Jam Report #28: 10/28/01
Oct. 28th, 2001 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/5/05.
In which I show off a new toy (though I don't play it), in which Paul's new toy is also shown off (though he doesn't play that either), and in which Kathryn gets to have Fun With Transposition. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Jolly Butcher", "Acres of Clams", "Stray Cat Strut", "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Goin' Up".
Today's jam report starts off with my having been able to show off my new toy -- my octave mandolin. Though I didn't get to play it today; I am not quite comfortable with my chord changes up to speed on it yet. So it'll be a few more rounds before the big mandolin gets to join her little sister in regular music-making with the group.
This was also the first time that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kathrynt (Kathryn) got to see Paul's new toy as well -- the Colonel, of whom Kathryn expressed due approval. And although spazzkat (Paul) did not in fact join us in actual jamming, the Colonel rather inevitably wound up in Patrick's hands through the latter half of the session.
We were also downmamishka (Mimi) again, as she had been ill earlier this week and needed to make up for lost time on her various painting projects, so she was off working on one of same.
First up was "Mari-Mac", one take to keep in practice; we didn't really even consider it a serious take because we sorely missed having the aforementioned Mimi to set the tempo for us with her drums. It really showed, too, because our tempo was all over the place. We still had some decent muscle on the guitars with Monica anddaspatrick (Patrick), though. ssha (Cyn) had a few adventures with the sheets for her violin part falling off the stand as well, though she opted not to tape them to the stand. We tried not to look at it cross-eyed and continue knocking it over for her.
Another keep-in-practice take was next, with "Jolly Butcher". The length of time it had been since we'd last played with this was rather evidenced when Patrick turned to Monica and said, "So Monica -- how do you play 'Jolly Butcher'?"
Fortunately, he remembered after we did a few bars for him. ;) Though, really, we had a take and a half of this, since we started improvising on it more or less in the middle of the song and wound up finishing it out. On the one full take, Kathryn and Cyn had a bit of a harmony choke-up on their intro, though they pulled it back together once the instruments came in to join 'em. My piccolo part came out sloppy, not surprisingly -- though I was rather stunned that I actually hit the high notes in the bridge for once!
Kathryn remarked that the reason behind the force of her cry of "HEY!" in her part of the intro was due to her realization that we had no Fred on his dulcimer, and we were therefore missing his little flourish to take us into the song.
Next up: "Acres of Clams". Monica forked over some lyrics to Kathryn, and we determined that Kathryn did in fact have a delightful penchant for belting this song out at full tilt. As she put it, you just can't do a song called "Acres of Clams" halfway.
We twiddled with the structure of it a bit, because it's got nine verses in it and it is therefore Too Darned Long. Monica didn't want to sing "thick as the hair on the back of a dog", anyway, so we rearranged it so that we did one verse and chorus, then two verses and a chorus for the rest of the song. Cyn has improvised a bass line for it, much to her satisfaction, since she taught herself the D scale on that instrument and was able to get a bass line just out of that.
Paul put in a little bit of impromptu participation to this song after all, whipping up one of our small frog hand puppets and 'singing' along on some of the later choruses. He almost managed to make Kathryn lose it, too. We have decided that when we are Rich and Famous and on our World Tour of Halifax, Nova Scotia for all twelve of our fans, we must clearly have clam puppets. And we must all also be as drunk as possible.
On to "Stray Cat Strut" -- though this time Patrick sang lead on it, since Paul wasn't up to joining in with us today. Patrick has informed Paul that this song really is his, though their voices aren't all that different; Patrick has a few issues with coming in high enough at the beginning, and Paul's the one who has the proper style nailed down better. Kathryn had fun doing the backup "oohs", though. And I'm getting a better idea of how to do my flute part, though there's some places in there towards the end that I need some accidentals and I'm not sure yet what to do there.
"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" was next, with some lead singing by Monica and some by Kathryn. I had a bit of shakiness picking up the mandolin for the first time during the session; for one thing, I kept not quite getting my strum pattern in sync with Monica's. For another thing, I dropped my pick in the middle of one of the takes, and wound up missing the rest of that verse and the chorus. I was advised after that take that this was why professional musicians keep picks attached to their mike stands, during their performances. Or, in the case of KISS, keeping a hundred picks or so on their mike stands so that they could hurl them all out into the audience.
On the other hand, I also demonstrated that Patrick is not the only one who can do cheese, since on the tail end of the cheesy little final solo he whipped out on the Colonel, I came in with a tremolo to take it out. ;)
We briefly considered doing "I'm a Rover" -- but since we don't have the instrumental-y bits in the right key and I couldn't figure out how to get them quickly converted out of ABC format, we opted to shelve that for now and move on to "Goin' Up".
We have a couple of issues with this song to start with, one of which is that we don't have anything to do on the bridge yet. The second issue turned out to be that Kathryn immediately declared we needed to sing "And we've got Freddy on the squeezebox" instead of "Bobby", though, granted, we don't have Freddy for some time and he hasn't played this ditty with us yet. We are informed by the Freddy in question, however, that he will be practicing this ditty on his boat's tour of duty into the Middle East, so hopefully we will in fact have Freddy on the squeezebox by spring.
The third issue on this ditty turned out to be that G was a bad key for Kathryn to sing in, so we transposed it on the fly into D. I was particularly happy that I managed to figure out that all of the chords in question translated to other chords I could still in fact play, and at least somewhat, I could still do it at a half-reasonable tempo. I'll need to practice it, but it's doable.
Cyn has some issues singing this in D, though. We'll have to see where this winds up going.
The pie: raspberry. With vanilla ice cream on top or Cool Whip depending on preferences.
In which I show off a new toy (though I don't play it), in which Paul's new toy is also shown off (though he doesn't play that either), and in which Kathryn gets to have Fun With Transposition. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Jolly Butcher", "Acres of Clams", "Stray Cat Strut", "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Goin' Up".
Today's jam report starts off with my having been able to show off my new toy -- my octave mandolin. Though I didn't get to play it today; I am not quite comfortable with my chord changes up to speed on it yet. So it'll be a few more rounds before the big mandolin gets to join her little sister in regular music-making with the group.
This was also the first time that
kathrynt (Kathryn) got to see Paul's new toy as well -- the Colonel, of whom Kathryn expressed due approval. And although spazzkat (Paul) did not in fact join us in actual jamming, the Colonel rather inevitably wound up in Patrick's hands through the latter half of the session.We were also down
mamishka (Mimi) again, as she had been ill earlier this week and needed to make up for lost time on her various painting projects, so she was off working on one of same.First up was "Mari-Mac", one take to keep in practice; we didn't really even consider it a serious take because we sorely missed having the aforementioned Mimi to set the tempo for us with her drums. It really showed, too, because our tempo was all over the place. We still had some decent muscle on the guitars with Monica and
daspatrick (Patrick), though. ssha (Cyn) had a few adventures with the sheets for her violin part falling off the stand as well, though she opted not to tape them to the stand. We tried not to look at it cross-eyed and continue knocking it over for her.Another keep-in-practice take was next, with "Jolly Butcher". The length of time it had been since we'd last played with this was rather evidenced when Patrick turned to Monica and said, "So Monica -- how do you play 'Jolly Butcher'?"
Fortunately, he remembered after we did a few bars for him. ;) Though, really, we had a take and a half of this, since we started improvising on it more or less in the middle of the song and wound up finishing it out. On the one full take, Kathryn and Cyn had a bit of a harmony choke-up on their intro, though they pulled it back together once the instruments came in to join 'em. My piccolo part came out sloppy, not surprisingly -- though I was rather stunned that I actually hit the high notes in the bridge for once!
Kathryn remarked that the reason behind the force of her cry of "HEY!" in her part of the intro was due to her realization that we had no Fred on his dulcimer, and we were therefore missing his little flourish to take us into the song.
Next up: "Acres of Clams". Monica forked over some lyrics to Kathryn, and we determined that Kathryn did in fact have a delightful penchant for belting this song out at full tilt. As she put it, you just can't do a song called "Acres of Clams" halfway.
We twiddled with the structure of it a bit, because it's got nine verses in it and it is therefore Too Darned Long. Monica didn't want to sing "thick as the hair on the back of a dog", anyway, so we rearranged it so that we did one verse and chorus, then two verses and a chorus for the rest of the song. Cyn has improvised a bass line for it, much to her satisfaction, since she taught herself the D scale on that instrument and was able to get a bass line just out of that.
Paul put in a little bit of impromptu participation to this song after all, whipping up one of our small frog hand puppets and 'singing' along on some of the later choruses. He almost managed to make Kathryn lose it, too. We have decided that when we are Rich and Famous and on our World Tour of Halifax, Nova Scotia for all twelve of our fans, we must clearly have clam puppets. And we must all also be as drunk as possible.
On to "Stray Cat Strut" -- though this time Patrick sang lead on it, since Paul wasn't up to joining in with us today. Patrick has informed Paul that this song really is his, though their voices aren't all that different; Patrick has a few issues with coming in high enough at the beginning, and Paul's the one who has the proper style nailed down better. Kathryn had fun doing the backup "oohs", though. And I'm getting a better idea of how to do my flute part, though there's some places in there towards the end that I need some accidentals and I'm not sure yet what to do there.
"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" was next, with some lead singing by Monica and some by Kathryn. I had a bit of shakiness picking up the mandolin for the first time during the session; for one thing, I kept not quite getting my strum pattern in sync with Monica's. For another thing, I dropped my pick in the middle of one of the takes, and wound up missing the rest of that verse and the chorus. I was advised after that take that this was why professional musicians keep picks attached to their mike stands, during their performances. Or, in the case of KISS, keeping a hundred picks or so on their mike stands so that they could hurl them all out into the audience.
On the other hand, I also demonstrated that Patrick is not the only one who can do cheese, since on the tail end of the cheesy little final solo he whipped out on the Colonel, I came in with a tremolo to take it out. ;)
We briefly considered doing "I'm a Rover" -- but since we don't have the instrumental-y bits in the right key and I couldn't figure out how to get them quickly converted out of ABC format, we opted to shelve that for now and move on to "Goin' Up".
We have a couple of issues with this song to start with, one of which is that we don't have anything to do on the bridge yet. The second issue turned out to be that Kathryn immediately declared we needed to sing "And we've got Freddy on the squeezebox" instead of "Bobby", though, granted, we don't have Freddy for some time and he hasn't played this ditty with us yet. We are informed by the Freddy in question, however, that he will be practicing this ditty on his boat's tour of duty into the Middle East, so hopefully we will in fact have Freddy on the squeezebox by spring.
The third issue on this ditty turned out to be that G was a bad key for Kathryn to sing in, so we transposed it on the fly into D. I was particularly happy that I managed to figure out that all of the chords in question translated to other chords I could still in fact play, and at least somewhat, I could still do it at a half-reasonable tempo. I'll need to practice it, but it's doable.
Cyn has some issues singing this in D, though. We'll have to see where this winds up going.
The pie: raspberry. With vanilla ice cream on top or Cool Whip depending on preferences.