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Myfanwy
5:00pm, Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Current mood: relaxed 
If you're a fan of Welsh male voice choirs you will certainly be familiar with "Myfanwy", one of the best in a great field of Welsh choral songs. I had certainly heard it a number of times over the years but I heard it again recently on YouTube sung unaccompanied by Olwen Morgan in memoriam to the Aberfan disaster. Her heartfelt rendition inspired me transcribe it and create my own arrangement of this all-time classic.
The song was written in 1875 with words by Richard Davies, ("Mynyddog") and music by Joseph Parry. It
is most often heard in Parry's TTBB male voice choir arrangement and it is a truly wonderful piece of work all round. I don't speak Welsh but I love the sound of it and it is clear that this is high grade poetry, being the sad heartfelt plea from a man to his failed love. The choral version is set in Db to suit proper tenors as it goes up to a high Ab. The range is just an octave so it may be sung in the original key an octave low by a bass but although it is easily possible it is a little low for proper dramatic effect. The famous Welsh baritone: Bryn Terfel sang it in G, which is a good key for most people as it only goes up to a D. I chose this key before independently as it was the first key I tried after transposing the song and it worked well.
It took me the best part of a day to transcribe the choral version from a crappy JPG, type in the lyrics, analyse the harmony, transpose it and write the piano accompaniment. I have done a lot of harmonic analysis over the decades and I know when I am working on a masterpiece. Joseph Parry really knew his stuff and he certainly made the most of a relatively simple tune. His use of long drones by the low voices might seem overly simple at first glance but in fact, it is the best way to accompany this tune. One of the signs of a master is not to overdo an arrangement. Just because you CAN doesn't always mean that you SHOULD! Sometimes you need to step back and give the melody the floor. This is one such time.
Parry also shows his class with his TASTEFUL use of suspensions, 9ths, 4ths, diminished and augmented chords. Just one of each over the whole verse; beautifully restrained and the effect is magnificent. It was a pleasure to work with his harmonies and I only found cause to change it twice and then only for one note each. I was able to add more notes below the melody and lower bass notes as I was writing for the piano. I could have gone over the top but, like Parry, I kept it simple, honoured the harmonies and let the song speak. In the end I was taking notes out in order to keep the proper effect.
My arrangement (click for full score).
I am not Welsh but my great, great, grandfather was and I have been to Wales a few times and have always enjoyed myself there and found occasion to sing in Welsh. I pretty much know Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and Calon Lân off by heart and I found that when I launched into these at pubs the locals would join in. Good times!
If you have access to a piano I recommend you give my piano arrangement a go and if you have someone who can sing in Welsh so much the better. I found it fun to play and so should you.
Just another day in the life of a composer. My life is full of days like these.
The wonderful thing about music is that there is always more! It never runs out for me. Sure, the inspiration to write songs is not as hot as it once was but I'm still writing SOME tunes and in the meantime there is an entire WORLD of songs to harmonise and arrange. Bozhe moi!
Currently reading:
Overgeared by Park Saenal/Redice Studio.
An Echo Chamber
8:00pm, Monday, April 27th, 2026
Current mood: tired 
YouTube thumbnail of "An Echo Chamber". Click to watch the clip.
At 3am on 26th of Feb I was awoken with the first line of a song. The line was "You live your life in an echo chamber." It came with part of a tune, so I went to the piano and hit E4 and found the first part of the melody in C. It sounded too plain so I tried it in D and found the first suspension, then moved it to E, which seemed best, where I found the bass line. From there it was straightforward to find the rest of the tune although I had to write a high E in order to make the 2nd half work.
This was the first time, (but not the last), that I needed to do a proper arrangement, while I was writing the tune, in order to FIND the tune. I suspect that a lot of musically advanced songs are written this way. The bass line can dictate some parts of the tune as well as the harmony which produces unexpected results and can help an old songwriter like myself to find new jewels in a thoroughly worked-over landscape.
We tune-smiths all eventually find ourselves in rut and it's not so easy to break out. Guitarist songwriters are usually the first to fall into the mire as the melodic landscape visible from the guitar appears much more limited than it does on the piano. Having said that, it is possible to play anything on the guitar, so in THEORY it is possible to write anything but in FACT the more advanced tunes and harmonies are much harder to find there.
The landscape visible on the piano appears much broader and richer and the creative tune-smith can have a long and productive time there exploring multitudes of ideas. Writing in different keys is a wonderful way to break through the block of rehashing your previous finds but eventually even that palls.
A SONG is a special kind of melody that has to grab the heart and it has to be strong and unique. Most people are incapable of finding such a thing and most of those that do find some good tunes only manage a handful of really good ones and spend their productive life churning out weak things and rehashes of their good stuff. Bruce Springsteen is a classic example and most famous pop stars are in the same boat. Most of these people have less than 100 finished songs, often less than 50.
There are not many song writers who can keep the good stuff coming for decades and who have written 20 or more great songs: Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, John Lennon, Burt Bacharach, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Elton John, Neil Diamond, John Fogerty, Ian Anderson, Tom Waits... There aren't too many more. You can look at Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Songwriters" list and most of them are mediocre or only produced 10 or less great songs. Jimmy Webb and James Taylor are good examples of the latter: Whilst they do have GREAT songs there are only 10 or so of them each. Lennon & McCartney are on an entirely different level. Singers like Bjork, Prince and Tom Petty simply don't have ANY great songs and most of Rolling Stones' candidates are in the same boat. Clearly Rolling Stone have their head up their arse and have no idea of what constitutes a great song. A rap is not a song and Richard Rodgers, who wrote "The Sound Of Music", "Oklahoma" and "South Pacific", didn't even make the list!
Anyway, I have written almost 300 songs now and I think they are all strong and all unique. You can decide for yourself whether I am deluded after you have heard them professionally performed and recorded. In any event I have certainly churned out a lot of songs over a long period of 50 years with no sign of stopping. Few indeed can say that. Even greats like Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carole King and Bob Dylan wrote their last good song before they were 60, probably before they were 50.
We have all faced the problem of our well of inspiration running dry. Even those of us blest with the deepest wells eventually find the bottom. For many years I assumed that I would never reach the bottom as I could always find a good new tune, alas though, for the past few years it hasn't been as easy as it used to be. This doesn't mean that my well is completely dry though. Clearly not! However I have found that I need to change my attitude, perspective or approach in order to find clean, new water.
I was happy with my tune to "An Echo Chamber" and set about writing more words. Since the first line was already there it was just a matter of expanding the subject to 4 verses. It is a piece of cautionary advice to the Millennial "cancel culture" who are intolerant beyond the dreams of the older generations and who think that they can simply shut out the dissenting voices in the outside world and everything will be fine. Clearly it won't! Hiding one's head in the sand is a recipe for disaster.
I refined my piano accompaniment over the following week and then set about trying to sing it. The song is simple enough to sing until you get to the high note. I am a standard bass with a range from E4 to E2, although I can sometimes hit notes outside this depending on the day. The high note is an E4 and I used to be able to sing it without trouble but at 64 I found it VERY difficult and began to wonder if it were possible for me at all. When I was a teenager I wrote plenty of E4s in my songs and it was just another note in my range. Not so much now...
I had some persistent throat phlegm and I busied myself with other musical projects while I waited for it to subside. After a week in Edenhope where I sang every day I felt like I might be able to get there and then I was able to reclaim most of what I had lost by concentrating on strong diaphragm pressure rather than throat pressure and a lot of chest voice to compete with the volume of my piano with the lid up.
This made the difference and after hitting some high Es I set about recording the piano part and then the vocal part.
The piano part was VERY difficult for me, just as it had been for "Carry Me Back To East Kentucky". I am not a concert pianist and although I can play each section of my arrangements I find that when I try to put them together at proper tempo with the recording pressure I inevitably make mistakes. It took me around 50 takes to get enough usable takes to make the backing track. Considering it isn't THAT hard a piece I find it hard to explain why...
The vocal part was easy EXCEPT for the high note! I knew I wasn't going to get a beautiful clean note so I was shooting for something that was more or less in tune. I was able to hit it in practice but once the phones were on my ears I couldn't sing quite the same way and murdered a bunch of attempts. Ah well. I was able to get some takes that I was prepared to put up with even though I knew they weren't ideal. Close enough would have to do. I had a song to get out after all! I eschewed the idea of running my vocal takes through pitch correction. I prefer to let my voice speak for itself. It may not be perfect but at least it isn't fake and I can sing all my stuff live without a mic and achieve the same result.
Mixing the various audio takes together was tricky and time consuming as I had to sync them all manually as I did not use a click track. Eventually I got it sorted however and then it was time to mix together the video tracks...
Each audio take had its corresponding video take but they were not synced together in any way and that had to be done manually as well. I had hoped to use the low grade audio track from the camera to help with this but there was little visual similarity between the proper audio track waveform and the one from the camera mic. It was a tiresome process but eventually I had it. Then I needed to crop the vocal video into a box in the corner of the piano footage. Shotcut changed the screen to something horrible that I couldn't return from and then hung up before I had saved it all. Not happy!
This was not my first rodeo however and I simply put my head down and retraced my steps. In the end I probably lost only 30 minutes and I soon had the video done and exported.
After leaving the final result until the next day I adjusted the audio mix a little before generating the final cut and uploading it to YouTube. I was happy with the end result despite its imperfections as I am realist and I know that perfection is not going to be possible in my current situation. Clearly a better result could be achieved with in a professional studio with professional musicians but this is what we have for now. In judging the innate quality of the song you should take this into account before making a fatuous statement like "It doesn't sound as good as "The Beatles". Of course it doesn't! They had an expert team working with them and they were young, energetic, in fine voice and NOT suffering from arthritis...
In order to judge the song and not the recording you should ask yourself: "What would it have sounded like if the Beatles had recorded it? Here's the YouTube clip. Have a good listen and ask yourself the question...
Here is the music score if anyone wants to have a go at it.
Currently reading:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin