{"id":1570,"date":"2015-02-19T20:46:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T19:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jutze.com\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2015-02-19T21:03:50","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T20:03:50","slug":"squirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/?p=1570","title":{"rendered":"Squirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=3449317672\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=157\/track=2333253296\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/spintown.bandcamp.com\/album\/spintunes-10-round-3\">SpinTunes #10: Round 3 by Jutze<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The challenge of the third round of <a title=\"SpinTunes\" href=\"http:\/\/blogspot.spintunes.de\">SpinTunes<\/a> #10 was to write a song with long run-on sentences. It took me a while to get a vague idea what the challenge was about. Loooong sentences are rather common in German, but there was no way I could communicate a German song to the (mostly English-speaking) SpinTunes audience and, in particular, the judges. I was stumped. But hey, what if I sang <em>about<\/em> German(y)? Could this be a topic worth rambling about? I wasn&#8217;t sure. I still don&#8217;t know. My only alternative idea was a detailed description of the pain of getting a part of your body pierced (while trying to impress your latest flame that talked you into it). I didn&#8217;t want to focus on pain and negative emotions (even in a comical way), so I began writing about my home country. Writing a song about an specific idea\/concept is usually work and this song was no exception. Thankfully, I never ran out of inspiration. Most of the lyrics were written in the order I sing them. I only updated a couple of parts before I recorded the vocals.<\/p>\n<p>I began composing the music when I had the first few verses and a rough idea where the refrain was headed. At first I found myself resorting to the chords and melody of a German traditional song (&#8220;<a title=\"Liederjan homepage with an excerpt of the song\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liederjan.com\/Diskographie.htm\">Der M\u00f6nch im Nonnenkloster<\/a>&#8220;) but eventually I found a sufficiently original approach, a catchy chorus, a chorus after the chorus (with lots of room for me to butcher the pronunciation of squirrel), and also a quick bridge to make it all more dynamic. I considered inserting the melody of the Germany national hymn between verses, but the song was already getting long. (I even shortened the second chorus.)<\/p>\n<p>I consider the lyrics to be just a few looong sentences. I added two more parts with free-style rambling just to be sure that my entry would be run-on enough. The middle-part allowed me to address the issue of sarcasm. I felt this was necessary, because the initial lyrics came across almost serious. I mean, lines like &#8220;Invincible, almighty and fearless in the night&#8221; might go unnoticed. Finally, I have no idea what people who don&#8217;t understand German think of the line &#8220;their Bandwurms\u00e4tze are really, really long their Bandwurms\u00e4tze are really, really long&#8221;. Maybe one of the judges remarks on it. Anyway, I was thinking of making a video for the song; I won&#8217;t have time for that any time soon, though. Meanwhile, here&#8217;s the music\/lyrics:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><a title=\"Listen to the song!\" href=\"https:\/\/spintown.bandcamp.com\/track\/squirrel\">Squirrel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When it comes to building cars, Germany&#8217;s the best<br \/>\nAnd Germans on the Autobahn drive faster than the rest<br \/>\nWith the pedal to the metal and reckless as can be<br \/>\nJust like Michael Schumacher racing down the street<br \/>\nNothing that can stop us on and off the road<br \/>\nBe it truck or airplane, be it bicycle or boat<\/p>\n<p>And with regard to soccer, I&#8217;m sure that you all know<br \/>\nThe Germans won the World Cup while England had to go<br \/>\nAnd while we don&#8217;t like to admit it, our country makes us proud<br \/>\n&#8216;Cos Germans are the greatest \u2013 there is really no doubt<br \/>\nInvincible, almighty and fearless in the night<br \/>\nAnd if there&#8217;s something broken, we can fix it all right<br \/>\n<strong>Yes, there is nothing that we Germans cannot do<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> &#8216;Cos we know everything so much better than you<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> But as a citizen of this nation<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> I struggle with the pronunciation of &#8216;squirrel&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Germans built the wall and they tore it down again<br \/>\nAnd they still miss the Deutschmark every now and then<br \/>\nFor example when it&#8217;s time to pay at the Oktoberfest<br \/>\nWhere schnitzel, wurst and sauerkraut are easy to digest<br \/>\nAs long as there is order, as long as there is beer<br \/>\nWith Merkel on our side, there is nothing to fear<\/p>\n<p>German maids are beautiful and German men are strong<br \/>\nAnd their Bandwurms\u00e4tze are really, really long<br \/>\nAnd all the Black Forest cuckoo&#8217;s clocks are never running late<br \/>\nSo why not book a trip and come to see the Brandenburg Gate<br \/>\nEnjoy some German music: Rammstein, Volksmusik<br \/>\nWe rock you like a hurricane until you agree<br \/>\n<strong>That there is nothing that we Germans cannot do<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> &#8216;Cos we know everything so much better than you<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> But as a citizen of this nation<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> I struggle with the pronunciation of &#8216;squirrel&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Anyway, Germans are always on time, sticking to the rules, very talented and charming, fantastic singers \u2013 like me, for example &#8211; builders, engineers, inventors, Nobel Prize winners, Friedrich Nietzsche, you know, and Dirk Nowitzki, Pope Benedict, Beethoven, Wagner, Nena, handsome German people each and every one of them, big fans of discipline, yes, that&#8217;s us, and when we use sarcasm, it&#8217;s always 100% obvious, smart, efficient, never making any mistakes \u2013 and most of all we are very modest!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ja, there is nothing that we Germans cannot do<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> &#8216;Cos we know everything so much better than you<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> But as someone who grew up in this nation<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> I struggle with the pronunciation of &#8216;squirrel&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Why couldn&#8217;t they just call it \u201cEichh\u00f6rnchen\u201d? I mean, they took so many German words for the English language like Rucksack or Kindergarten and we also took some words from them like Handy or like Public Viewing \u2013 okay, we misused them*, but anyway, it&#8217;s so weird and I can&#8217;t pronounce it; it&#8217;s a tongue twister and, ah, it&#8217;s driving me crazy and did you know that Chip an&#8217; Dale are called Ah\u00f6rnchen and Beh\u00f6rnchen in German?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>* Handy = mobile\/cell phone, Public Viewing = broadcast of soccer games in public places<\/p>\n<p><em>(words and music by Johannes Schult 2015 <a title=\"Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\">Creative Commons by-nc 4.0<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpinTunes #10: Round 3 by Jutze The challenge of the third round of SpinTunes #10 was to write a song with long run-on sentences. It took me a while to get a vague idea what the challenge was about. Loooong sentences are rather common in German, but there was no way I could communicate a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[601,99,107,305,600],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-solo-song","tag-spintunes","tag-squirrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1574,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions\/1574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jutze.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}