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It’s several years since I picked up my classic, but this weekend I finally got around to restringing it. When the strings had settled, I did some noodling that evolved into a pseudo-classical thing that I finally put down as an MP3. It has one or two rough spots, but I think I might edit it a little and use it as soundtrack for a video at some point.
David Harley
A piece I was playing about with a few months ago on resonator guitar. This is actually played on the same guitar, but messing about with it to get a more 1950s steel guitar sound. Still needs work on the production, but I like the overall feel of this version.
Backup
David Harley
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A lengthy piece that combines my guitar solo ‘Swifts’ with my setting of a poem by W.B. Yeats – ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’.
Backup:
For this more recent version, the guitar sounds better but it’s not the best I’ve ever sung it. And there are some bits of the guitar part in the older version I like. I guess the answer is to have yet another shot at it, but in the meantime…
Backup:
And here’s the poem.
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
David Harley Words & Music 
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