JCHC Links: Fieldstone

Here at the JCHC, we sponsor a lot of local events.  These vary from special programs at the History Center, antique rifle and artifact shows, Victorian Christmas events, and much more.  Coming up next month, we are hosting a number of events for Victorian Christmas, but we do have a separate special event planned.  On Wednesday, December 22nd, the JCHC is sponsoring a musical concert featuring the locally-based folk band, Fieldstone.  Today, I thought I'd share with you the music of Fieldstone.  They are wonderful and talented musicians that should be heard by many.

Please check out their website to listen to some of their songs as well as learn a bit more about the band.
www.fieldstonemusic.com

For more information on the concert, please check out our Facebook Event Page.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: 105th Editing

I thought I'd share some updates on my 105th video project on this dreary, wet day in Brookville.  Yesterday, I finally finished doing the last of the video screen captures from Google Earth that will act as the primary focus for the project.  So, today I started sitting down and putting everything into iMovie.  The way I'm editing this is by year; 1861 will be it's own video, as will 1862, 1863, and so on.  I also have separate videos for my title sequence and the credits.  This will essentially allow the viewer to select the year in which they would like to view.

Now that everything is in place in iMovie, I sat down with a pencil and a sheet of paper to write narration for the movie.  Here is a picture of the mess:

While drafting the narration, I realized that there is need for more supplemental visuals in the video.  This will help to break up the monotonous virtual tour of the Google Earth screen captures.  If you take a close look at my narration under 1861, you'll notice I have marked where a "Secession Graphic" will fit into the video.  I searched to find something that I liked and could use, but this was not very successful.  So, I decided to make my own.  Here is what I came up with:

I think that this will work nicely in the video to show the Confederate States and when they actually seceded from the Union.  This is the first of what will probably be many supplemental slides that will be created over the course of editing.

These slides aren't the only thing that I've been working on today.  I also started some music editing for the video.  I found a Library of Congress page with primary sources for Civil War Music.  On it, I found a download for a version of the Civil War era song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"performed by the Airforce Band of Liberty.  I wanted to see what music would sound like in the intro for the project, so I used GarageBand to adjust the audio levels to fade in and out in the timeframe that I needed:

After the initial editing, I put the newly created .mp3 file into the iMovie.  Take a look and listen to what the intro the the 105th project might end up looking like:




That may or may not be the actual music that I use in the final version of this, but I wanted to play around with some audio to get an idea of what the end product will be like.

Feel free to leave comments or ask questions.

-Nathan

JCHC Fun Fact: Civil War Music

While editing and piecing together video today, I realized this project is lacking music.  I normally work with Pandora Radio playing in the background, so I never really noticed until I paused it to record some narration.  Sure, I could have the narration drive the videos, but that would be boring.  I would definitely be bored watching it, and I'm sure our patrons would also lose interest quickly.  To find a solution to this problem, I did what anybody would do; I searched for "civil war era music" on Google.  I figure putting authentic music in the video would be much more meaningful and appropriate.  On my search, I came across the "Music of the American Civil War" article on Wikipedia.  Reading through the article I found a very interesting fact that struck me.  Take a look at this passage from the article:

"Musical duels between the two sides were common, as they heard each other as the music traveled across the countryside. The night before the Battle of Stones River, bands from both sides dueled with separate songs, until both sides started playing Home! Sweet Home!, at which time soldiers on both sides started singing together as one.^[15] A similar situation occurred in Fredericksburg, Virginia in the winter of 1862–3. On a cold afternoon a Union band started playing Northern patriotic tunes; a Southern band responded by playing Southern patriotic tunes. This back and forth continued into the night, until at the end both sides played Home! Sweet Home! simultaneously, to the cheers of both sides' forces.^[16] In a third instance, in the spring of 1863, the opposing armies were on the opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, when the different sides played their patriotic tunes, and at taps one side played Home! Sweet Home!, and the other joined in, creating "cheers" from both sides that echoed throughout the hilly countryside.^[17]"

This amazes me!  Just think, two armies fighting each other by day, both sides suffering numerous casualties and wounds at the hands of one another, and by night, they are engaged in a friendly music competition that ends in a unity.  This, to me, represents the American Civil War very well.  A war fought between brothers, united on many fronts, yet divided and separated by differing views.  It's very poetic.

That Wiki article is also nice because it shows some key songs during the war, arranged by year.  So, I did a search on Amazon.com to see if I could find some of these songs in a compilation, and I found two that I'm going to further look into.  They are:

and

Both look like they'd be useful resources for this project.  I'll have to listen to some samples of the compilations to see what will be the best for my needs.

I hope you enjoyed learning a new bit of information about Civil War music.  I know I did!

-Nathan