Jam Report #25: 9/30/01
Sep. 30th, 2001 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/4/05.
In which almost all of us are present, and we have another guest Jammer, Dana; in which we get out a good take of "Jolly Butcher" (hurray!); in which we plot to eventually go commerical with "Acres of Clams" and "Yum Yum Bumblebee Tuna"; in which "Little Beggarman" and "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" almost but not quite get us printable takes.
This time around we were missing exactly one of us,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daspatrick (Patrick), who managed to get himself excused from Noise today on the grounds that he had a job interview. We greatly missed Patrick, but well hey, income is a good thing eh?
Today also marked the second occurrence for us of having a guest Jammer: in this case, Dana, who I met off the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts club on Yahoo! (and who I am sneakily attempting to convert to Great Big Sea fand--ahem. Er. Did I say sneakily out loud?). Well, okay, so Dana mostly was Audience rather than Jammer, but she did come in with us on some of the choruses of "Jolly Butcher", so we figure that's enough to count her as Jammer.
We opened up with a bit of debate as to whether to try a take of "Mari-Mac" to warm up, and we shot this down on the grounds that that particular ditty does actual damage tokathrynt (Kathryn) when she tries to sing it.
First up, therefore, was "Jolly Butcher" in an attempt to actually get a printable take of that out onto the Music section of our brand-spankin' new web page.
I really, really, really need to practice the piccolo more often; this is the only drawback to having my mandolin and being ravingly in love with it. Poor Shine is getting neglected and this means my embouchure suffers if I play only every two weeks or so! I kept spiking on the piccolo and kept falling apart on the bridge as well. This was responsible for totally killing our first take, but fortunately, we tried it again several more times.
The guitars had their own issues as well, but for the most part did a decent job of covering for one another's issues.
Also of note is our discussion as to whether to keep our one swear word in the final verse. "What, what," I hear you cry, "you've got a swear word in this song?" Yeah. Although you don't get to hear it in this session's public take, which we did in fact achieve. You'll just have to wait for it, folks. ;) Our public take has Kathryn andssha (Cyn) singing all the way through, and mamishka (Mimi), Fred, and Dana singing on the choruses.
During the long break between "Jolly Butcher" and "Little Beggarman" we had an interlude of Absolute Silliness, as Monica proposed that -- if we had any aspirations whatsoever of being a Pacific Northwest folk band -- we should learn "Acres of Clams". One of the jingles of the local seafood chain Ivar's, you see.
Kathryn retaliated by pointing out that she knew of a jingle for Bumblebee brand tuna, a cover of which was done by a band called Mephiskapheles. There are few more alarming things than hearing Kathryn and Mimi harmonize on words that go like this:
"Yum yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! I love Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! Yum yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! Love a sandwich made with Bumblebee!"
One more alarming thing may well be, however, this same song in seven-part harmony. With kazoos. More bulletins on this as events warrant. ;)
"Little Beggarman" was our next ditty, one which we hadn't touched on in a while. After checking our particular set of chords for it I realized that I did in fact know all of the involved chords, and I was able to pick up a strum pattern from Monica, but the problem is that the way we're playing it doesn't actually quite follow the transcription we've got! So the mandolin is going to need some work on this particular ditty, though it did at least initially go over well in terms of sound and how it fits with this particular song.
Cyn put in a request for us to try playing it a bit slower than normal, on the grounds that she wasn't really comfortable with her desired fiddle part, but the problem with that was that Kathryn sings this with a breath about every seven weeks, so she really has to get it out at top speed.
Most gigglesome about this particular song as well was our 3/4th's take of it at about twice our normal speed. It made us sound like we were already on fast-forward, and the scary thing was that it almost came together a couple of times. Afterwards we did an almost printable take, but Kathryn and Mimi didn't pull themselves together quite enough to let us get that take out publically. However, we were happy with how solid it came out, and hopefully in the next session or two we can work on this again.
Third up: "Greensleeves", which we hadn't done since our very first session. We had a bit of a problem trying to figure out what key to play it in as well, since no one remembered what key we played it in the first time. The only chords we had were mine in one of my Meg Davis songbooks, in the key of A minor, but that disagreed with how Kathryn had been practicing it -- i.e., in C minor -- and furthermore neither Cyn nor Mimi wanted to sing in the key of A minor. Monica was extremely dubious about transposing the chords into C minor -- but happily,spazzkat (Paul) saved the day by suddenly realizing that he and Monica could CAPO. I whipped out my silver flute to play on this as well.
On the whole, though, we deemed the song too dour for us in general and are unlikely to try to do it again unless we can do a faster, more upbeat version. Which is, scarily enough, possible -- I told the group about an Elvis song I know that's up-tempo and done to the tune of "Greensleeves". More bulletins on this as events warrant, too.
And to close, and to put us on a brighter note: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood". The addition of Mimi on the drum helped us solve a lot of problems with this song, such as Kathryn's issues with how to keep rhythm in the lyrics, and holding us all together in general. I was very delighted to note that my recent advances in being able to play with decent volume on the mandolin are helping this song out, and Cyn is coming up with some nice fiddle work to go over the top of what the mandolin and the guitars are doing.
I noticed that I'm also getting to the point that if I'm playing with energy and speed, my more flexible pick starts slipping in my hand. So on our last take, I changed picks to my purple-jewel-toned one, which has the added advantage of letting me play louder as well. Unfortunately we don't have a public take of this yet, so I can't show this off! Maybe soon though.
At last we called it Pie Time, and adjourned with pleasure to two, count 'em, two pies: strawberry rhubarb and marionberry.
Next week we may have an informal session, but if not, more in two weeks folks!
And last, but not least, here is the URL for this week's public take of "Jolly Butcher":
http://www.murkworks.net/~piper/tgm/tgm-jolly-butcher-2k1-9-30.mp3
Enjoy, folks!
Anna the Piper
In which almost all of us are present, and we have another guest Jammer, Dana; in which we get out a good take of "Jolly Butcher" (hurray!); in which we plot to eventually go commerical with "Acres of Clams" and "Yum Yum Bumblebee Tuna"; in which "Little Beggarman" and "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" almost but not quite get us printable takes.
This time around we were missing exactly one of us,
daspatrick (Patrick), who managed to get himself excused from Noise today on the grounds that he had a job interview. We greatly missed Patrick, but well hey, income is a good thing eh?Today also marked the second occurrence for us of having a guest Jammer: in this case, Dana, who I met off the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts club on Yahoo! (and who I am sneakily attempting to convert to Great Big Sea fand--ahem. Er. Did I say sneakily out loud?). Well, okay, so Dana mostly was Audience rather than Jammer, but she did come in with us on some of the choruses of "Jolly Butcher", so we figure that's enough to count her as Jammer.
We opened up with a bit of debate as to whether to try a take of "Mari-Mac" to warm up, and we shot this down on the grounds that that particular ditty does actual damage to
kathrynt (Kathryn) when she tries to sing it.First up, therefore, was "Jolly Butcher" in an attempt to actually get a printable take of that out onto the Music section of our brand-spankin' new web page.
I really, really, really need to practice the piccolo more often; this is the only drawback to having my mandolin and being ravingly in love with it. Poor Shine is getting neglected and this means my embouchure suffers if I play only every two weeks or so! I kept spiking on the piccolo and kept falling apart on the bridge as well. This was responsible for totally killing our first take, but fortunately, we tried it again several more times.
The guitars had their own issues as well, but for the most part did a decent job of covering for one another's issues.
Also of note is our discussion as to whether to keep our one swear word in the final verse. "What, what," I hear you cry, "you've got a swear word in this song?" Yeah. Although you don't get to hear it in this session's public take, which we did in fact achieve. You'll just have to wait for it, folks. ;) Our public take has Kathryn and
ssha (Cyn) singing all the way through, and mamishka (Mimi), Fred, and Dana singing on the choruses.During the long break between "Jolly Butcher" and "Little Beggarman" we had an interlude of Absolute Silliness, as Monica proposed that -- if we had any aspirations whatsoever of being a Pacific Northwest folk band -- we should learn "Acres of Clams". One of the jingles of the local seafood chain Ivar's, you see.
Kathryn retaliated by pointing out that she knew of a jingle for Bumblebee brand tuna, a cover of which was done by a band called Mephiskapheles. There are few more alarming things than hearing Kathryn and Mimi harmonize on words that go like this:
"Yum yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! I love Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! Yum yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee tuna! Love a sandwich made with Bumblebee!"
One more alarming thing may well be, however, this same song in seven-part harmony. With kazoos. More bulletins on this as events warrant. ;)
"Little Beggarman" was our next ditty, one which we hadn't touched on in a while. After checking our particular set of chords for it I realized that I did in fact know all of the involved chords, and I was able to pick up a strum pattern from Monica, but the problem is that the way we're playing it doesn't actually quite follow the transcription we've got! So the mandolin is going to need some work on this particular ditty, though it did at least initially go over well in terms of sound and how it fits with this particular song.
Cyn put in a request for us to try playing it a bit slower than normal, on the grounds that she wasn't really comfortable with her desired fiddle part, but the problem with that was that Kathryn sings this with a breath about every seven weeks, so she really has to get it out at top speed.
Most gigglesome about this particular song as well was our 3/4th's take of it at about twice our normal speed. It made us sound like we were already on fast-forward, and the scary thing was that it almost came together a couple of times. Afterwards we did an almost printable take, but Kathryn and Mimi didn't pull themselves together quite enough to let us get that take out publically. However, we were happy with how solid it came out, and hopefully in the next session or two we can work on this again.
Third up: "Greensleeves", which we hadn't done since our very first session. We had a bit of a problem trying to figure out what key to play it in as well, since no one remembered what key we played it in the first time. The only chords we had were mine in one of my Meg Davis songbooks, in the key of A minor, but that disagreed with how Kathryn had been practicing it -- i.e., in C minor -- and furthermore neither Cyn nor Mimi wanted to sing in the key of A minor. Monica was extremely dubious about transposing the chords into C minor -- but happily,
spazzkat (Paul) saved the day by suddenly realizing that he and Monica could CAPO. I whipped out my silver flute to play on this as well.On the whole, though, we deemed the song too dour for us in general and are unlikely to try to do it again unless we can do a faster, more upbeat version. Which is, scarily enough, possible -- I told the group about an Elvis song I know that's up-tempo and done to the tune of "Greensleeves". More bulletins on this as events warrant, too.
And to close, and to put us on a brighter note: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood". The addition of Mimi on the drum helped us solve a lot of problems with this song, such as Kathryn's issues with how to keep rhythm in the lyrics, and holding us all together in general. I was very delighted to note that my recent advances in being able to play with decent volume on the mandolin are helping this song out, and Cyn is coming up with some nice fiddle work to go over the top of what the mandolin and the guitars are doing.
I noticed that I'm also getting to the point that if I'm playing with energy and speed, my more flexible pick starts slipping in my hand. So on our last take, I changed picks to my purple-jewel-toned one, which has the added advantage of letting me play louder as well. Unfortunately we don't have a public take of this yet, so I can't show this off! Maybe soon though.
At last we called it Pie Time, and adjourned with pleasure to two, count 'em, two pies: strawberry rhubarb and marionberry.
Next week we may have an informal session, but if not, more in two weeks folks!
And last, but not least, here is the URL for this week's public take of "Jolly Butcher":
http://www.murkworks.net/~piper/tgm/tgm-jolly-butcher-2k1-9-30.mp3
Enjoy, folks!
Anna the Piper