the wrens

...our shore town knockdown sure was fun

Okey doke, here’s song/part #2. It’s the bridge piano part to ‘she sends kisses’ and although it’s not hard to play, it’s more involved and more to remember than say, the one for ‘hopeless’.

Taking you back to those piano lessons you crammed for right before your parents car left the driveway for the dreaded half-hour, note that although this bridge does hit a few different keys while it lumbers along, the overall song is in F (or dm) so all those ‘B’s are flat, students!
(except in measure 7 for the G Major chord).

Also note that the end – where it goes to the repeated A’s & B-flat’s – isn’t really there on the record. But just figuring that that’ll double the high pingy guitar parts nicely and give you a way to finish out the section.

[11/06/06: someone wrote to ask about the F# in measure 4 – a valid question, since the song’s in Bb and there is no F# in the key of Bb. But in this case, just forgot to add the chord symbol above that measure: it’s a D Major chord so just for that one bar, it really is F#. We’ll add that to the music in a bit. If none of that makes any sense, don't worry - you don't have to know how the engine works to drive the car (thanks, Ian)]

Again, the email is:

5th_wren@wrens.com

or go to the ‘contact’ page here:

click this butooon

(and be sure to let us know which city you're in and which song/part you wanna try for).

Bon chance.

And thanks as always,
the wrens

...and every half-assed offer

Okey doke….so first up is an easy one – partially ‘cause we wanna start small and easy, partially ‘cause we’ve had some tech problems getting this all up online this week and partially ‘cause we haven’t figured out how we’ll work the extra on-stage guitars yet.

So this is the piano part that comes in at the end of ‘hopeless’ (track #5 on the meadowlands). Technically, it starts almost exactly at 4’:27” into the song right at the end of the last long two-part harmony held-note thing in the outro chorus although it is a little hard to hear (mixing digital piano on record not being a strong point). But it’s there.

For this weekend – Philadelphia & Washington D.C., 10/27 & 1028 respectively – we’ll take the first folks that email by say tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 (that’s Friday, 10/27), throw the names in Jerry’s said bowler, pick one and email you back before we leave. Sorry for the slapdash last-minute poop, but you know us. And we know nothing.

Again, the email is:

5th_wren@wrens.com

or go to the ‘contact’ page here:

click this large peppermint candy, Gumby

(and be sure to let us know which city you're in and which song/part you wanna try for)

Then by next week, we’ll have more songs & parts up and a more official sign-up email set up. Don’t expect the handwriting to get much better though, sadly.

Thanks very much for playing along…

the wrens

View the piano part...

Welcome…..to THUNDERDOME, Raggedyman!

As we’d mentioned last week in the little preview blurb about all this, there are a bunch of songs we either don’t play live or don’t play all that well. In most cases, there are simply too many parts on the recorded versions and we either can’t figure a way around not playing the parts live, can’t cover them with just the four of us or just haven’t gotten around to or felt like rearranging the song yet (like half the other poop we do on-stage).
The solution? Well, maybe rehearsal, sure, but for now…The 5th wren.

So essentially, in the links below are the TAB/standard notation for the extra parts for specific songs – could be a guitar part, could be a baritone, could be a piano etc. – and we’ll be adding more as we go.

Your mission, citizen, should you choose to accept it, is to check the ‘Tours’ page and see when we’re playing a stripmall liquor store near you, and email us here to throw your hat in the ring to play one of parts:

5th_wren@wrens.com

or go to the ‘contact’ page here:

click this lifelike button to get there

(please be sure to specify which song/part and which city/show you’re shooting for)

For now at least, to keep it as shabbily fair as we can without actually trying, we’ll take any email entries up to an arbitrarily chosen cut off date before any given show, throw the names in one Jerry’s bowler hats, pick a lucky, lucky winner and let you know via the electronic mails.

And that person will win my entire chocolate factory.

No…but should you be that luckiest of ducks, then log in the requisite tens of minutes it’ll take to master your part, have that graduation tux taken out a bit, and come showtime, when we get to that song in the set, we’ll call you up on stage, whereby you’ll then strut on up with the confidence bordering on cockiness we wish WE possessed and together we’ll proceed to kick out the funk, motherjammers.
Should be fun.

Now, this is for real insofar as you’re really gonna be playing the part and people will hear you and stuff. But that said, we’re really trying to encourage the non-pro’s out there to sign up if only ‘cause half the reason we’re doing this is that things have gone real well for us in the last couple years (thanks mostly to all of you reading this) and it’s truly a hoot to get up on stage and play songs for an appreciative audience. And we’d like to try to share a wee bit of that.

You should see the link for the songs on the right rail menu right under this ‘5th wren’ one. Or here’s the shortcut for the first:

a hopeless piano part

Thanks as always & best of luck,

Wonka, William

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