Jam Report #14: 6/24/01
Jun. 24th, 2001 12:22 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.
Fred in a utilikilt; I have my mandolin for the first time, though I don't play it during the jam. Kathryn calls dibs on "I'm a Rover" and Monica plays the same chords about ten billion times. Only partial Dara presence, as she has to go to get Paul from the airport. Cyn plays with the mandolin after the jam is officially over, and does a mighty fine job. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "I'm a Rover".
A somewhat reduced headcount for this session -- because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spazzkat (Paul) was coming back from a trip to the East Coast, and solarbird (Dara) had to go get him. Furthermore, daspatrick (Patrick) had forgotten that we were going to a once-a-week schedule, and he'd done gone and gotten himself committed to go to a party being held by a friend's parents. So we were down two guitarists and half the flute section, too. Siiiiigh!
Not to fret, however! Much was made over Fred's new utilikilt, I showed off my new mandolin (YAY!), and after the obligatory "So what the heck are we doing, anyway?" pre-jam chatter, we finally took a couple stabs at "Mari Mac" to see if we could get down the tempo changes. We were more or less okay on that, but the problem was -- no Patrick!
So "Mari Mac" was then abandoned in favor of some preliminary work on a song near and dear tokathrynt's (Kathryn's) heart (and to mine, for that matter, as I not only really like the song, it also reminds me of Russell Crowe (not that reminding me of Russell Crowe is DIFFICULT, but hey, if there's any seldom sober rovers out there, he qualifies ;) (and this is Anna arbitrarily nesting her parentheses))): "I'm a Rover".
Kathryn had called extra special dibs on this one and claimed the right to sing lead on the verses, and because Kathryn gets to be lead voice, we also decided we had to transpose this ditty down into a Happy Friendly Kathryn Key, in which category A, alas, does not qualify. She originally wanted E flat, but Monica was happier playing chords in E, so E it was. I pretty much immediately decided I needed to sing on this one rather than play, as we needed the voices on the chorus. Withssha (Cyn) and Fred, that meant we had four voices, so Kathryn got to demonstrate her harmony-making skills by picking harmony pretty much out of the air (well, okay, she DID listen to the song on the disc a couple times through first) and handing parts to me and Cyn. She lamented that my part ended lower than Cyn's even though I had alto and Cyn had tenor -- but from where I was sitting, it sounded pretty darned good. Noises were made about a bass part for Fred, though we didn't get around to actually doing serious four-part-harmony work, because right around then was when Dara and Paul got back, so we got kind of distracted.
Monica, bless her heart, played the same chords pretty much over and over for us as we sang the chorus of "I'm a Rover" about ten billion times in a row trying to get the harmony down. So when Dara joined us on the flute she was pretty tired by then; thus, we changed songs again and went back to a couple more takes of "Mari Mac". Overall results: improvement on tempo management in general, and our last take would have been better if I suddenly hadn't swallowed a bug or whatever it was that made me cough on the final few measures. ;p
The pie: apple crumb, once again brought down from Snohomish by Fred, who has been voted in as Current Pie Acquirer on the grounds that dat dere was some good pie!
And now for the post-jam report, which I must include in because as it happened, Cyn and I wound up continuing with the musicgeeking after everybody else had left. She wanted to play with my new mandolin, you see. And I'm here to tell you -- it was astounding how quickly she managed to make decent noise with the thing! Since it's tuned just like her violin, G-D-A-E, all the chords felt absolutely natural to her, and so she played with trying to hit all the chords on my chord chart (and agreed with me that the F chord was pretty much a What WERE They Thinking?! sort of chord, since neither of our hands could quite pull it off yet), and then played with trying to pick out a lot of her various violin pieces. She says this immediate comfort with the mandolin is the result of playing the violin for ten years, but it all sounded very impressive to me!
(Me, I was just happy to add to the previous day's repetoire of mandolin experimentation by picking out three simple songs -- only one of which was actually an exercise in the book. ;D )
Next week -- there will be jamming, but I will not be present to chronicle it, as I will be in Kentucky playing flute for my little sister's wedding. So y'all will have to look for a guest report from someone else in the group.
Cheers,
Anna the Piper
Fred in a utilikilt; I have my mandolin for the first time, though I don't play it during the jam. Kathryn calls dibs on "I'm a Rover" and Monica plays the same chords about ten billion times. Only partial Dara presence, as she has to go to get Paul from the airport. Cyn plays with the mandolin after the jam is officially over, and does a mighty fine job. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "I'm a Rover".
A somewhat reduced headcount for this session -- because
spazzkat (Paul) was coming back from a trip to the East Coast, and solarbird (Dara) had to go get him. Furthermore, daspatrick (Patrick) had forgotten that we were going to a once-a-week schedule, and he'd done gone and gotten himself committed to go to a party being held by a friend's parents. So we were down two guitarists and half the flute section, too. Siiiiigh!Not to fret, however! Much was made over Fred's new utilikilt, I showed off my new mandolin (YAY!), and after the obligatory "So what the heck are we doing, anyway?" pre-jam chatter, we finally took a couple stabs at "Mari Mac" to see if we could get down the tempo changes. We were more or less okay on that, but the problem was -- no Patrick!
So "Mari Mac" was then abandoned in favor of some preliminary work on a song near and dear to
kathrynt's (Kathryn's) heart (and to mine, for that matter, as I not only really like the song, it also reminds me of Russell Crowe (not that reminding me of Russell Crowe is DIFFICULT, but hey, if there's any seldom sober rovers out there, he qualifies ;) (and this is Anna arbitrarily nesting her parentheses))): "I'm a Rover".Kathryn had called extra special dibs on this one and claimed the right to sing lead on the verses, and because Kathryn gets to be lead voice, we also decided we had to transpose this ditty down into a Happy Friendly Kathryn Key, in which category A, alas, does not qualify. She originally wanted E flat, but Monica was happier playing chords in E, so E it was. I pretty much immediately decided I needed to sing on this one rather than play, as we needed the voices on the chorus. With
ssha (Cyn) and Fred, that meant we had four voices, so Kathryn got to demonstrate her harmony-making skills by picking harmony pretty much out of the air (well, okay, she DID listen to the song on the disc a couple times through first) and handing parts to me and Cyn. She lamented that my part ended lower than Cyn's even though I had alto and Cyn had tenor -- but from where I was sitting, it sounded pretty darned good. Noises were made about a bass part for Fred, though we didn't get around to actually doing serious four-part-harmony work, because right around then was when Dara and Paul got back, so we got kind of distracted.Monica, bless her heart, played the same chords pretty much over and over for us as we sang the chorus of "I'm a Rover" about ten billion times in a row trying to get the harmony down. So when Dara joined us on the flute she was pretty tired by then; thus, we changed songs again and went back to a couple more takes of "Mari Mac". Overall results: improvement on tempo management in general, and our last take would have been better if I suddenly hadn't swallowed a bug or whatever it was that made me cough on the final few measures. ;p
The pie: apple crumb, once again brought down from Snohomish by Fred, who has been voted in as Current Pie Acquirer on the grounds that dat dere was some good pie!
And now for the post-jam report, which I must include in because as it happened, Cyn and I wound up continuing with the musicgeeking after everybody else had left. She wanted to play with my new mandolin, you see. And I'm here to tell you -- it was astounding how quickly she managed to make decent noise with the thing! Since it's tuned just like her violin, G-D-A-E, all the chords felt absolutely natural to her, and so she played with trying to hit all the chords on my chord chart (and agreed with me that the F chord was pretty much a What WERE They Thinking?! sort of chord, since neither of our hands could quite pull it off yet), and then played with trying to pick out a lot of her various violin pieces. She says this immediate comfort with the mandolin is the result of playing the violin for ten years, but it all sounded very impressive to me!
(Me, I was just happy to add to the previous day's repetoire of mandolin experimentation by picking out three simple songs -- only one of which was actually an exercise in the book. ;D )
Next week -- there will be jamming, but I will not be present to chronicle it, as I will be in Kentucky playing flute for my little sister's wedding. So y'all will have to look for a guest report from someone else in the group.
Cheers,
Anna the Piper