Hmmm... vitamins

I love a good cover version of a song I do.

Favourites include (in no particular order) 

Amy Winehouse doing the Beatles' "All my loving"

Jamie Cullum doing Pharrells "Frontin'"

William Orbit doing Samuel Barbers "Adagio for Strings"

There is a group out on the west coast of the States who have got the whole make-a-song-your-own thing locked down. So locked down in fact that they don't just stop at covering tracks but whole albums. And it isn't cheesy parody either.

Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you...

The Vitamin String Quartet
http://www.vitaminstringquartet.com/home

Covering everything from The Strokes to Adele, Mumford and Sons to Red Hot Chilli Peppers, if its big, chances are they've done it. They release songs at a pretty prolific rate too. Their most recent album is a selection of Sigur Ros' greatest hits.



Inspired by VSQ, I wrote string-trio cover of a pop-song. I wanted to pick a song or an artist from the 21st century had not received the VSQ treatment. I settled for the London-based band "Athlete" and the last song from their 2nd album "Tourist" called "I Love".

It's up there in my top ten favourite songs of all time as it holds some brilliant memories of special times. It's one of those rare songs where the entire song has a strong connection with me, not just a hook, the chorus or one clever line.

Anyway, I've attached my string cover version which you can download on the link below and a copy of the first page. You can check out the original song "I Love" by Athlete on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you source your music

"I Love strings" string trio arrangement of "I love" by Athlete

Music therapy

Music as a form of therapy is nothing new. Ancient thinkers such as Plato, Galen and Pythagoras (him of the triangle theorem fame) all wrote about music as a therapeutic agent.

Music therapy fascinates me. The song-writing process is extremely therapeutic for myself. Getting over the death of my grandad, I poured myself into writing music. That's how I dealt with the grief. And a symphony came out of it. That's how deep the grieving was.

Having a guitar is fantastic for me when writing songs about trying to make sense of the world, girls and life. I'm a baby at the guitar so I haven't developed my guitar playing skills and technique to match the level of my song-writing and musicality. A lot of practice is needed beforehand to match them up.

One guy whose guitar/singing skills match up to his song-writing (both to a high level) is Frank Turner. If you've heard any of Frank Turner's latest album "Tape Deck Heart", you'll know what I mean. This is an album written as therapy for the song-writer, a lot of the songs (if not all), are deeply personal, autobiographical songs. I really take my hat off to him to be so bold as to share the songs on that album, because the writing and the playing of those songs is clearly deep therapy for him (he indicates as much himself when I heard him interviewed on the Zane Lowe Radio 1 show).

That's all active music therapy i.e. the music acts as therapy for the player/writer. 

Then there is passive music therapy i.e. where the music acts as therapy for the listener.

Here are a couple examples of passive music therapy. The following video was forwarded to me by a colleague in my previous work place. I'm very grateful to her for for sharing this powerful video. Click on the link below to watch it.

http://youtu.be/fyZQf0p73QM

If you are interested in cases of musical awakening such as these, I recommend highly a book by Oliver Sacks "Musicophilia". It's full of similar and equally fascinating examples.

On a personal note, getting to play music live as a form of therapy is extremely fulfilling - even when the audience can not express themselves (e.g. people with advanced forms of dementia).

I was blessed to play saxophone and piano on a few occasions for residents of a nursing home I used to work at. Nothing as magical as what happened in the video above occured when I played (or at least to my knowledge it did not), but there were special moments especially at Christmas time and at a  leaving do when I got to play sax for the residents.

I recently returned there to play again and received this note and two bags of popcorn (the popcorn is an in-joke with the staff). Whatever the level of therapy I provided to anyone that listened, I was delighted to play and I will treasure this note for a long time, such is the therapeutic power of music and as the video showed, musical memories can be the deepest memories.

All about mind

Shameless plug here. I'm fundraising for a mental health charity called "Mind" by running the British 10k in July. You can check out my fundraising page at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/sammysax10k you can donate on there.

What has this got to do with music?
Good question.
I'll be selling the remainder of my saxophone love song CDs as part of the fundraiser. I've attached one of the songs on the CD as a sample.

Also the race rules, ban any mp3, ipods etc in the race itself,  so in my training I am running without any music. Which for me, as a musician is torture and is taking some discipline, but it hasn't killed me so far. Goes to show that a lot about running for me is in the mind, because I feel much slower and weaker without the sounds of Mendelssohn and Radiohead playing in my ears. Must be in the mind.

Will be posting more once I've got my summer plans sorted.

Peace (... which also happens to be the name of a band I'm listening to right now - check their album "In Love")

Another shameless plug, sorry.

Sample song - Moon River by Henry Mancini