Merry Music – But who’s Metadude?

That Magic Memory Mirror is cool- made my first visit this week.  I’d remembered little snapshots and soundbites of song & sound from our lost week, but the mirror revealed a whole lot more that went on.  Our Trailer Song continued to be a hit throughout the week.

 

The children were all dancing and singing to the Burgeron Children’s Song. And the ABC Song was a hit with the real little ones. It wasn’t clear who commissioned it, but little Sally Lou and the other Burgeron children had a cute cow song for our sweet Anna Cow. Although Don Burgeron was rockin’ the joint with his version of “Who Let The Cow’s Out“.

There were group singalongs, requested solos by Nanalou, myself (Rochelle Louridge), Mama Boo and Cousin Ron.  Dr. M even had a go (after she’d had a bit too much of the ol’ Burgeron Backwoods Brew.)  The Headless Inkspots were in fine form performing a great rendition featuring a banjo, ukelele and Strawberry Arizona washboard.

 

But that duet with Nanalou and Cousin Froid was… shall we say… an event that I am amazed any of us could forget.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when my daughter, Amber, and I sang “Motherless Child”

 

Cousin Ron was heard playing the old piano out in the cow barn behind the trailer.

 

Who knew Little Ron Burgeron’s music lessons would pay off in the long run. Piano AND Guitar. The man has talent. But his moonshine induced croning over “Betty-Lou Schaeffner” was a sorry sight.

 

Aunt Sappy was reciting love poetry in all manner of languages. Her German poem “An Anna Blume” was described as a parody of a love poem, an emblem of the chaos and madness of the week.

 

 

But who’s this Metadude guy?  Some of the Burgeron family members were really digging his techno vibe. But the mirror only let me hear the music and allowed me to catch a few glimpses of the story. I’m really curious now.  If anyone has any more detail please share with the rest of us.

 

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ABC Duet

Inspired by recent Burgeron stories Sally Lou makes a photo of an alien.

Met with Little Sally Lou this afternoon for her computer lessons.  This week’s computer classes were all about audio, so we played with audio stuff as well as taking pictures using different effects with the Photobooth app on the iPhone. The alleged alien invasions (Anna Cow’s relatives, The Boos, Don)  being discussed on our site may’ve influenced this one.

I had so much fun with Sally Lou, her dad & mom that I got home too late to make a proper blog post for the family.  How many other Nana’s get to have fun like this with their great-great grandchildren?

The DS106 website has this great thing called the assignment bank where students can find and create their own assignments.  I wanted to do something that we could post to the site. I looked around in the Audio Assignments section and didn’t find much that seemed like a six year old Sally Lou and I could do easily together.  So I created my own.  And I decided to toss my 3 year old great-great grandson DJ into the mix as well.  It’s a mashup duet of the two of them singing the ABC song.  I recorded DJ on Wednesday night, then Sally Lou sang her version this afternoon (Thursday).  With a little help from Nana Lou & GarageBand 6.0.5 they’re now singing a duet.

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The Making Of….

It helps all of us learn by sharing with the rest of the family how we created something.  I’ve found I learn by both sharing my process with others and reading how others have completed their projects.  So here’s what I did to create this delightful duet.

I recorded both children using the iTalk App on my iPhone. The original files were in an .aifc format which I could load into GarageBand but not easily onto this site for you to listen to.  I used the iTunes feature of “create mp3 version” to put them into the format that I’ve post here.  And since our free site doesn’t allow us to upload audio media files, I uploaded them to Rochelle Louridge’s Rockylou’s DS106 Blog site and linked to them that way.

Sally Lou sings her ABC’s

 

DJ sings his ABC’s

 

I tried a couple of different ways to assemble audio snippets: Having DJ simply repeat after Sally Lou; the two of them singing in unison, then a combination of the earlier two attempts.  With my desire to keep it short and interesting to the listener I felt the final attempt with a mix of DJ “repeating” after Sally Lou and at other times singing in unison was my best effort.  Here’s a screen shot of my GarageBand workspace.

I was very pleasantly surprised when their ending segments were almost in harmony.  How lucky was that?

I have a few more audio tracks from this week that I plan on editing and posting later this weekend.  Stay tuned!

Storytelling with Sally Lou

I was excited to start teaching my first “computer” class with little Sally Lou today.  (My great granddaughter on the Louridge side of the family.) Her friend will be joining us a little later in the month.  We plan on playing together every Thursday at 4:30 until the big Burgeron Family Reunion at the end of August.

It is amazing what kids can do if given the opportunity.  She dove right in.  Just like her great grandma Nana Lou.  After her dad asked if we were okay with onions as part of our dinner, (We both wanted to say, “Yuck”, although not to her dad.  We were polite and said, “No thank you.” instead.)  Then little Sally Lou used the Paper 53 app to draw a picture of an onion on a plate. She asked if we could make the onion smaller and place it on another picture with a person on it. (Creative kid!) But ol’ Nana Lou couldn’t figure out which app would help her that was easy to use on the spot. Sally Lou then suggested she could just draw the person in the corner. You can see her drawing below.  She is pushing the plate away with the onion on it and her tongue is sticking out. “Ewww….”

“Eww… Yuck… Onions” (Lady sticking her tongue out and pushing away a plate with an onion on it. Drawn by Sally Lou)

 

Silly Sally Lou turns herself old with the “Old Fart” app. Beard? Pipe? And look at that hair doo!

She also liked playing with the “Old Fart” app. Turning herself and her dolls into really old ladies – some very silly. The app crashed a couple of times on us, and I let her know that’s just the way it is with technology – sometimes it doesn’t work and we just figure out how to get around it.  That’s an important lesson for those Burgerons who are just dipping their toes into the digital media world.  Things go wrong all the time – expect it and move on.

This week’s computer classes are asking us to explore “What is a Story?”. So I asked Sally Lou if she’d like to tell a story about the pictures and I’d record it to post on our site.  She wanted to practice to get it just right. I told her that sometimes your first time is the best, but that I wouldn’t record her until she was ready.  After dinner she felt ready and I loaded up the iTalk app on my iPhone. I didn’t have to teach her about the Story Spine. She just knew how to tell a story.

 

Here’s little Sally Lou’s story about the old lady who wanted to swim, but couldn’t because she was too old.  Hmmm… I’m wondering if I’m  the old lady. 🙂

The old lady that wanted to learn to swim.

Then the woman next door helped her some more and more and more.

The woman next door who helped her to learn to swim.

But then after that the old lady got weak and tired. So she went into her house and never swam again.

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I told her about the other Burgeron Family children around the world, and that I’d try to set-up a video chat for us.  I’m hoping Little Boo and Bella Burgeron might want to meet Sally Lou. Any other family members want to stop on by?

I wonder what the story is behind this one? I can’t wait until next Thursday to find out what the story is behind this one? Any guesses out there Burgeron Family?

 

Burgeron Bovines

We’ve had some disparaging comments and discussion of the animals of the bovine persuasion hanging around at the Burgeron place.  But let’s set the record straight. When Don was talking about those “Damn Dumb Cows” he was referring to the boorish uncultured cattle next door on the Bergeron spread (that’s with an “e” not a “u” – read more about the name confusion here. ) The BUrgeron bovines, on the other hand, are intelligent, creative, fun loving and talented creatures. Although we have to admit that occasionally we get a stray odd one in the bunch that likes to eat barb wire that we just can’t explain.

There’s a bit of a rumor going around that they may’ve gotten into some of that Bovine County Vodka, or perhaps Cousin Clitus poured a nip of the ol’  Burgeron Backwoods Brew into their watering trough before Don captured their joyous frolicking on video. And we don’t quite know what to make of these bovine conspiracy theorist folks who are afraid that our creative, cultured and computer literate cows are somehow preparing themselves to take over the world.

They’ve come a long way from their trip over from the old country being hauled by Great Aunt Cornelia down a dutch canal to being unloaded at the New York docks, then Ma & Pa Burgeron turning them into cheese making dairy cows – following in the footsteps of the de Boer family next door who were co-founders of the Happy Cow Cheese corporation.

At one point the dutch cheese masters from the Prima Donna company had courted Ma & Pa. Unfortunately, even with my Louridge family Italian cheese artisan connections they just weren’t able to acquire the artistic skill to aging the cheese properly, and that enterprising endeavor ended.

But let me tell you… when we claim our cows are creative, talented and fun-loving we’re not just spinning yarns. We’ve got proof right there posted on YouTube. Our very own star of the Burgeron Bovine Herd, Anna Cow, showed off her “hoofing” skills in a 2010 Cadbury commercial, “Tap Dancing Cows“.  Her dancing instructor, my grand-daughter Sappho, did her family proud.

And we’re just pleased as punch that Sappho is offering dance classes for the human side of the family this summer in preparation for the family reunion. Why little Sally Lou, Bonnie and Bella have already started preparing.  You can see them all below learning the Burgeron’s Children’s Trailer Song.

Anna Cow leading Sappho’s dance class teaching the young Burgeron girls the children’s  Burgeron Trailer song this summer.

Song for the Burgeron children

Burgeron family and neighbors

This old footage and an old recording have been mixed together to show the dance the Burgeron children sang and danced to.

We hope Bella, Donna, little Boo and Sally Lou will enjoy this song and dance coming summer at the reunion.
And … don’t forget dancing is even more fun when you do it together. So all adults (even mama Boo) can join the dance!

Meet Sally Lou

Little Sally Lou: dancer, singer, listener, inventor (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Flickr Commons)

The Burgeron clan have some great kids.  I’d like to introduce you to Sally Lou, my great grand daughter on the Louridge side.  She likes to dance and sing a lot. She and her Aunt Sappy are already planning a dance show for the big family reunion to celebrate my 100th birthday at the end of August.

What a voice this little gal has , and she likes to listen to music too.  She’s been listening to the family practicing the Burgeron Trailer House Blues.  I wonder if Uncle Ron will have a separate Burgeron children’s version just for the kids? I just think it would be so lovely to hear Sally Lou, Bella, Bonnie, DJ, and maybe even Little Boo singing all together. Those digital audio skills sure can come in handy when we adults want to share how proud we are of our little ones.

Sometimes Sally Lou likes to hide from grown-ups though, especially if they are going to go someplace she doesn’t want to go. I understand how Sally Lou feels.  Sometimes Nana Lou likes to hide from the grown-ups too. Do you know… this little lady has gone and made a machine to make a fake Sally Lou to go to the places that she doesn’t really want to go, and she can control it with a little remote control. She’s already on her way to growing up to be another famous inventor, like her Great Great Great Granny Roxy Louridge, the inventor of GIFaChrome. How could a Great Great Nana not be proud of all these wonderful Burgeron family children that are coming to join us this summer at The Trailer. 🙂

Burgeron children playing at Dr. M’s new tree house. [Image remix by Rochelle Lockridge- children courtesy of the Library of Congress Flickr Commons- background courtesy of John Johnston]

(Images courtesy of the Library of Congress Flickr Commons.  No known copyright restrictions.)