Jam Report #43: 4/28/02
Apr. 28th, 2002 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 1/26/06.
In which we do not record ourselves, though five of us show up; in which Anna gets to be alpha guitar/stringed instrument (read: only guitar/stringed instrument) and takes turn with Cyn singing lead; and in which Fred finally rejoins us after months at sea! Songs: "Goin' Up", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Judas Cart", "Old Black Rum", "Lukey".
Getting together for music yesterday was something of an adventure. The Murkworks has a houseguest until tomorrow, and said houseguest kindly invited those of us who were on hand out for dim sum; however, this turned out to require an expedition downtown by bus, as the place we wanted to go to was in Seattle's International District.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spazzkat (Paul) did not want to drive downtown, the five of us going could not fit in jiapa's (Amy's) rental, and solarbird (Dara) was leery about driving our car since it was still damaged from the accident a couple of weeks back.
As it turned out it took too long to get to the place by bus, so Dara and I had to turn right around and come back as soon as we got there, in order to get back in time for Jam. I stopped on the way to call home and see ifmamishka (Mimi) was going to get pie, and found out from her that a) Fred had called, though she hadn't made out his message; b) Monica had RSVP'd in the negative on the grounds of not feeling well, c) Dana had also mailed asking if Jam was happening today, or if she should just scamper over to Dusty Strings; and d) Mimi was also going to RSVP in the negative on the grounds of not feeling well but also on the grounds that she was about to head back East again to do some more painting for our ex-housemate and friend lyonesse (Vicka). Mimi did, however, also kindly offer to buy pie, on which I took her up.
Once I got back home I called Fred and Dana both, anxious to see Fred since he hadn't set foot in the Murk since going on his tour of duty, and got both his and Dana's positive RSVP's for music.ssha (Cyn) showed up, only to scamper off for a bit again to take care of a few things necessary for her car. But at last we, as well as Dara, all got together for what turned out to be an informal session, 'informal' in the sense of 'we didn't bother to record ourselves this time, even though we had five of us on hand'.
Fred showed off his new baby: a second dulcimer, which he'd picked up during his absence, and a lovely thing it is too. It has a deeper soundbox than his first one, and he hopes to keep them tuned into two different keys so as to be able to easily switch back and forth between songs as needed. Since he hadn't seen my octave mandolin, I proudly showed that off to him, as well.
First up was "Goin' Up", since I had promised some time ago to try to work out the accordion bits of this song for Fred to play on his concertina, and I thought I might actually get it done if we decided to work on it during Jam.
For additional giggles and grins, partly because we had absolutely none of the regular guitar players on hand and also because I'd just spent the previous week practicing hard on my little Ragamuffin, I actually played guitar on this song. One of the most immediate things I noticed, too, was that I need to strum a little more simply on the guitar than I do on the mandolin, just because the chord changes are slightly more of a reach for me on the choruses; G - C - D is really easy on the mandolin, but my little hand has to jump about a bit on the wide neck of my guitar. I also tried to sing on the choruses, but found myself erratic on that, just because I'm not quite confident enough of this song to play it and sing it to my satisfaction in general, much less on this instrument.
We had some issues, though, with trying to help Fred figure out where he needed to play. He wants to play something as close to Bob's accordion part as possible, but since we hadn't quite worked it out all the way through yet, he improvised something vaguely close to it. We did still have to actually break out the up version of this song, though, and listen through it once just to pick out all the places Mr. Hallett actually plays (survey says, intro measures, second half of the verses, in between chorus and next verse, bridge, final few measures).
"Trois Navires de Ble" was next -- and since Cyn wasn't exactly comfortable singing lead on this and needing to pick up her violin in all the relevant bits, I wound up having to sing lead on it, frighteningly enough. It's one of the few songs I know well enough on the guitar at this point that I can actually give it a shot, though it turns out that in Jam I have to sing it in my upper octave just to make sure I get heard. I also am obviously going to have to work harder on memorizing the lyrics, because I am still having issues remembering sometimes exactly what verse falls where, which may or may not be a consequence of having had to learn French lyrics phonetically.
I don't know the song well enough to quite play it as comfortably on the guitar as I can on the mand, though. I kept getting off-rhythm while trying to sing, and having to catch myself to keep the song going; moreover, I kept screwing up the bits leading into the various bridges. What happens for the first bridge (the one just after the third verse) is not the same thing as what happens for the second bridge (the one just after the fifth verse), which is not quite the same thing as what happens for the final instrumental (after the sixth verse).
One thing I did learn about playing the guitar in Jam, though: I think I actually do like playing the guitar if I'm by myself, but if there's another guitar present, I like being on the mand. At least for "Trois Navires de Ble". My mileage varied for the rest of the session, as we kicked back to songs I know way better on the mandolin than I do on the guitar.
Like "Judas Cart" -- since Cyn and I wanted to do our harmony bits for Dana, who hadn't heard them. I'm still not consistent on where I want to be singing, though I'm managing to fake my way through a chord progression on this song now if I fall apart on the fingerwork. So I can at least keep it going, and I know the harmony well enough to come in the choruses. We do sound way better with Monica to join in, though it was nice to have Fred rumbling in on the bottom as well. The only problem was that Dara doesn't really have anything to do with this song, on the flute, and in fact stated the opinion that the song doesn't really need a flute part... which fits in with my own opinion about the two recorded versions of this song by 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. The one I prefer has just a guitar and a single voice, which is quite simple and sweet. We're adding harmony, but it really doesn't need much else.
After we got done with a couple of takes of this we tried to get Dara to suggest something Dara could play, but she opted out of picking something -- which left us with having to pick from stuff I could actually strum and which we hadn't played yet. This made "Old Black Rum" pretty much inevitable, since I can whip that out fairly well in the key of D on the octave mand now even if I'm still having issues with the syncopated parts of the vocals on the verses and avoiding keeping my voice from following the chords. Since I was having issues with this, Cyn tried to take the lead, but found that her voice was pretty thrashed -- partly leftover effects from seeing Great Big Sea live last Wednesday, and partly due to seasonal allergies.
This pretty much left us with "Lukey" in terms of the Set of Things Anna Can Strum; I can do "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", but we voted that down on the grounds of no other guitars on hand, not to mention no Mimi to keep the tempo and no Monica to sing lead. We haven't really done much work on "Lukey", though; I still need to transpose the "Staten Island" version of the bridge for Cyn to play in the proper key, so we'll have a bridge, and I need to learn the chords that go with it as well.
After one take of "Lukey", played straight through without the bridge, we called it Pie... and had some of the nummy chocolate cream pie that Mimi brought us. Wound up having a bit of the leftover dim sum that Amy and Paul andimalion (Chris) brought back, as well!
Anna the Piper
In which we do not record ourselves, though five of us show up; in which Anna gets to be alpha guitar/stringed instrument (read: only guitar/stringed instrument) and takes turn with Cyn singing lead; and in which Fred finally rejoins us after months at sea! Songs: "Goin' Up", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Judas Cart", "Old Black Rum", "Lukey".
Getting together for music yesterday was something of an adventure. The Murkworks has a houseguest until tomorrow, and said houseguest kindly invited those of us who were on hand out for dim sum; however, this turned out to require an expedition downtown by bus, as the place we wanted to go to was in Seattle's International District.
spazzkat (Paul) did not want to drive downtown, the five of us going could not fit in jiapa's (Amy's) rental, and solarbird (Dara) was leery about driving our car since it was still damaged from the accident a couple of weeks back.As it turned out it took too long to get to the place by bus, so Dara and I had to turn right around and come back as soon as we got there, in order to get back in time for Jam. I stopped on the way to call home and see if
mamishka (Mimi) was going to get pie, and found out from her that a) Fred had called, though she hadn't made out his message; b) Monica had RSVP'd in the negative on the grounds of not feeling well, c) Dana had also mailed asking if Jam was happening today, or if she should just scamper over to Dusty Strings; and d) Mimi was also going to RSVP in the negative on the grounds of not feeling well but also on the grounds that she was about to head back East again to do some more painting for our ex-housemate and friend lyonesse (Vicka). Mimi did, however, also kindly offer to buy pie, on which I took her up.Once I got back home I called Fred and Dana both, anxious to see Fred since he hadn't set foot in the Murk since going on his tour of duty, and got both his and Dana's positive RSVP's for music.
ssha (Cyn) showed up, only to scamper off for a bit again to take care of a few things necessary for her car. But at last we, as well as Dara, all got together for what turned out to be an informal session, 'informal' in the sense of 'we didn't bother to record ourselves this time, even though we had five of us on hand'.Fred showed off his new baby: a second dulcimer, which he'd picked up during his absence, and a lovely thing it is too. It has a deeper soundbox than his first one, and he hopes to keep them tuned into two different keys so as to be able to easily switch back and forth between songs as needed. Since he hadn't seen my octave mandolin, I proudly showed that off to him, as well.
First up was "Goin' Up", since I had promised some time ago to try to work out the accordion bits of this song for Fred to play on his concertina, and I thought I might actually get it done if we decided to work on it during Jam.
For additional giggles and grins, partly because we had absolutely none of the regular guitar players on hand and also because I'd just spent the previous week practicing hard on my little Ragamuffin, I actually played guitar on this song. One of the most immediate things I noticed, too, was that I need to strum a little more simply on the guitar than I do on the mandolin, just because the chord changes are slightly more of a reach for me on the choruses; G - C - D is really easy on the mandolin, but my little hand has to jump about a bit on the wide neck of my guitar. I also tried to sing on the choruses, but found myself erratic on that, just because I'm not quite confident enough of this song to play it and sing it to my satisfaction in general, much less on this instrument.
We had some issues, though, with trying to help Fred figure out where he needed to play. He wants to play something as close to Bob's accordion part as possible, but since we hadn't quite worked it out all the way through yet, he improvised something vaguely close to it. We did still have to actually break out the up version of this song, though, and listen through it once just to pick out all the places Mr. Hallett actually plays (survey says, intro measures, second half of the verses, in between chorus and next verse, bridge, final few measures).
"Trois Navires de Ble" was next -- and since Cyn wasn't exactly comfortable singing lead on this and needing to pick up her violin in all the relevant bits, I wound up having to sing lead on it, frighteningly enough. It's one of the few songs I know well enough on the guitar at this point that I can actually give it a shot, though it turns out that in Jam I have to sing it in my upper octave just to make sure I get heard. I also am obviously going to have to work harder on memorizing the lyrics, because I am still having issues remembering sometimes exactly what verse falls where, which may or may not be a consequence of having had to learn French lyrics phonetically.
I don't know the song well enough to quite play it as comfortably on the guitar as I can on the mand, though. I kept getting off-rhythm while trying to sing, and having to catch myself to keep the song going; moreover, I kept screwing up the bits leading into the various bridges. What happens for the first bridge (the one just after the third verse) is not the same thing as what happens for the second bridge (the one just after the fifth verse), which is not quite the same thing as what happens for the final instrumental (after the sixth verse).
One thing I did learn about playing the guitar in Jam, though: I think I actually do like playing the guitar if I'm by myself, but if there's another guitar present, I like being on the mand. At least for "Trois Navires de Ble". My mileage varied for the rest of the session, as we kicked back to songs I know way better on the mandolin than I do on the guitar.
Like "Judas Cart" -- since Cyn and I wanted to do our harmony bits for Dana, who hadn't heard them. I'm still not consistent on where I want to be singing, though I'm managing to fake my way through a chord progression on this song now if I fall apart on the fingerwork. So I can at least keep it going, and I know the harmony well enough to come in the choruses. We do sound way better with Monica to join in, though it was nice to have Fred rumbling in on the bottom as well. The only problem was that Dara doesn't really have anything to do with this song, on the flute, and in fact stated the opinion that the song doesn't really need a flute part... which fits in with my own opinion about the two recorded versions of this song by 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. The one I prefer has just a guitar and a single voice, which is quite simple and sweet. We're adding harmony, but it really doesn't need much else.
After we got done with a couple of takes of this we tried to get Dara to suggest something Dara could play, but she opted out of picking something -- which left us with having to pick from stuff I could actually strum and which we hadn't played yet. This made "Old Black Rum" pretty much inevitable, since I can whip that out fairly well in the key of D on the octave mand now even if I'm still having issues with the syncopated parts of the vocals on the verses and avoiding keeping my voice from following the chords. Since I was having issues with this, Cyn tried to take the lead, but found that her voice was pretty thrashed -- partly leftover effects from seeing Great Big Sea live last Wednesday, and partly due to seasonal allergies.
This pretty much left us with "Lukey" in terms of the Set of Things Anna Can Strum; I can do "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", but we voted that down on the grounds of no other guitars on hand, not to mention no Mimi to keep the tempo and no Monica to sing lead. We haven't really done much work on "Lukey", though; I still need to transpose the "Staten Island" version of the bridge for Cyn to play in the proper key, so we'll have a bridge, and I need to learn the chords that go with it as well.
After one take of "Lukey", played straight through without the bridge, we called it Pie... and had some of the nummy chocolate cream pie that Mimi brought us. Wound up having a bit of the leftover dim sum that Amy and Paul and
imalion (Chris) brought back, as well!Anna the Piper