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I'm a singer-songwriter and filker who writes songs on a wide variety of topics — science fiction and fantasy; religion (several); science and computers; etc. I write original melodies, and I borrow tunes from other songwriters and from the soundtracks of media such as movies and video games.

You don't need to be a member of this DW community to access the songs. You can find songs by title or by tag — you can even search for combinations of tags. If you just want to see what's new, look at the recent entries view or the archive.

Audio files linked from song posts in this community are hosted on Google Drive. Leave a comment if you have technical difficulties accessing any audio file (or if it's the wrong file for the song it's linked from). These songs are, and will always be, free to download. I also have a bandcamp site where a few songs are available for purchase. In the future, featured or more intricately produced recordings will appear there.

Enjoy the songs, and please comment if you have any questions.

( click for the index )

This song is part three of the song cycle Melissa Mielfée and the Omphalonian Orchid, a Harry Potter x Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fanfic.

Note: This song introduces Tonks as a mentor/big sister figure for Melissa — but this is Tonks's last year at Hogwarts and we won't see her explicitly mentioned again. Also introduced in this song is our token non-binary character, Pat — and yes, this conversation is taking place right by those infamously gendered booby-trapped staircases to the Hufflepuff dormitories. You should imagine Tonks giving the stairs a Meaningful Look at that point in the song, and an Arrangement being made, although this song doesn't say what it is.

Voice: Tonks
Additional voices: Pat, Melissa

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "The Queen of Argyll" by Silly Wizard (approximately, but in a major key)

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/ C G C G / C G - D / 1st / C G D G - /

Welcome all to Hufflepuff, please put down your trunks

Everyone get settled and we'll see you to your bunks

Some Hufflepuffs are steady, and some of us are punks

My name is— no, I hate that name! — please just call me Tonks

We're happy to have you here — everyone let out a cheer

The house where you can just be you, 'cause being you's enough

Every house may have its charter — we're not braver, slyer, smarter

But we're who we are, together: that's the code of Hufflepuff

Hufflepuffs all stick together, let me show you how

A solid bond of friendship is as strong as any vow

And often goes beyond what the authorities allow

I may not be a prefect, but I'm your big sister now

And I can't help but notice when a sibling's feeling blue

So get it off your chest and tell me what you're going through

Pat? "I'm not a boy or girl!" No problem, just be you

Melissa? "Family trouble..." Oh, sis, I've seen some too

And I won't forget your troubles, like I won't forget your names

We take friendship seriously, we're not just fun and games

I learned to change my face, but not to fit in others' frames

And if you stick by me, young sibs, you'll learn to do the same

We're happy to have you here — everyone let out a cheer

The house where you can just be you, 'cause being you's enough

Every house may have its charter — we're not braver, slyer, smarter

But we're who we are, together: that's the code of Hufflepuff

Opinions within the gamer community differ widely regarding the ethics of emulation — copying old games onto modern computers where they can be played by using software tools to mimic the behavior of older console hardware. Most video game publishers are strongly opposed of course, and fans agree that the people who make our games should be able to profit from them. But, because of their dependence on aging hardware, games are one of the least-well-preserved of all media types. Allowing pieces of our culture to vanish forever because their "owners" didn't find it profitable to preserve them, for generation after generation, doesn't "promote the progress of science and the useful arts".

And then of course there's this terrible pun.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Message in a Bottle" by The Police

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( Read more... )

The Eagles' original has been crying out for this pun for a long time, and I'm certainly not the first to think of it or mention it, but I may be the first to expand it into a complete story-song. This is a shapeshifting huntress's tale in the vein of "Velvet" or "Golden Eyes".

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Lyin' Eyes" by Don Henley and Glenn Frey

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This one began with just the pun(ch) line, but when I realized what piece of media it could be about, it grew (ahem) into something deeper. Miyazaki's Nausicaa, like Frozen's Elsa, is a bold heroine who discovers a dangerous secret, an inner connection to an unstoppable natural force, and her own sense of purpose on the edge of the wilderness.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Let It Go" from Disney's Frozen by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez

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If you're at all familiar with action adventures or comic books, you've surely heard Justin's name before, but did you know he has a twin brother? This concept was a long time in preparation, and finally took shape in something of a Les Barker x Tom Smith form.

by Benjamin Newman

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Hekate is a mysterious and complex goddess, associated with magic and witchcraft, liminal spaces, and threes — such as places where three roads meet; or the upper, middle, and lower worlds. I know Her primarily through Her supporting role in the story of Persephone, about Whom more is written elsewhere. Speaking with Hekate around the time of Sukkot, a Jewish (not Hellenic!) holiday which involves the gathering and waving of a bundle of symbolic plants, She suggested to me this trio of weeds, all of which grow wild in my neighborhood. Poisonous nightshades have long been Hers (and bittersweet nightshade is poisonous), and mugwort and goldenrod are associated with the dream realm and abundance respectively.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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In Hebrew, "chochmah" means "wisdom", and "kavanah" means "intention", often particularly referring to a statement of intention or mystical formula recited before the main part of a prayer or ritual to set an appropriate tone — so a "chochmah kavanah" would be a mystical formula to invoke wisdom. Of course it also sounds like a certain classic lounge song...

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Copacabana" by Barry Manilow

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According to a meme that has been going around, the name of OpenAI's flagship product sounds especially funny if you know French.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

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Having disposed of certain people's ambitions of Mars colonization, let's plant the seeds of a more egalitarian vision for our future on the red planet — a future we can build together if only we keep ~~marching~~ Martian.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Bread and Roses" by James Oppenheim, set to music by Mimi Farina

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Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) is a solemn hymn chanted on the holiest days of the Jewish year, reminding us of the G-d before whom we stand. Modern progressive Jews vary in their relationship to those particular metaphors. This new, um, translation, reveals a surprisingly modern and scientific view of the Source of Life in the coming together of simple organic molecules under geothermal heat.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Avinu Malkeinu", trad. Hebrew

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Amino volcano

Molecular tango

Amino volcano, molecular tango

That gave rise to all living beings

They say the dawn-soup

Thickened when heated

They say the dawn-soup thickened when heated

And out of that soup we all grew

Just in time for Purim, a chant from the Scroll of Esther, and a midrash (interpretation). The Book of Esther begins with the King, a bit of a buffoon, throwing a huge drunken party for everyone, and this sets the tone for everything that follows.

( Read more... )

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Just in time for Purim, a classic verse from the Scroll of Esther: "Who knows, maybe it was for just such a time as this that you came to royalty?" The Hebrew word "malchut" means royalty, sovereignty, kingdom, but also (as a kabbalistic term) physical reality. Each of us has a role to play in standing against evil in our time — who knows, maybe it was for just such a time as this that you arrived in the world?

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וּמִ֣י יוֹדֵ֔עַ אִם־לְעֵ֣ת כָּזֹ֔את הִגַּ֖עַתְּ לַמַּלְכֽוּת׃

Umi yode'a im l'et kazot higa'at lamalchut?

In the memorable Babylon 5 episode "War Without End" (for which spoiler alert but I will, like the character who sings this song, try to keep them vague), the alien Zathras is assigned by Cmdr. Sinclair to a time travel mission in which he is taken prisoner by Sinclair at an earlier point in the timeline. To avoid, well, spoilers, at first all Zathras will say to the earlier Sinclair is "Not the One!"

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Still the One" by Johanna Hall and John Hall

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I began writing this song when the current assault on the federal bureaucracy was just a talking point and a twinkle in a candidate's eye. After the inauguration, when the assault began in earnest, I realized the urgency of the moment and made finishing the song a priority. No modern nation can be "great" without a civil service whose mission is firm and doesn't change with every political wind. Both my father (may he live long) and my partner's father (of blessed memory) worked all or most of their professional careers as experts in federal agencies. This song is dedicated to them and to all the federal employees who have lost their jobs or are still trying to hold the line in whatever way they can. The no-nonsense defiance of Seanan's original song seemed a perfect fit for this one.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Wicked Girls" by Seanan McGuire

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Updated song titles and added recordings for three older Dave Carter parodies:

Based on a haunting and pointed Advent hymn, this song is a pointed rebuke to religious conservatives who blame natural disasters and the decline of nations on the "sins" of the same people they've always picked on, while ignoring the very real sins that scientists agree are responsible for the weirding of Earth's climate — the very sins, even, that the Bible calls out as leading to the destruction of nations (no, not carbon emissions specifically, the ancients didn't know that, but refusing to let the Earth rest).

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Each Winter as the Year Grows Older" by William & Annabeth Gay

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Skroderiders are one of several iconic alien races in Vernor Vinge's classic A Fire Upon the Deep— cyborgs consisting of a sessile, frond-like intertidal animal and a wheeled cart with computing faculties. Behind this marriage of organic and machine components lies a long-forgotten legend and ultimately a deep tragedy (but spoilers!). "41 Thunderer" by Dave Carter also tells a tragic story of a person whose soul becomes entangled with a machine.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "41 Thunderer" by Dave Carter

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Explorators are sentient, self-replicating and self-improving space probes sent out by a race of makers who developed AI but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Outliving their makers, they've since colonized the galaxy and built a lasting machine civilization based on wonder and curiosity— and, in accordance with the known laws of physics that rule out any form of FTL travel or communication, network protocols that are robust to very long ping times.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Beacons in the Darkness" by Gary McGath

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Zoe's original song tells the story of a set of heirloom crystal glasses that become fewer in number but dearer to memory as time passes. In software development, classes (modules of code) can also break if they are not carefully looked after over time — although, especially in a large enterprise, their number is more likely to increase than to decrease. The term "tech debt" refers to the ongoing cost of keeping code up-to-date even when it isn't actively being worked on or even used.

The guitar work here is my best attempt to capture the feel of what Zoe is doing in some alternate tuning, some of the chords are mostly conjecture.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Elegy (Crystal Glass)" by Zoe Mulford

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This song sets out one of the foundational myths of the Storytellers' World, an original fantasy setting. Zoe Mulford's original song, "The Street That Wasn't There", could practically be set in that world already, which is one reason why the first verse is so little changed. The identity of Professor Oceanstone (or, if you think that's too easy, why his name is "Oceanstone") is left as an exercise.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Street That Wasn't There" by Zoe Mulford

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