David Harley Words & Music

Moonflow instrumental

My instrumental Moonflow was written and recorded in Ludlow, using Garageband on a MacBook. Originally it was a short, improvised introduction to a recording of Bert Jansch’s Needle of Death. Later, I thought the instrumental introduction was interesting enough to stand as a tune in its own right. (And I’m not at all biased.) That recording of Bert’s song hasn’t been released commercially, by the way.

The acoustic guitar that comprises the first section is actually the entire improvised introduction to Bert’s song. The second and third sections are the same section, but electronically tweaked and with overdubbed instruments.

This is the version that was released as a single. It also got a mention in my book So Sound You Sleep. If it matters, acoustic guitar was a Gibson J160E, the slide guitar was a Gretsch Bobtail round-neck resonator guitar, and the electric guitar was a Variax Standard impersonating a Coral Sitar and then (if I remember correctly – it was quite a few years ago and I didn’t make a note at the time!) a Rickenbacker 370. And if it doesn’t matter, feel free to disregard the previous sentence.

Recording:

Acoustic, resonator and electric guitars by David Harley.

Additions to Selective Symmetry Substack

Information about two new sections to my Substack publication Selective Symmetry: one specializing in music, the other in verse. There will be others, since it occurs to me that not everyone who is interested in some of my output will want to read all of it!

Floorsinging for Beginners update

Floorsinging for Beginners update

A very old document that I’ve been promising to update since 2018.

Once upon a time, Neil Corbett of the Bracknell Folk Club asked on uk.music.folk:

“What would be your top 3 tips for aspiring folk club floor singers? I’d lke to put a top 10 tip list on our Bracknell Folk Website.”

However, the response was so enthusiastic that it seemed a shame not to use all the advice that was offered, so I suggested putting together an FAQ. In fact, this is less an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document than a tipsheet, but we hoped it would be of use. The site on which I was keeping it disappeared several years ago, and in fact I’d forgotten about it until I came across it in a dark corner of my network. There are probably a lot fewer folk clubs around than when we put this together in the late 1990s, but I’ve been to enough open mic nights and jam sessions subsequently to believe that there are still people who are new to singing in public who might find it of some use, even if references to cassettes seem a little quaint in the second decade of the 21st century.

David Harley