Extra drowsy Formula

I played toy piano and marimba on a cover of Yo La Tengo’s “My Little Corner of the World” by an Argentinian fellow named Alantl, whom I met through MetaFilter.  Listen to the song over here.

Here’s a song that I sing to my cat, who, like the song, is named Henry Pants. Because he has a lot on his plate and a short attention span besides, this song is less than a minute long. It features autoharp, glockenspiel, and the “Min-O-Matic” rhythm box.

Fun Facts:

1) The “choked” autoharp in the beginning is achieved by holding down two chord buttons at once, so that the only undampened note (F, in this case) is the one common to both chords (F and Bb). Mechanics!

2) I slowed the song down a little bit in order to sing the harmony part. (I sped it back up again afterward.)

3) Everything in this song is hard-panned. The lead vocals are up the center, autoharp all the way to the left, and everything else all the way to the right. (There’s a little bit of autoharp on the right, too, because I forgot to unplug the monitor speakers when I recorded the harmony vocals.)

4) This is a fun song to sing. You can sing it to your cat (or dog! or…hamster?) if they have a name that rhymes with “Pants.” If you are not so fortunate, I guess you can sing it to this picture of Henry Pants, himself.  Here are the words.

Just in time for Election Day! “Which Would You Rather Be?” is a nice song to sing on your way to or from your local polling place. (If you sing it at the polling place — or at work, or really in any polite company — you will be frowned at, at the very least.) If you’ve already voted, that’s okay — you can sing it while watching the returns, or simply learn it for next time. If you’re not in the United States, that’s okay, too — it will probably still apply.

This is what I did on Sunday, mostly, and finished up just now.

Autoharp, vocals, “Dr. Groove” drum machine, and the Alesis Micron for bass & organ. (I’m using my Shinybox ribbon mic for vocals and I’m pretty happy with it so far.)

The words are a couple of years old but apart from a vague melodic idea this is all new as of last weekend.