The Molecular Orbital Blues!

(Lyrics by Prof. S. DiMagno & R. Shoemaker)

Many years ago, Steve DiMagno and I set-out to compose a song that might help introduce Molecular Orbital theory to beginning Organic Chemistry students. It it's original debut version, Steve prepared the notes for the lecture on the chalk-boards in the lecture hall, and I performed the song "live" while Steve used a pointer to follow-along with the lecture as I sang the lyrics. Well, many years have gone by, and in 2001 I moved on to Colorado after 18-years in the Dept. of Chemistry at UN-L. Last year, Steve sent me the PowerPoint version of his lecture that he synchronized with the MO-Blues. I had the idea that I could re-record the song, and convert the .ppt to a video file. Once this was accomplished I used Adobe Premiere to synchronize the video with the music. This current version of the song was recorded in my home-studio on 8/17/2008. I recorded the guitar parts and vocals live, and all of the backing was done w/ my own MIDI sequencing equpment and Band-In-A-Box 2008.

Below, you will find the Lyrics, the song in .MP3 format, and a video in .MP4 format (suitable for Video-iPod or QuickTime). Thought you might be able to click on the file to save it, I would suggest that you right-click and save the file on your local computer, and then play it.

• Right-Click this link to Save/Download the .MP3 of me perorming the MO-Blues. (File is ~ 7 MBytes)
• Here is a .PDF version of the Lyrics as the stood when I decided to record it.
• MO-Blues Video (.mp4 format): This is a QuickTime and Video-iPod format file.

(Lyrics, (c) 2000/2008 by Steve DiMagno and Richard Shoemaker. Recorded Performance (c) 2008 by Richard Shoemaker.)

Please contact me (Rich Shoemaker ) if you would like a full-resolution DVD of this video.