Jam Report #33 1/3: 1/14/02
Jan. 14th, 2002 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/7/05.
In which it is Monica's turn to be down with the plague during Jam, and in which much musicgeeking happens the week after, and which Anna is tackled by a pile of brand new chords. Jam Songs: "Jolly Butcher", "Rocky Road to Dublin", "Stray Cat Strut". Musicgeek Songs: "Big Love Big Heartache", "Sail Those Same Oceans", "Are You Lonesome Tonight?".
Happy New Year, all! Well, okay, two weeks late, but it's the thought that counts. And considering that 2002 needs a bit more of a nudge to climb out of the gaping black hole of sucktitude that was 2001, we could use all the Happy New Year wishes we could get, eh?
This is hands down the latest I've ever done a jam report -- but well hey, the jams have been sort of low-key lately, as we all adjust to the new year, and so this is a combined report for our last official jam as well as the musicgeeking some number of us have done since. Call it, if you will, Jam Report #33 1/3.
Our last official jam was back on 1/6, and turned out to be fairly laid back. Attendees included myself,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird (Dara), spazzkat (Paul), ssha (Cyn), daspatrick (Patrick), and kathrynt (Kathryn); Monica turned out to have another round of the local plagues, and Dana had to skip out to handle a private matter.
Kathryn showed up with yet another metronome -- promptly dubbed Mini-Robo-Mimi -- of the variety that gives off beeps as well as alters its display as it counts the beats. It proved to be not particularly useful, as yet again we all played loudly enough to drown it out, and it was too tiny for us to be able to read it effectively when we put it on the floor in the center of us all. Kathryn has announced her intention to acquire a metronome with an arm on it, to see if a better visual cue will help us be better able to keep tempos.
Songs covered included:
The pie: raspberry. Which was also deemed an inferior pie, and as evidence, we still have some left in our fridge.
This past week was an off-week, and so we didn't actually have a jam session scheduled. However, Dana came by on Saturday, and she and I did in fact do a bit of musicgeeking as I started playing with an Elvis ditty, "Big Love Big Heartache", and discovered to my pleasure that G, E minor, and E flat chords play unexpectedly nicely with each other in a ballad. I also played with the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts ditty "Sail Those Same Oceans", and discovered how to turn it from a four-chord song into a six-chord song, courtesy of having just learned D7 and Dsus4 -- thanks to Great Big Sea, "Lukey", and "Fast as I Can"! (The lesson herein being, folks, that apparently if I listen to enough songs long enough I can start hearing how chords play with one another. This is a development I'm quite happy about!)
It also didn't stop Cyn and me from doing a bit of musicgeeking yesterday -- primarily involving playing with "Gone By the Board", which we found transcribed out on the Consequence Free fansite. We wanted to see which we liked better as a bridge for "Lukey", that one, or Staten Island. Thus far, inclination seems to be going towards "Gone By the Board". We had to transpose it, as Deb's (HI DEB!) fine little music repository up on her site seems to have it in a key appropriate for the ditty it's attached to on the album Great Big Sea, i.e., the song "Great Big Sea". However, the B'ys appear to have kicked it from the key of F into the key of D to play it for "Lukey". Fortunately, with an ABC file, it's easy for me to get a song transposed in my handy dandy Music Write software.
This past week being an off-week didn't stop our friendbrombear (Brom) from showing up with a newcomer by the name of Mike in tow yesterday, either. Brom came by to give Dara, Paul, and me late Christmas presents, but he also brought with him a couple of his instruments, a bodhran with some lovely Celtic knotwork painted on the head and a very nice bass which was duly admired and played with.
We had pie yesterday, too -- strawberry rhubarb -- but as of this writing none of it has been eaten yet, because it got trumped by the homemade fudge that yet another friend of mine, Sarah, brought by yesterday (thusly continuing this past weekend's tradition of the Murkworks as Hotbed of Social Activity). Because mmmmmmm FUDGE.
Last, but not least, I have also begun fiddling with a second Elvis ditty, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", and have discovered to my shock that the thing has a grand total of THIRTEEN CHORDS in it. C, B flat, A7, D minor, G7, F, F minor, C minor, C7, D7, F#7, B flat diminished, and D7-9. My new quest: playing this thing at speed. And learning what the heck D7-9 is.
Oh, and finishing off that fudge.
More in a week, assuming I actually write one of these things on time for once,
Anna the Piper
In which it is Monica's turn to be down with the plague during Jam, and in which much musicgeeking happens the week after, and which Anna is tackled by a pile of brand new chords. Jam Songs: "Jolly Butcher", "Rocky Road to Dublin", "Stray Cat Strut". Musicgeek Songs: "Big Love Big Heartache", "Sail Those Same Oceans", "Are You Lonesome Tonight?".
Happy New Year, all! Well, okay, two weeks late, but it's the thought that counts. And considering that 2002 needs a bit more of a nudge to climb out of the gaping black hole of sucktitude that was 2001, we could use all the Happy New Year wishes we could get, eh?
This is hands down the latest I've ever done a jam report -- but well hey, the jams have been sort of low-key lately, as we all adjust to the new year, and so this is a combined report for our last official jam as well as the musicgeeking some number of us have done since. Call it, if you will, Jam Report #33 1/3.
Our last official jam was back on 1/6, and turned out to be fairly laid back. Attendees included myself,
solarbird (Dara), spazzkat (Paul), ssha (Cyn), daspatrick (Patrick), and kathrynt (Kathryn); Monica turned out to have another round of the local plagues, and Dana had to skip out to handle a private matter.Kathryn showed up with yet another metronome -- promptly dubbed Mini-Robo-Mimi -- of the variety that gives off beeps as well as alters its display as it counts the beats. It proved to be not particularly useful, as yet again we all played loudly enough to drown it out, and it was too tiny for us to be able to read it effectively when we put it on the floor in the center of us all. Kathryn has announced her intention to acquire a metronome with an arm on it, to see if a better visual cue will help us be better able to keep tempos.
Songs covered included:
- "Jolly Butcher", for practice purposes. We noted with pleasure that we actually played this with more energy than we had in a while, even if we couldn't keep the tempo consistent to save any of our lives. Much playing of G chords to give Kathryn her starting notes occurred. And I had round one of "Anna obviously wants to trill today", wanting to throw in a trill on Shine just as we're coming out of the bridge. I think half of me was trying to make up for not having Mimi's great little drum riff there, and the other half was just in the mood to trill.
- Well, okay, we didn't actually do "Yum Yum Bumblebee Tuna", but only because we can't find the lyrics yet. Trust on this, folks, this one is coming. ;)
- And so since we couldn't sing the praises of BumbleBee Tuna, we decided to do "Rocky Road to Dublin" instead -- a new thing we hadn't tried before! Kathryn and I in particular had liked this song from the first time we'd heard the Irish Descendants' version of it, and for the longest time Kathryn had been working on learning it on her harp. I have two versions of it in my songbooks, though the key signatures disagree, and now I have two recorded versions of it as well (the Irish Descendants', as well as the Fables'). We had key signature disagreements between our recorded versions and our songbook versions as well, and we finally wound up playing the thing in some sort of weirdo B not-quite-minor-but-sort-of-Dorian-modish sort of key. All I know is, I spent a lot of time hitting B minor and A chords. Patrick and Kathryn did most of the work on figuring out what to do with this ditty, since we didn't have all the voices we really need to do it justice on hand, or mamishka (Mimi) and her drums.
- After we got done with "Rocky Road to Dublin" we were all sort of tuckered out from playing with something totally new, so we shot down the notion of playing with "I'm a Rover" in favor of playing with "Stray Cat Strut" again instead. We aren't quite solid yet on how we're layering bringing in the various voices and instruments on this, but we got some progress in on it. And moved Paul closer to the mike so that he can be heard better over the horde of instruments playing underneath him. Kathryn kicked back to whip out more "ooos" in the backup vocals while knitting at the same time. And I started being hit with the urge to throw in a few trills here and there on this ditty, too.
The pie: raspberry. Which was also deemed an inferior pie, and as evidence, we still have some left in our fridge.
This past week was an off-week, and so we didn't actually have a jam session scheduled. However, Dana came by on Saturday, and she and I did in fact do a bit of musicgeeking as I started playing with an Elvis ditty, "Big Love Big Heartache", and discovered to my pleasure that G, E minor, and E flat chords play unexpectedly nicely with each other in a ballad. I also played with the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts ditty "Sail Those Same Oceans", and discovered how to turn it from a four-chord song into a six-chord song, courtesy of having just learned D7 and Dsus4 -- thanks to Great Big Sea, "Lukey", and "Fast as I Can"! (The lesson herein being, folks, that apparently if I listen to enough songs long enough I can start hearing how chords play with one another. This is a development I'm quite happy about!)
It also didn't stop Cyn and me from doing a bit of musicgeeking yesterday -- primarily involving playing with "Gone By the Board", which we found transcribed out on the Consequence Free fansite. We wanted to see which we liked better as a bridge for "Lukey", that one, or Staten Island. Thus far, inclination seems to be going towards "Gone By the Board". We had to transpose it, as Deb's (HI DEB!) fine little music repository up on her site seems to have it in a key appropriate for the ditty it's attached to on the album Great Big Sea, i.e., the song "Great Big Sea". However, the B'ys appear to have kicked it from the key of F into the key of D to play it for "Lukey". Fortunately, with an ABC file, it's easy for me to get a song transposed in my handy dandy Music Write software.
This past week being an off-week didn't stop our friend
brombear (Brom) from showing up with a newcomer by the name of Mike in tow yesterday, either. Brom came by to give Dara, Paul, and me late Christmas presents, but he also brought with him a couple of his instruments, a bodhran with some lovely Celtic knotwork painted on the head and a very nice bass which was duly admired and played with.We had pie yesterday, too -- strawberry rhubarb -- but as of this writing none of it has been eaten yet, because it got trumped by the homemade fudge that yet another friend of mine, Sarah, brought by yesterday (thusly continuing this past weekend's tradition of the Murkworks as Hotbed of Social Activity). Because mmmmmmm FUDGE.
Last, but not least, I have also begun fiddling with a second Elvis ditty, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", and have discovered to my shock that the thing has a grand total of THIRTEEN CHORDS in it. C, B flat, A7, D minor, G7, F, F minor, C minor, C7, D7, F#7, B flat diminished, and D7-9. My new quest: playing this thing at speed. And learning what the heck D7-9 is.
Oh, and finishing off that fudge.
More in a week, assuming I actually write one of these things on time for once,
Anna the Piper