Howdy guys,

Thanks for all the encouragement. The polka was sort of tongue in cheek, but I do often find it refreshing (and challenging) to try different styles for songs to help me think outside the box. I have a bass buddy, Norm Stockton, who collaborated with some of his musical buddies in that same vein (thinking outside the box) and they came up with a very tasty album "A Dangerously Groovy Christmas". I've really been enjoying it

Anyway, I didn't meet my goal to have all the pieces done by the end of October, because I got sidetracked on an arrangement that one of our foreign exchange students wants to do with me as a duet. She goes by "Helen" here, and she's an extremely talented and dedicated musician. And she very obviously enjoys making music, which makes playing with her a lot of fun, even if she does intimidate me because she is so much more advanced musically than I'll probably ever hope to be. She plays violin and piano (not at the same time) beautifully, and it's just a lot of fun to jam with her. Having Composer (to create some files) and Player (so she can hear and practice with them) has worked out really well for a number of songs.

Anyway, she had a piece that started out as a violin duet of "Angels We Have Heard On High", which we've rearranged to suit violin and electric bass. My personal biggest challenge is doing the double-stops, which is getting easier with each practice session (by myself - we haven't practiced together yet).

I was thinking about why this is such a challenge for me, and I realized just how limited my music reading ability is. I picked up whistle years ago to learn to read notation, but it's a one-note-at-a-time instrument played from only the treble clef. When I took up bass, it's generally single-note-at-a-time from just the bass clef, and most of the time I'm not even reading a sheet, I'm reading a chord chart given to me by the guitarist and making up my own line, or mimicking a line that I've heard. My guitar playing is also a lot of "monkey hear, monkey do", or noodling with a chord progression that I have. So, one of my upcoming personal goals is to work on learning to play keyboard using a method from another Composer user, and see if I can improve my overall musicianship in the coming year

Anyway, all that lofty musical-goal aspiration aside, here's the piece we're going to do. I'm posting the practice file here, which also includes the Print part and an "easy notes" part that I put in for a former bass student (gotta love keeping connections ).

Enjoy!
Sherry

p.s. If I get any live recordings, I'll post them on SoundClick.

<center><table border=1><tr><td>Angels We Have Heard on High
Angels We Have Heard on High-Violin with Bass final.not (154.6 k)</td></tr></table></center>