"Yellow Bird" slack key instrumental - iPhone video

[Fran Guidry]

The melody we call "Yellow Bird" was originally composed to accompany a poem "Choucoune" way back in the 1883. The English lyrics were written in the late 50s and the song entered the folk music lexicon, but the best selling version was an instrumental by the Arthur Lyman Group - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lyman

Lyman was of Hawaiian descent, lived and performed on O`ahu, and his hit version of "Yellow Bird" became a Hawaiian music standard. I've fooled around with the song for years but this is the first time I've recorded the song. I realized recently that I had been playing a harmony rather than the melody so I changed my tuning from a C wahine to taropatch G (just open G - D G D G B D) on my Composite Acoustics OX Raw and came up with this arrangement:



Just for fun I set up my iPhone with an iRig Pro Duo instead of my usual collection of Panasonic Lumix cameras and Zoom recorder. I used an app called MoviePro for the capture, then edited in iMovie and uploaded from the phone to YouTube.

Honestly I don't think this will become my default recording rig, but it was interesting to see how capable these little gadgets have become. My dad worked for Southern Bell when I was growing up and he brought home one of the hand crank telephones that were being phased out in rural Louisiana in the late 50s. We've come quite a distance from party lines with hand cranked generators to having our phones tell us how to navigate.

Fran

[naluguy]

Sounds great to me Fran. Great sound and great playing as usual, well done! May have to try that set up.

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by naluguy

Sounds great to me Fran. Great sound and great playing as usual, well done! May have to try that set up.

Thanks Mr. Surfperson (grin).

Fran

[naluguy]

Shaka braddah!

[Organic Sounds Select Guitars]

I always enjoy your music, Fran. That sounded great.

[Glennwillow]

Nice job on this Fran!

I remember this song from way back!

- Glenn

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by LWSog

I always enjoy your music, Fran. That sounded great.

Thanks, Larry, I appreciate it.

Fran

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Glennwillow

Nice job on this Fran!

I remember this song from way back!

- Glenn

Yeah, this is definitely and oldie-but-goodie, I just didn't realized until I researched that it's getting close to 150 years old, at least on the melody side.

Fran