"I Am The Walrus" - A One-Woman Beatles Cover With Homemade Instruments!
It's the 2024 Mystery Holiday Cover, a present from us and ours to you and yours. May your days be berry and might! Now, we figure you may have some questions, and we'll do our best to answer them. FAQ: 1. Which instruments are homemade? All of the string parts on the recording are played on an instrument I built over lockdown. I call it a "lyretar", and it's made out of a wine box, a floorboard, and harpsichord tuning pins. It's strung with the bottom four strings of a guitar, and it sounds, as someone once told me, like an "asthmatic cello". I also made the drums. The "kick" drum has a skin made from a giant vinyl pool toy, retired by a local municipal swimming pool. The other is mylar-skinned. 2. Did you cut out ALL of those words and pictures? Yes indeed! I spent weeks poring over old magazines and books in search of the perfect fish/crabs/burlesque dancers, etc. I found ALMOST every word in the song. Unfortunately, "knickers" eluded me, as did "custard" (I ended up taking a photo of a custard container at the supermarket). Some of the penguins are stickers, but I did end up having to cut them out so that I could animate them. 3. How did you animate the animals/van/tears/joker/those hideous footed-fish monstrosities? All the animations are done using traditional stop-motion techniques - that is to say, I would lay down the images, take a photo, move them minutely, take a photo, etc. Some of the tear clips took 20-30 minutes to complete. For "stupid bloody Tuesday", I employed a similar technique, except that instead of moving the images, I drew in a little more for every photograph. 4. Are those real cornflakes? Yep. I don't usually eat cornflakes, but I bought a box solely for the video. I finished the box - turns out they're very nostalgic. 5. How did you make the stage curtain? The curtain is a scarf from a local thrift shop. I taped it to a corflute green screen, and opened them by hand. 6. What was that old silent film footage at the third chorus? It comes from a 1909 short film production of King Lear (which is the Shakespeare play featured in the radio clips from the original Beatles release of the song!). 7. Was that a real radio in the recording? It is! I bought a secondhand portable AM radio from the '70s specifically for the recording. I love it. It's a keeper. 8. How did you make the costumes? I own virtually no plain white clothing; I had to borrow it from my mother, who has an extensive wardrobe. Thanks, Mum. Everything else is literally just painted cardboard! 9. Hey, weren't you actually IN Xena that one time? I was! In the episode "A Family Affair", I'm the little girl running in front of Xena at around 2:53. Some might say that was the peak of my career in film. Happy holidays, folks. Want to look at pictures of what I'm working on? / fathommusicnz Interested in what my original music sounds like? Here's a playlist of everything I've ever released: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kp... Keen to purchase music I've made? https://fathomnz.bandcamp.com Fathom albums "The World to Breathe" and "Modern Reflections, Vol. 1" are available on all streaming platforms. Tweed's album "High Brow Blues" is ALSO available on all streaming platforms! Thanks for your sharing your attention with me. :) #beatles #psychedelicrock #thebeatles #johnlennon #paulmccartney #ringostarr #georgeharrison #classicrock #rockmusic #60s #60smusic #diy #diyinstruments #homemadeinstruments #trumpet #cello #sorta #violins #kinda #cover #beatlecover #collage #analogcollage #artsandcrafts #iamthewalrus #walrus #diycostume #cardboardcostume