Vol 3 & 4, another double CD, another 160 minutes of pure listening pleasure for children and parents alike
Another eclectic and stimulating mix of Nursery Rhymes and Children’s Songs performed by real musicians on real vintage instruments in many more interesting styles. A timeless collection for children to enjoy, opening their eyes, ears, hearts and minds to the sounds of real music performances. A further 67 full length tracks and 23 new tunes creating another enjoyable and stress free listening experience for both the child and the adult alike!
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This next collection was always in my mind to produce as I’d had so much fun making ‘The Nursery Rhyme Collection Volume 1 & 2’ and inspired by many positive comments from the first album I set to work with a determined smile on my face. I wanted to maintain the same formula of using talented local musicians to bring their own feel to the tracks, using the same ‘Sing-along-a song Band’ core musicians that had worked so well on the previous get together. Clearly other parents had shared the same disappointment as me when purchasing Nursery Rhyme products for my own children and there seems to be a definite gap in the market for premium quality music for children, not only to treat them with respect but to keep our sanity as adults when hearing them repeatedly whilst the children listen. After all, why should we give our children sub standard music when we wouldn’t want to listen to our own favourite music if it was produced in a cheap, tinny, lifeless and unreal manner? My own children (2 & 4 years old) have been listening to this album as it was being created and I have used them to vet it and direct it. They have been telling me what they like and more importantly what they don’t like and a few tracks had to be completely reworked to satisfy their demands! There were so many more great Nursery Rhymes and Children’s songs I just had to include on this album, many of which I’d wanted to record the first time around but had run out of space on the double CD! Songs such as the classic ‘Morningtown Ride’ for example that took me right back falling in love with songs played to me as a child on my dad’s ‘Gramophone’ and tape machine.
One problem we faced with this album was that some of the most famous Nursery Rhymes were simply just that; ‘rhymes’ and verbal rhymes only, they had a rhythm but no melody. For example try reciting ‘This Little Piggy’, there is no recognised tune to it. The challenge was to create a new tune to fit the well known rhythm, one that children could easily grasp, hopefully we succeeded. On this album we further developed the idea from Volume 1 & 2 of stylistic versions of children’s songs with influences from varied genres and our own personal music collections, feedback from the previous volumes showed that this aspect was enjoyed by the adult listener. Stand out tracks of this nature are ‘Thirty Days Hath September/Tinker Tailor’ and ‘Wee Willy Winkey/Jack Be Nimble’ where musicians from tribute bands were used to their full ‘tribute’ potential. A further highlight for me was ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ where I had the pleasure of working with the one and only ‘Jess Conrad’; a true star of 60’s fame who provided the excellent lead vocal complemented by brilliant rapping from ‘Duke01’. We also have the pleasure of introducing ‘Harriet Hopkins’ and ‘lalala’; both up and coming young acts to look out for. We were truly thrilled to have these guys guest perform on our album but of course additional thanks goes out to every musician involved, some familiar to us from Volume 1 & 2 and a few new ones; we couldn’t have achieved such a beautifully varied product without them.
So let’s provide our children with music of some integrity that won’t drive us mad and hope that they will enjoy it so much that they remember it fondly for years to come, perhaps even inspiring some to take up creating music themselves.
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