Friday, March 15, 2013

Over the Rainbow: Banjo Edition

As I am sure most of you are aware, most of you don't know that The Wizard of Oz is the best American fantasy movie ever, according to the American Film Institute:


Furthermore, the AFI and RIAA have ranked "Over The Rainbow" as the #1 "Song of the Century" and the "greatest movie song of all time":


Like most of you, I thought it would be a good idea to re-score the frequently reproduced "Over the Rainbow" hit for electric guitar.  Turns out that was done already, like a dozen times, so I thought "Hey, people hate the banjo, right?  Surely no one has done an arrangement of OTR* for such a terrible instrument," so I decided to do an arrangement for banjo.  Duh, right?  Turns out people have done that too, also like a dozen times, but by then I had already put a few hours into it and I said "whatever."
So here is my arrangement of OTR* for banjo, piano, drums, and several other banjos: (**),(***)


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* OTR is an "acronym" for other larger words. Read more about acronyms at your local library!

**  For those of you who want a ton of "Over the Rainbow" banjo midi files, I strongly recommend avoiding Wendy's Wizard of Oz, which only has six.

*** Some of you may be wondering how I got Judy Garland to star in my video.  Full disclosure: this footage was actually from the original movie and not a scene-by-scene remake as you probably assumed.  I actually found the video "dance montage" (as the kids call it) on YouTube (as the kids call it).