Revisiting our Flag

[Claude Desmoulins]

I was looking at the flag the other day. When we adopted it, there were two sims, hence two stars. There was discussion at the time of adding a star per sim. We are soon to have four sims. Is it time to update the flag? The GMP calls for 47 sims. That's a lot of stars. It seems to me that the best way to add all those stars without hopelessly cluttering the flag is to put them in a circle around the owl shield a la the EU.

[Desmond Shang]

I guess the suggestion of a black, red and green tartan with gold bars in the top left quadrant would be totally out of order?

grin

edit: crown on the owl's head too

[Cindy Ecksol]

I guess the suggestion of a black, red and green tartan with gold bars in the top left quadrant would be totally out of order?

grin

edit: crown on the owl's head too

LOL! Earlier today I WAS going to put a comment here twitting Des for not saying anything on this subject, but I can see that such a poke was completely unnecessary

CIndy

[Claude Desmoulins]

If we are committed to three branches, we could do three stars on the hoist for the Representative, Executive, and Philosophic branches. That way we wouldn't have to redesign every time we added a sim.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

*waves* at Desmond

Actually, I like the idea of the three stars for the three branches. Definitely worth suggesting it as a bill for the RA to pass

Yesterday at the ball, when it was finished, we were amused to listen in to the stream while the DJ moved over to Caledon, and played, as a start, "Rule Britannia!" as Caledon's anthem.

Now this made a few of us think if we shouldn't have our own anthem as well. In fact, we even got talented musicians and poets (!) so we might even manage to create an original piece for us.

I wonder if we should launch a contest, or appoint a Anthem Committee to study the idea and propose something. Let me see... how do we mix Alpine music with Roman Empire triumphant marches and Greek music?

[Claude Desmoulins]

It really is easier to let the poets go first and then turn the musicians loose, unless you want to be like the Spaniards and have an anthem without words.

Claude,
The CDS musician nobody knows about

[Claude Desmoulins]

*waves* at Desmond

Actually, I like the idea of the three stars for the three branches. Definitely worth suggesting it as a bill for the RA to pass

Yesterday at the ball, when it was finished, we were amused to listen in to the stream while the DJ moved over to Caledon, and played, as a start, "Rule Britannia!" as Caledon's anthem.

Now this made a few of us think if we shouldn't have our own anthem as well. In fact, we even got talented musicians and poets (!) so we might even manage to create an original piece for us.

I wonder if we should launch a contest, or appoint a Anthem Committee to study the idea and propose something. Let me see... how do we mix Alpine music with Roman Empire triumphant marches and Greek music?

Gwyn some days I despise you, running around and putting ideas into people's heads

Of course I went and didn't follow my own advice. Please let me know what RL things this is entirely too reminiscent of, since I have my tunnel hearing going.

http://claude.desmoulins.googlepages.com/CDSATransp.MID

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Claude, this is fantastic!! I've listened to it several times, and I think we have something good enough! It definitely has a nice, strong melody, and sounds anthem-ish

Oh, and after all, I was doing something wrong, so I actually managed to import it to Melody Assistant after all. Mmmh. Now for some fun

And we just need the words to go with it... now it's the time for the poets in the CDS to show their talent as well!

Excellent work, Claude, thanks so much for spending the time in doing this!

[Rose Springvale]

Wow... Claude, you have been hiding your light! Okay writers, let's put some words to this! Do i need to post CALEDON'S lyrics to inspire us?

Really quite nice Claude. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Cindy Ecksol]

Wow... Claude, you have been hiding your light! Okay writers, let's put some words to this! Do i need to post CALEDON'S lyrics to inspire us?

Really quite nice Claude. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Hey, I just got a chance to hear this -- it is definitely "anthem" material! I spent part of last week in a song-writing workshop, so I may inflict my nascent songwriting skills upon the assembled avs.....

Cindy

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Mmmh here goes a MP3 with a slight different choice of instruments

Proposed CDS Anthem.mp3

And no, Claude, I'm afraid I haven't done much more than play around with some volume settings and different sets of instruments...

Gosh, I wish that I had any talent for doing lyrics that actually rhyme and are in the proper rhythm to the music... although the first phrase could be "Oh glorious land" which fits the melody nicely

[Justice Soothsayer]

Curiously, the link to the mp3 file also lists as "related" files "Proposed Supplier for Pot Bearing and Expansion Joints.doc". Hmmmm.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

All right... I was laughing so hard at the fun attempts at tweaking the Proposed Anthem, and having the words "Oh glorious land" in my mind, I challenged Moon to try to fit some lyrics to the music

Yes, we both know these are horrible!... but, well, they (sort of) rhyme, they (sort of) make some sense, and they (sometimes) even match the melody! So, with humble apologies by Moon (please don't laugh at her, I can be terrible at pestering her to be creative!), here goes what she put together:

Oh glorious land, oh glorious land, newly born from the sea!
And ev'ry day we toil to keep you a democracy!
People of all nations united to keep you free.
Our goal, protect and serve, to attain sovereignity.
We're loy'l of heart, and lend our minds and hands in virtuality,
To build a dream, to fly away, to a new kind of country!

The lyrics are quite weirdly fit to the melody, so I tried to print them out:

Split among syllables this comes out like this:

Oh/glo-rious land, oh /glo-rious land new-/ly born fro-m the/sea! And/e-v'ry day we/toil to keep you/a de-mo-cra-/cy! Peo-/ple of all na-/tions u-ni-ted /to keep you /free. Our /goal, pro-tect and/serve to a-ttain/so-ver-eign-i-/ty. We're/loy'l of heart, and /lend our minds a-nd /hands in vir-tu-al-i-/ty, To /build a dream, to/fly a-way to a /new kind of- co-un-/try!/

And finally, since I had no singer available (Moon's got a wonderful husky, mezzo voice, but she is to shy for this; and I can't sing "Happy Birthday", much less anything else), I've just let my software render the voice digitally. It's horrible, but at least it gives you a very vague idea on how it sounds with the rest of the music:

Music & Lyrics

Have fun, enjoy, and... just remember, it can't get any worse than this! Now it's up to the immensely talented musicians and singers currently living in the CDS, as well as the native English speakers who are much better at this, to get something a bit more pleasant, and... do a good recording that we can play at the ceremony of opening Locus Amoenus

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

oooh and Caledon has such nice lyrics, too!...

http://intolerable.org/sl/?p=291

Then again, they have no original music Ha!

[Desmond Shang]

Ooooooh ya poked me good, and now I'll have to break out the big guns!

Caledon's Ms Cornelia Rothschild. A few months back. Yep, that's her singing.

Listen and despair, CDS, for ye shall never have anything that comes close...

http://www.4shared.com/account/file/475 ... ledon.html