Music Notes

Day 6: The First Noel, Alisa Jones (Irish instrumental)

My sixth Xmas track is one from a group I'm already familiar with. I highlighted their cover of God Rest Ye Merry last year. At that point, I didn't have anything else from them. But now, between how easy it is to use AZ Music Premium (to think I scoffed at the idea of actually using the 90 day free trial I received on Black Friday!) and the need to find fresh Xmas music for this challenge, I thought of searching for their holiday album and picked what I recognized.

Have you noticed I choose a very few melodies, done a dozen different ways? I mostly stick with the classic spiritual ones I know. The only secular Xmas tracks on my playlists are a couple from OneRepublic and one from Coldplay (and that only because I had to write about it for last December's 48 Hour Media Challenge.)

The First Noel, done the unique Irish way of Alisa Jones, is layered with… Let me look at the list of instruments on the album cover: fiddle, whistles, guitar, uilleann pipes, Celtic harp, boderon, bouzouki, concertina and bass. Good grief, that's a lot. I'm not even sure what some of those are. It's best listened to at a lower volume, or those high notes could get on your nerves.

Overall, it's a gentle, soothing rendition, with different sections highlighting different instruments so as not to pile them all on at once. I love the twinkling harps or wind chimes which appear so often in Christmas music; it adds such a magical effect. I can imagine frost and snow whispering across the land.

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