Tim Tunes
I’m Tim Rose and I’ve been writing songs for over 50 years. Each episode I’ll feature two or three songs that I’ve written over the years on a particular theme or subject or I'll interview someone who has been a key influence on me and my songwriting and performing. In the podcast I’ll explain what I am doing in each song, where they came from and the circumstances under which they were recorded. In interviews I'll explain how we met, how the interviewee became involved in music and how they influenced my work.
Tim Tunes
2-2021 Christmas Special
Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas. Christmas Time is upon us and all around us. You can’t ignore it. From my perspective, it’s best just to dive right in. It can be glorious celebrating the birth of Jesus. God gave us his son, so I got you cufflinks.
Hi. I’m Tim Rose and this is the Tim Tunes Christmas Special pod cast. In this episode I’ll cover several Christmas carols and talk about Christmas over the years.
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[Intro]
[Intro Theme – Motor]
[Play Sleigh Bells]
Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas. Christmas Time is upon us and all around us. You can’t ignore it. From my perspective, it’s best just to dive right in. It can be glorious celebrating the birth of Jesus. God gave us his son, so I got you cufflinks. He-he cufflinks. The rotary phone of men’s accessories. It’s a funny word, cuff-links.
But I digress… where was I. Oh yes. Christmas!
It’s no coincidence that Christmas comes in the darkest, most depressing time of the year (if you live in the northern hemisphere that is). We used to give things to God to make sure the days would get longer, lambs, calves, kids and even the occasional young lady. Most civilizations have a festival around this time of year. The word “Yule” comes from Odin’s Wild Hunt festival, for instance. Very convenient to have a celebration with lots of fires and colored lights right when the nights are longest.
But whatever its origins, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Right?
[Pod Lick]
Hi. I’m Tim Rose and this is the Tim Tunes Christmas Special pod cast. In this episode I’ll cover several Christmas carols and talk about Christmas over the years.
This podcast is also a fund raiser for Voices of Hope, a group that I perform with in Boston to raise money for cancer research at Boston General Hospital. You can donate at vohboston.com. Just click the button in the upper right corner and take it from there. If you can’t donate then…
[Sing- Christmas is coming.]
C Am F C G C
Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
Am F C G C
If you haven’t got a penny a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you.
[Pod Lick – Big D]
[What Child is This?]
When I was a little kid, back in East Tennessee, we’d always go to church to celebrate Christmas. On Christmas or on Christmas eve there would be a special Christmas service that featured the kids singing mainly religious Christmas Carols. It was from there that I got my love of the old traditional carols – It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, O Little Town of Bethlehem, We Three Kings and the like. I love the modal oddities of the melodies. It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the melodies were based on drinking songs. I’m sure there was a lot of drinking going on when they were written. Plus, the songs are so old I have no worries about royalties, so…
Here is my acoustic guitar version of “What Child Is This” Enjoy!
[Play Song – What Child is This]
This song uses the same melody as the traditional song “Greensleeves” so, conveniently, I can play it year-round.
[Pod Lick]
[Computer Christmas]
When I got out of college, I lived in the Washington, DC area. While casting about looking for ways to apply my Theater degree to the real world, I decided use computers to make music. I had always had bands and was moderately successful as a musician. In college, I started performing my own songs in several of the groups we formed. I wanted to learn how to use computers to write and perform music. I dreaded going back to school. Plus, I couldn’t afford it. So instead, I decided to go to work for one of the companies that were just starting to sell what were then called “microcomputers”.
I got a job with a small company called “The Math Box” that sold calculators, watches and, occasionally, microcomputers. We had a retail store front where customers would come to buy our wares. Shoppers, like traffic, come in waves, especially around Christmas. But there were long stretches where there were no customers at all. I used these times to teach myself how to program these microcomputers to make music.
Now keep in mind this was early 1980 and there was no Windows, no Apple Mac, and no DOS. Everything had to be written in the BASIC computing language. I had to figure out how to get sound out of the computer. How to make sure that the pitches for the sound were correct. How to make sure that the timing was correct. Then I had to write a program that would play the pitches in the right order at the right time, and voila, a song, of sorts.
When it came time to put together a few songs, I decided what better than to string a few Christmas Carols together and play them for customers as a demonstration of the computer’s capabilities.
[Podlick – Eye Nu U Wud]
Our advertising agent happened to be in the store one day and heard what I was doing. So they decided to include my little composition in a radio ad. Fortunately, for you, I still have a copy of that ad. So here in all of it’s lo-fi glory is that radio ad. Hit it, Atari.
[Play song – Math Box Commercial ]
That little sequence took me about 100 hours to make…
Now contrast that with this little version of “O Come All Ye Faithful” I did in the early 2000’s. I was able to edit this version on my computer using a program that made the music look like sheet music. I then sent the signals to a bank of digital samplers and synthesizers to get the sounds. It may have taken me an hour to do this.
[Play song – O Come All Ye Faithful]
Although Chip Davis of Mannheim Steamroller has nothing to worry about, We’d come a long way in the last 20 years…
[Pod Lick]
[Christmas Flu]
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, until it isn’t. Most of us love Christmas, myself included, but it can also be a stress filled time. As much as I love the season, I used to get all hung up on gift giving. This next song is an original Carol I wrote about that anxiety called “Christmas Flu”. It seemed appropriate what with the world’s current health situation.
Written around 2009, here is the world premiere of “Christmas Flu”
[Play Song – Christmas Flu]
Ah-choo, indeed….
[Pod Lick]
[God Rest Ye Merry-We 3 Kings]
I performed this next song with Voices of Hope once live and once as a part of an online event in 2021 – Hope for the Holidays. You can still listen to the song on You Tube as a part of the VOH Hope For the Holidays if you’d like to hear more. And please donate if you can.
Engineered by Darren Maguire and recorded at the Voices of Hope studio in 2019 are Greg Chastain, Dianne Early, Eliza Healy and me, here is a medley of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and We Three Kings.
[Play – God Rest Ye/We 3 Kings]
[Outro]
Thanks for joining us for this special Christmas Episode. If you stick around after the end you can get a special treat. A recording of my son Josh performing Silent Night when he was 6 or 7 years old.
If you haven’t already, please don’t forget to donate to VoH. As always you can subscribe to this podcast or stream or purchase my published music on your favorite source, Spotify, Pandora, Apple or Amazon. Until next time!
[Outro Pod Lick]
[After Outro Pod Lick ends, Play – Josh Sings Silent night]
[Very quietly at the end] God Bless Us Every One