One Small Uke For (a) Man…

The fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing continues with widescale television documentaries and interesting online articles.  I recall being disappointed when told I was too young to stay up & watch the live event  – I was four at the time!

Two items that struck me most today were interview snippets from the two surviving crew members: Michael Collins spoke of being along in the Command Module and Buzz Aldrin was wistful at the death of Neil Armstrong meaning the three of them would not stand together at this month’s celebrations.

Neil Armstrong Playing A Ukulele Whilst Quarantined After Returning From The Moon (Michael Kohan Photography)

Here’s an eleven-year old Asia’s Got Talent contestant, Feng E, playing his arrangement of David Bowie’s Space Oddity:

 

Happy Birthday JS Bach

It’s  composer Johann Sebastian Bach‘s 334th birthday today. He’s known for his prodigious output of Baroque music, including many important works such as his Brandenburg Concertos, Goldberg Variations, St Matthew Passion and the monumental The Well -Tempered Clavier, which was written using the adoption of the Western musical system we now use call ‘equal temperament‘ (ie what we use on our ukuleles, with adjacent notes all being split into equal steps) and contains twenty-four preludes and fugues in every major and minor key. (For example, here’s the one in C major.)

To celebrate his important legacy, today’s fun interactive Google Doodle lets you compose a short melody, which is then played back with complete Bach style four-part harmony added for you. Have a little play & practice writing some music! You can even change the key signature, note duration, tempo, add accidentals (sharps, flats & naturals) and download your creation as a MIDI file.

Bonus points if you can guess the PLUC tune reimagined in Bach harmonies below!

JS Bach Google Doodle 21/03/19