Jam Report #29: 11/11/01
Nov. 11th, 2001 01:07 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 another new toy (though I don't play it, and Patrick does), in which Dana shows up for a second session and officially joins the group, in which 30 Odd Foot of Grunts becomes the latest band we've covered, and in which I get to play piccolo and flute and lead mandolin AND sing! Songs: "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Judas Cart", "Stray Cat Strut", "Old Black Rum".
Happy Binary Day, all! This is the last one we'll have until 2010, so in honor of Binary Day, even if you happen to read this later, turn your lights on and off!
Ahem. Er, but anyway, about the music...
Dana, who had dropped by back on session #25, joined us again today and made interested noises about being a permanent fixture as well. So this session marked Dana's second with us, as she ramped up learning the lyrics to various and sundry things, including the French lyrics to "Trois Navires de Ble". Although she is not yet up to speed on the guitar or the violin, instruments she has both played in the past but some time ago, we'll have the potential of her contributing those as well once she's comfortable -- since it did occur to us that if she got comfortable on the fiddle, she could in fact play Cyn's fiddle while![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ssha (Cyn) played her bass, which would be a very fine thing indeed. Yay Dana!
For the rest of us, we were down (in addition to the absent Fred, who has been periodically updating us about his concertina progress via email from his travelling vessel)kathrynt (Kathryn) and mamishka (Mimi), as the two of them had jaunted off down to a science fiction convention in Portland this weekend. The guitar section came in staggered, first Monica, then daspatrick (Patrick) and finally spazzkat (Paul), but once everyone was with us we had a good-sized group indeed.
I was delighted to show off yet another new instrument to the group at large -- my new guitar Ragamuffin, who came to the Murkworks all broken and battered and who was brought back to life after some fine work by my partner on its poor bridge (which was in PIECES). Ragamuffin is the smallest guitar in the house now, and although he hasn't cleaned up nearly as nice as the Colonel, he's got a not bad sound at all; Patrick certainly made some lovely noises with the little guy, continuing his fine personal tradition of picking up every new thing with strings that comes into the house and playing with it. I told everyone that it'd probably be a bit before I was able to go anything on the guitar, since my brain hasn't really begun to handle the mandolin's arrangement of strings and the guitar's arrangement at the same time -- and furthermore, Rags is a classical guitar, and therefore has a nice fat neck, especially in comparison to my mandolins' ones. Even my octave mand's neck is very slender compared to a classical guitar's.
At some point during the session I shared with everybody that my brother and his band would be coming to Seattle to do work on their very first actual album, and that my brother may even be able to drop by for a session or two as they'd be in town for a whole month. Slightly intimidated noises were made by Monica at the prospect of having someone present who actually makes music professionally, though Dana pointed out that my brother, being, well, my brother, would hopefully be very forgiving. At least until Monica pointed out that she played one of our MP3's for her brother, whose reaction could be basically summarized as "Yeah, Monica, whatever..." ;)
As for today's musical lineup, first off it was Monica,solarbird (Dara), Cyn, Dana, and me with "Acres of Clams", with Monica taking lead vocals again since Kathryn wasn't here to belt this ditty out at the top of her lungs for us. Monica announced her belief that we really needed to keep the tempo up and moving due to the length of the song, which we all seemed to pretty much agree with... but this still needs some work. Dar and I have some fun initial concepts with her little bamboo flute and my piccolo interweaving on our parts, but I haven't yet figured out some thing to counterbalance her "low on the verses, high on the choruses" part that she's doing.
Monica is, however, continuing her tradition of song-virusing me when she's not actually singing. For much of the rest of the evening, and even as I write this report, I've got her singing "I think of my pleasant condition, suuuuurounded by acres of clams!" in the back of my head. ;)
Patrick showed up as we were deciding to do "Trois Navires de Ble", so we were then presented with the quadruple challenges of:
We're not exactly there yet on this song, but we kept the tempo up. The chords came out a little ragged here and there, but not too terribly bad.
Onward to a new ditty that we'd periodically made noises about covering before and hadn't yet gotten around to -- "Judas Cart" by 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, which is based on the very first composition of the ancient Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, "Si Bheag Si Mhor". We had a bit of debate as to which version of the song we actually wanted to try, since I had in fact found a set of Gaelic lyrics on the web and Monica has, in fact, taken Irish language classes in the past, so she could even in theory pronounce them. I also had a transcription of the "Si Bheag Si Mhor" version of the melody, which would give us all a starting point for how the song goes. But the Gaelic was deemed too hard to tackle without Monica doing a bit of work first to figure out how the lyrics would scan into the melody, so "Judas Cart" it was.
(And another joke as well about what would be as alarming as French sung with a Newfoundland accent: Gaelic sung with an Australian one. On account of 30 Odd Foot of Grunts is an Aussie band, doncha know...)
The fun thing about this song is that the version with which I am familiar is extremely simple, one singer and one guitar line. However, we are an ensemble, so we played around a bit with figuring out who should sing and who should play an instrument. I had it in my head that we should have as many people singing as possible, preferably in harmony if we could manage it, with minimal instrumentation -- one guitar, Dar on the flute, my mandolin.
It was very unnerving, for me! For one thing, this was the first time I'd done anything on the mandolin in the full group besides just rhythm chords. For another thing, since I was the one who knew how the various little twiddles and things were in theory supposed to go, I was suddenly lead string instrument and that is not something I'm used to yet in the slightest. For a third thing, the A7 chord in the tail end of the verse is still giving me fits to finger at tempo; I need to figure out something there I can play and play comfortably well at speed. For a fourth thing, the third verse is not quite the same in structure as the first two, so I have to work on that part as well.
All that said, although the first few takes and partial takes were pretty ragged, we finally got one together that didn't suck too terribly badly. :) It's not ready to be shared with anybody by any stretch of the imagination, but there was enough there to show some potential for sounding really cool if we could make it work. Once or twice I could hear myself upholding the overall theme of the group and getting two or three good measures here or there when I made the guitar-adopted-to-mandolin part work right. The vocals had much coolness as well, since we got Patrick in to provide some depth to the bottom of the singing. I really want to hear some harmony going on with this, but so far no one has worked out a harmony part to sing. I have sort of played with singing harmony to the recording of "Judas Cart", and will have to write out what I've worked out to share with Monica, since I can't play and sing at the same time.
Onward then to another stab at "Stray Cat Strut", for which we pulled Paul down the stairs. Patrick had brought his electric guitar with him, so we had two electrics and a bass on hand, but we determined that we didn't have the proper setup to let both of the electrics be plugged in at the same time. So Paul broke out his acoustic to throw in some backup twiddles while Patrick took the lead on the Colonel, and Monica provided some guitar support as well, which worked out quite nicely all around even though we're used to the small arrangement of instruments that the recorded version of this song has. I am also getting happier with my flute part, though it's not entirely there yet; I do at least know that I'm starting off down in my lower register and soaring up a couple octaves for the latter bit of the song, and I've more or less got a rhythm down. The trick will be to nail down what I'm supposed to be doing on the guitar solo in the middle. Monica had to wind up sitting out a bit, though, since she had to do some bar chords on this song and her wrist really isn't up to that, thanks to her recent bout with tendonitis.
Lastly, we finished off with "Old Black Rum" -- since I'd had an epiphany that if I transcribed that puppy into D, I'd very possibly be able to sing it a lot better. Moreover, I'd noticed that the tabs for the song, if you consult the Road Rage collection of chords on the web, are actually natively in D and are marked as needing to be capoed up three frets for guitarists, so getting the chords into that key was easy -- or would have been if Monica hadn't already been able to easily produce chords in the proper key.
We had a bit of trouble getting all three guitars synced up, which wound up throwing me off for tempo as well. So at least the first couple of times through, we weren't exactly together. But all in all this turned out to be extremely satisfying, as I could in fact sing this ditty in this key way better than I could in F. I made it through a full take for the first time, complete with the Road Rage slowdown of "And I drank sixteen doubles for the price of ooooooooone!" at the end. ;) Cyn helped me out with belting out "ON HER HAIR!" in the right place on the second verse, and we even managed to get in a bit of harmony on the "HEY!" part of "HEY! Will I live for another day?" on the choruses.
The pie: apple, with suitable vanilla ice cream to go with. A poll was taken as to how many of the group likes pumpkin pie, though Monica expressed uncertainty about being able to get away with consuming store-bought pie due to her dairy allergy. To balance this out, she may be able to bring us a homemade pumpkin pie, the recipe for which, or so she tells us, involves brandy!
Cheers all,
Anna the Piper
In which I show off another new toy (though I don't play it, and Patrick does), in which Dana shows up for a second session and officially joins the group, in which 30 Odd Foot of Grunts becomes the latest band we've covered, and in which I get to play piccolo and flute and lead mandolin AND sing! Songs: "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Judas Cart", "Stray Cat Strut", "Old Black Rum".
Happy Binary Day, all! This is the last one we'll have until 2010, so in honor of Binary Day, even if you happen to read this later, turn your lights on and off!
Ahem. Er, but anyway, about the music...
Dana, who had dropped by back on session #25, joined us again today and made interested noises about being a permanent fixture as well. So this session marked Dana's second with us, as she ramped up learning the lyrics to various and sundry things, including the French lyrics to "Trois Navires de Ble". Although she is not yet up to speed on the guitar or the violin, instruments she has both played in the past but some time ago, we'll have the potential of her contributing those as well once she's comfortable -- since it did occur to us that if she got comfortable on the fiddle, she could in fact play Cyn's fiddle while
ssha (Cyn) played her bass, which would be a very fine thing indeed. Yay Dana!For the rest of us, we were down (in addition to the absent Fred, who has been periodically updating us about his concertina progress via email from his travelling vessel)
kathrynt (Kathryn) and mamishka (Mimi), as the two of them had jaunted off down to a science fiction convention in Portland this weekend. The guitar section came in staggered, first Monica, then daspatrick (Patrick) and finally spazzkat (Paul), but once everyone was with us we had a good-sized group indeed.I was delighted to show off yet another new instrument to the group at large -- my new guitar Ragamuffin, who came to the Murkworks all broken and battered and who was brought back to life after some fine work by my partner on its poor bridge (which was in PIECES). Ragamuffin is the smallest guitar in the house now, and although he hasn't cleaned up nearly as nice as the Colonel, he's got a not bad sound at all; Patrick certainly made some lovely noises with the little guy, continuing his fine personal tradition of picking up every new thing with strings that comes into the house and playing with it. I told everyone that it'd probably be a bit before I was able to go anything on the guitar, since my brain hasn't really begun to handle the mandolin's arrangement of strings and the guitar's arrangement at the same time -- and furthermore, Rags is a classical guitar, and therefore has a nice fat neck, especially in comparison to my mandolins' ones. Even my octave mand's neck is very slender compared to a classical guitar's.
At some point during the session I shared with everybody that my brother and his band would be coming to Seattle to do work on their very first actual album, and that my brother may even be able to drop by for a session or two as they'd be in town for a whole month. Slightly intimidated noises were made by Monica at the prospect of having someone present who actually makes music professionally, though Dana pointed out that my brother, being, well, my brother, would hopefully be very forgiving. At least until Monica pointed out that she played one of our MP3's for her brother, whose reaction could be basically summarized as "Yeah, Monica, whatever..." ;)
As for today's musical lineup, first off it was Monica,
solarbird (Dara), Cyn, Dana, and me with "Acres of Clams", with Monica taking lead vocals again since Kathryn wasn't here to belt this ditty out at the top of her lungs for us. Monica announced her belief that we really needed to keep the tempo up and moving due to the length of the song, which we all seemed to pretty much agree with... but this still needs some work. Dar and I have some fun initial concepts with her little bamboo flute and my piccolo interweaving on our parts, but I haven't yet figured out some thing to counterbalance her "low on the verses, high on the choruses" part that she's doing.Monica is, however, continuing her tradition of song-virusing me when she's not actually singing. For much of the rest of the evening, and even as I write this report, I've got her singing "I think of my pleasant condition, suuuuurounded by acres of clams!" in the back of my head. ;)
Patrick showed up as we were deciding to do "Trois Navires de Ble", so we were then presented with the quadruple challenges of:
- Re-cluing Patrick in on the chord line for this song;
- Introducing Dana to the French lyrics while making jokes about French lyrics (and Acadian French at that) sung in a Newfoundland accent, a situation which makes it challenging for us Amurkins to try to learn how to sing this ditty phonetically if we're trying to listen to Alan Doyle sing 'em;
- Getting Cyn another copy of the bridge-y bits since she'd mislaid hers;
- Having me and Patrick try to carry the chord line without Monica as she shifted over to join Cyn and Dana to solidify the vocals.
We're not exactly there yet on this song, but we kept the tempo up. The chords came out a little ragged here and there, but not too terribly bad.
Onward to a new ditty that we'd periodically made noises about covering before and hadn't yet gotten around to -- "Judas Cart" by 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, which is based on the very first composition of the ancient Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, "Si Bheag Si Mhor". We had a bit of debate as to which version of the song we actually wanted to try, since I had in fact found a set of Gaelic lyrics on the web and Monica has, in fact, taken Irish language classes in the past, so she could even in theory pronounce them. I also had a transcription of the "Si Bheag Si Mhor" version of the melody, which would give us all a starting point for how the song goes. But the Gaelic was deemed too hard to tackle without Monica doing a bit of work first to figure out how the lyrics would scan into the melody, so "Judas Cart" it was.
(And another joke as well about what would be as alarming as French sung with a Newfoundland accent: Gaelic sung with an Australian one. On account of 30 Odd Foot of Grunts is an Aussie band, doncha know...)
The fun thing about this song is that the version with which I am familiar is extremely simple, one singer and one guitar line. However, we are an ensemble, so we played around a bit with figuring out who should sing and who should play an instrument. I had it in my head that we should have as many people singing as possible, preferably in harmony if we could manage it, with minimal instrumentation -- one guitar, Dar on the flute, my mandolin.
It was very unnerving, for me! For one thing, this was the first time I'd done anything on the mandolin in the full group besides just rhythm chords. For another thing, since I was the one who knew how the various little twiddles and things were in theory supposed to go, I was suddenly lead string instrument and that is not something I'm used to yet in the slightest. For a third thing, the A7 chord in the tail end of the verse is still giving me fits to finger at tempo; I need to figure out something there I can play and play comfortably well at speed. For a fourth thing, the third verse is not quite the same in structure as the first two, so I have to work on that part as well.
All that said, although the first few takes and partial takes were pretty ragged, we finally got one together that didn't suck too terribly badly. :) It's not ready to be shared with anybody by any stretch of the imagination, but there was enough there to show some potential for sounding really cool if we could make it work. Once or twice I could hear myself upholding the overall theme of the group and getting two or three good measures here or there when I made the guitar-adopted-to-mandolin part work right. The vocals had much coolness as well, since we got Patrick in to provide some depth to the bottom of the singing. I really want to hear some harmony going on with this, but so far no one has worked out a harmony part to sing. I have sort of played with singing harmony to the recording of "Judas Cart", and will have to write out what I've worked out to share with Monica, since I can't play and sing at the same time.
Onward then to another stab at "Stray Cat Strut", for which we pulled Paul down the stairs. Patrick had brought his electric guitar with him, so we had two electrics and a bass on hand, but we determined that we didn't have the proper setup to let both of the electrics be plugged in at the same time. So Paul broke out his acoustic to throw in some backup twiddles while Patrick took the lead on the Colonel, and Monica provided some guitar support as well, which worked out quite nicely all around even though we're used to the small arrangement of instruments that the recorded version of this song has. I am also getting happier with my flute part, though it's not entirely there yet; I do at least know that I'm starting off down in my lower register and soaring up a couple octaves for the latter bit of the song, and I've more or less got a rhythm down. The trick will be to nail down what I'm supposed to be doing on the guitar solo in the middle. Monica had to wind up sitting out a bit, though, since she had to do some bar chords on this song and her wrist really isn't up to that, thanks to her recent bout with tendonitis.
Lastly, we finished off with "Old Black Rum" -- since I'd had an epiphany that if I transcribed that puppy into D, I'd very possibly be able to sing it a lot better. Moreover, I'd noticed that the tabs for the song, if you consult the Road Rage collection of chords on the web, are actually natively in D and are marked as needing to be capoed up three frets for guitarists, so getting the chords into that key was easy -- or would have been if Monica hadn't already been able to easily produce chords in the proper key.
We had a bit of trouble getting all three guitars synced up, which wound up throwing me off for tempo as well. So at least the first couple of times through, we weren't exactly together. But all in all this turned out to be extremely satisfying, as I could in fact sing this ditty in this key way better than I could in F. I made it through a full take for the first time, complete with the Road Rage slowdown of "And I drank sixteen doubles for the price of ooooooooone!" at the end. ;) Cyn helped me out with belting out "ON HER HAIR!" in the right place on the second verse, and we even managed to get in a bit of harmony on the "HEY!" part of "HEY! Will I live for another day?" on the choruses.
The pie: apple, with suitable vanilla ice cream to go with. A poll was taken as to how many of the group likes pumpkin pie, though Monica expressed uncertainty about being able to get away with consuming store-bought pie due to her dairy allergy. To balance this out, she may be able to bring us a homemade pumpkin pie, the recipe for which, or so she tells us, involves brandy!
Cheers all,
Anna the Piper