my projects.

Keep up the good work,

A.R.,Toronto

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks! and thanks in particular for the link to soundsnap. It looks cool, and I like that browse feature.