Jam Report #10: 4/29/01
Apr. 29th, 2001 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/2/05.
Extremely small session, with only four of us; Dara declares we need a different name for when we're that small a group. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Consequence Free" (including ballad version thereof), "Jolly Butcher", "Rant and Roar".
In which our jam chronicler actually posts on time for once, despite the fact that she has been suffering from something that's either a cold or an allergy all week -- since the last jam session, as a matter of fact. And furthermore I hadn't been sleeping well at all, until yesterday when I actually took some Benadryl, which knocked me right out.
And I'm here to tell you, when you go sleepless all week, Benadryl does strange things to your brain. I distinctly recall dreaming Alan Doyle telling me that he wanted to get on a starship and go to Earth. And I regained consciousness thinking, "Does this mean he's really some sort of space alien in disguise, or that he's some sort of interdimensional traveler and was in fact referring to some other mysterious Earth besides the one we were in fact ON at the time?"
But aaaaaanyway, we broke our every-other-week-or-so pattern this time since Monica had missed last week's session and wanted to come by today. However, a good portion of the rest of the group was out -- so today's attendees were a meager four, myself, Monica,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ssha (Cyn), and solarbird (Dara).
Dara decreed that when our group gets down to as few as four, we need a different name for the subset. As a whole we're probably still Three Good Measures, but we haven't really decided yet what to call us when there's only four. Options suggested were "Eggs Don't Come from Cows" and "Secret Hindu", both of which were a result of Monica assuring us that she could in fact eat lemon meringue pie, and "Remove Label Before Use".
Today's ditties:
"Mari-Mac". The B'ys do this one just fine with only four of them, but we still have a few problems with it. Tempo-wise I think the four of us were more or less managing to keep up with one another, but when two of us were playing flute and piccolo and therefore could not contribute to the vocals, it's easy to have only two voices eaten by the instruments.
"Consequence Free" -- which, I might add, started off with an impromptu ballad version thereof (this particular song actually works rather well when played slow). Then we actually tried to play it up to speed. I sang one time through, but my vocal ability was shot to heck and back due to the aforementioned cold-or-allergy, so although I can actually sing this ditty I kept to the piccolo and coming up with twiddles to play against the melody. I've got a couple good solid ideas on what to twiddle (echoing the na-na-na's in the vocals, after they're sung, and a couple things on the choruses). The transition into the bridge is still throwing us, though.
"Jolly Butcher". Monica wanted to do this one again, so we went for it. Cyn had the latest in a series of loaner violins she's had custody of while waiting for her actual violin to get fixed, and so this time we had her, Dar, and myself all there to try the bridge. Which still gave us problems in various places; my ability to hit the high notes on the bridge is questionable when I'm fully healthy anyway, and this time around it was worse. On the other hand, I kept up with the twiddling here and I sorta kinda have a clue about what I'm doing here, but it still needs some practice.
We debated but did not actually try "General Taylor" since we had insufficient numbers of singers present to take it on. But we did debate some about the various parts of the ditty, whether Alan is in fact singing thirds against Sean all the way through, and whether Darrell is singing an octave down from Sean all the way through. The answer to both of these, as near as we can tell, is no.
Further debate occurred after "Jolly Butcher" as to what to try next, and we finally settled on trying something we hadn't played before: "Rant and Roar". That was kind of fun, since there are actual whistle parts in that song that I already knew at least somewhat how to play, and also since it was in the key of F and we had to start thinking about playing flats instead of sharps, and that was a pleasant switch. I don't think we ever actually tried to play this all the way through in any sort of formal sense, but we did have some constructive initial work done on it. We scarfed guitar tabs off the site on tripod.com, and I reminded myself by listening to the disc exactly where those whistle parts were. I also have twiddles for this song, though I haven't gotten them solidly down yet and haven't worked out how to make them smoothly flow into the whistle parts. Between Dara and me though we made some pretty decent harmony, though! Dara has started filling in chords here and there on various songs with her various flutes where the situation seems to call for it, and that's working beautifully.
The pie, as mentioned, was lemon meringue, and since there were only four of us we had leftovers and I plan to go have some more as soon as I finish this report. We also had freshly made cinnamon raisin bread (mmmmmmmm).
More again soon,
Anna the Piper
Extremely small session, with only four of us; Dara declares we need a different name for when we're that small a group. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Consequence Free" (including ballad version thereof), "Jolly Butcher", "Rant and Roar".
In which our jam chronicler actually posts on time for once, despite the fact that she has been suffering from something that's either a cold or an allergy all week -- since the last jam session, as a matter of fact. And furthermore I hadn't been sleeping well at all, until yesterday when I actually took some Benadryl, which knocked me right out.
And I'm here to tell you, when you go sleepless all week, Benadryl does strange things to your brain. I distinctly recall dreaming Alan Doyle telling me that he wanted to get on a starship and go to Earth. And I regained consciousness thinking, "Does this mean he's really some sort of space alien in disguise, or that he's some sort of interdimensional traveler and was in fact referring to some other mysterious Earth besides the one we were in fact ON at the time?"
But aaaaaanyway, we broke our every-other-week-or-so pattern this time since Monica had missed last week's session and wanted to come by today. However, a good portion of the rest of the group was out -- so today's attendees were a meager four, myself, Monica,
ssha (Cyn), and solarbird (Dara).Dara decreed that when our group gets down to as few as four, we need a different name for the subset. As a whole we're probably still Three Good Measures, but we haven't really decided yet what to call us when there's only four. Options suggested were "Eggs Don't Come from Cows" and "Secret Hindu", both of which were a result of Monica assuring us that she could in fact eat lemon meringue pie, and "Remove Label Before Use".
Today's ditties:
"Mari-Mac". The B'ys do this one just fine with only four of them, but we still have a few problems with it. Tempo-wise I think the four of us were more or less managing to keep up with one another, but when two of us were playing flute and piccolo and therefore could not contribute to the vocals, it's easy to have only two voices eaten by the instruments.
"Consequence Free" -- which, I might add, started off with an impromptu ballad version thereof (this particular song actually works rather well when played slow). Then we actually tried to play it up to speed. I sang one time through, but my vocal ability was shot to heck and back due to the aforementioned cold-or-allergy, so although I can actually sing this ditty I kept to the piccolo and coming up with twiddles to play against the melody. I've got a couple good solid ideas on what to twiddle (echoing the na-na-na's in the vocals, after they're sung, and a couple things on the choruses). The transition into the bridge is still throwing us, though.
"Jolly Butcher". Monica wanted to do this one again, so we went for it. Cyn had the latest in a series of loaner violins she's had custody of while waiting for her actual violin to get fixed, and so this time we had her, Dar, and myself all there to try the bridge. Which still gave us problems in various places; my ability to hit the high notes on the bridge is questionable when I'm fully healthy anyway, and this time around it was worse. On the other hand, I kept up with the twiddling here and I sorta kinda have a clue about what I'm doing here, but it still needs some practice.
We debated but did not actually try "General Taylor" since we had insufficient numbers of singers present to take it on. But we did debate some about the various parts of the ditty, whether Alan is in fact singing thirds against Sean all the way through, and whether Darrell is singing an octave down from Sean all the way through. The answer to both of these, as near as we can tell, is no.
Further debate occurred after "Jolly Butcher" as to what to try next, and we finally settled on trying something we hadn't played before: "Rant and Roar". That was kind of fun, since there are actual whistle parts in that song that I already knew at least somewhat how to play, and also since it was in the key of F and we had to start thinking about playing flats instead of sharps, and that was a pleasant switch. I don't think we ever actually tried to play this all the way through in any sort of formal sense, but we did have some constructive initial work done on it. We scarfed guitar tabs off the site on tripod.com, and I reminded myself by listening to the disc exactly where those whistle parts were. I also have twiddles for this song, though I haven't gotten them solidly down yet and haven't worked out how to make them smoothly flow into the whistle parts. Between Dara and me though we made some pretty decent harmony, though! Dara has started filling in chords here and there on various songs with her various flutes where the situation seems to call for it, and that's working beautifully.
The pie, as mentioned, was lemon meringue, and since there were only four of us we had leftovers and I plan to go have some more as soon as I finish this report. We also had freshly made cinnamon raisin bread (mmmmmmmm).
More again soon,
Anna the Piper