Jam Report #13: 6/17/01
Jun. 17th, 2001 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/3/05.
Kathryn starts making happy noises about us reaching a point where we need to work on our energy rather than our notes; we play a lot longer than normal; Fred shows up with his new concertina and sound stick; we have TWO pies, and vote to meet every week for a while. Songs: "Jolly Butcher", "Mari-Mac".
We hit a few new plateaus this week, alarmingly enough.
No, we don't actually have anything to post yet. However:
First song: "Jolly Butcher". This was the one in which Kathryn actually got to encourage us to play with more energy and verve -- since we're to the point on this that we actually do more or less know the notes. Now we need to get, as Kathryn describes, the music. We have this habit of playing, as it were, the Timid Butcher, and so we're working on making him more Jolly. ;)
Kathryn and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ssha (Cyn) have some good harmony worked out for the chorus on this, and having Fred on hand to fill out the vocals on the chorus helped out too, so that the singers could be better heard over the instruments. Moreover, we even discussed that the song needed some percussion -- and Kathryn even tried to improvise a shaker by putting rice in a can and taping the top closed. The prevailing opinion was that we did in fact need some percussion, but nothing too terribly heavy. What percussion we want exactly has not yet been worked out, but hopefully we'll nail this down better when mamishka (Mimi) comes back from the east coast.
Since Monica showed up partway through our working on "Jolly Butcher", we learned the incredibly vital fact that on this song as on "Mari Mac", she is indeed the Mistress of Our Tempo, because when she's here and playing with us we're much better able to keep on tempo.
We also learned that I was coming in a note late on the instrumental entry at the beginning, because I had an extra note in there. Doh.
And much discussion was done about needing to make this song livelier -- because it's supposed to make people want to dance. It was pointed out that musicians do not actually get to dance, but then again, we're supposed to make other people want to!
Kathryn also brought up the scary point that "Jolly Butcher" is harder to play than "Mari Mac" is -- because the melody is more complicated and one really has to work harder to make the vocals sound interesting on "Jolly Butcher". Whereas in "Mari Mac" one's only real job is to make sure you can be heard and heard clearly.
And speaking of that particular ditty...
Second song: "Mari Mac". Complete, at least a couple of times, with Kathryn channeling Sean's intro to same from Road Rage. Monica's down with those two-beat E minor chord strikes, too!
We're getting dangerously close to actually being able to play this song. We're having issues with the tempo transitions still, but we did some specific work on the section of the song where it starts to speed up for the first time, after the second verse about the hills of Benifee. And we think we even did it better than "Jolly Butcher" -- and that we might even have managed to squeeze out a good take if Kathryn's voice hadn't up and insisted we stop and make with the pie.
Fred's Viking Pie from the Hinterlands (strawberry rhubarb) was deemed superior to the QFC-bought pie (also strawberry rhubarb), though in this humble jam chronicler's opinion, both of them had rather yummy attributes, particularly in conjunction with whipped cream. The foreign pie was rather more tart and rhubarb-y, while the local pie was sweeter and more syrupy of filling. Num num num.
We have voted to meet every week for the next few weeks in an all-out effort to get something together for the Kitchen Tapes -- since I will be out of town on the last weekend of June to go to my little sister's wedding, and then a lot of us will be going to Westercon. However, hopefully we'll be able to squeeze out a few more sessions before the deadline -- and hopefully we'll be able to finally share with you guys what we sound like. We have started to exult in the amount of improvement we've had since we started, six whole months ago!
Cheers all,
Anna the Piper
Kathryn starts making happy noises about us reaching a point where we need to work on our energy rather than our notes; we play a lot longer than normal; Fred shows up with his new concertina and sound stick; we have TWO pies, and vote to meet every week for a while. Songs: "Jolly Butcher", "Mari-Mac".
We hit a few new plateaus this week, alarmingly enough.
No, we don't actually have anything to post yet. However:
- We have gotten to the point where the alpha music geek of us all, kathrynt (Kathryn), has started saying things like "Gosh, this sounds really good, now can we play the bridge with more energy?"
- We played a lot longer than normal. This is partly because several of us showed up quite late, so those of us who were here on time started playing around with the bridge to "Jolly Butcher" while the rest of us straggled in -- and even then, we had a fairly long session of jamming once we were all present.
- We're getting MORE INSTRUMENTS! Fred showed up with two new toys, a concertina and a sound stick which is fretted and strung like a dulcimer. We didn't try to have either of those played today, but it is cool to no end that we have them. The concertina was passed around and marvelled over, and we're all pretty much convinced that the way it works is Magic. Especially when the same button makes different noises depending on whether you're drawing in or pulling out, and when the noises made by the various buttons do not appear to be arranged in any logical sequence, and when the distance between in-noise and out-noise on the various buttons isn't consistent either. Furthermore, hoo boy is a concertina LOUD.
- We had two pies, because Fred had offered to bring pie down from Snohomish but our humble jam chronicler did not actually grok that he was in fact bringing pie this very week, so I got pie as well. It is however the group consensus that if any session warranted the after-music consumption of two pies, it was this one -- because although we played but two songs, we worked very hard on both of them.
First song: "Jolly Butcher". This was the one in which Kathryn actually got to encourage us to play with more energy and verve -- since we're to the point on this that we actually do more or less know the notes. Now we need to get, as Kathryn describes, the music. We have this habit of playing, as it were, the Timid Butcher, and so we're working on making him more Jolly. ;)
Kathryn and
ssha (Cyn) have some good harmony worked out for the chorus on this, and having Fred on hand to fill out the vocals on the chorus helped out too, so that the singers could be better heard over the instruments. Moreover, we even discussed that the song needed some percussion -- and Kathryn even tried to improvise a shaker by putting rice in a can and taping the top closed. The prevailing opinion was that we did in fact need some percussion, but nothing too terribly heavy. What percussion we want exactly has not yet been worked out, but hopefully we'll nail this down better when mamishka (Mimi) comes back from the east coast.Since Monica showed up partway through our working on "Jolly Butcher", we learned the incredibly vital fact that on this song as on "Mari Mac", she is indeed the Mistress of Our Tempo, because when she's here and playing with us we're much better able to keep on tempo.
We also learned that I was coming in a note late on the instrumental entry at the beginning, because I had an extra note in there. Doh.
And much discussion was done about needing to make this song livelier -- because it's supposed to make people want to dance. It was pointed out that musicians do not actually get to dance, but then again, we're supposed to make other people want to!
Kathryn also brought up the scary point that "Jolly Butcher" is harder to play than "Mari Mac" is -- because the melody is more complicated and one really has to work harder to make the vocals sound interesting on "Jolly Butcher". Whereas in "Mari Mac" one's only real job is to make sure you can be heard and heard clearly.
And speaking of that particular ditty...
Second song: "Mari Mac". Complete, at least a couple of times, with Kathryn channeling Sean's intro to same from Road Rage. Monica's down with those two-beat E minor chord strikes, too!
We're getting dangerously close to actually being able to play this song. We're having issues with the tempo transitions still, but we did some specific work on the section of the song where it starts to speed up for the first time, after the second verse about the hills of Benifee. And we think we even did it better than "Jolly Butcher" -- and that we might even have managed to squeeze out a good take if Kathryn's voice hadn't up and insisted we stop and make with the pie.
Fred's Viking Pie from the Hinterlands (strawberry rhubarb) was deemed superior to the QFC-bought pie (also strawberry rhubarb), though in this humble jam chronicler's opinion, both of them had rather yummy attributes, particularly in conjunction with whipped cream. The foreign pie was rather more tart and rhubarb-y, while the local pie was sweeter and more syrupy of filling. Num num num.
We have voted to meet every week for the next few weeks in an all-out effort to get something together for the Kitchen Tapes -- since I will be out of town on the last weekend of June to go to my little sister's wedding, and then a lot of us will be going to Westercon. However, hopefully we'll be able to squeeze out a few more sessions before the deadline -- and hopefully we'll be able to finally share with you guys what we sound like. We have started to exult in the amount of improvement we've had since we started, six whole months ago!
Cheers all,
Anna the Piper