Jam Report #48: 7/14/02

[annathepiper]

As originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 2/4/06.

In which we play a whole pile of songs and get another public take, in which I break a string, and in which we have two pies! Songs: "Acres of Clams", "Jolly Butcher", "Mari-Mac", "Dancing With Mrs. White", "Trois Navires de Ble", "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Old Black Rum", "The Guitar", "House of the Rising Sun", "Jennie's Jealous", "A Boat Like Gideon Brown".

Today we had a good turnout -- and found out that five people can make a pretty stunning amount of music if we work at it. Now, granted, a great deal of it was a mess, but well hey, at least we were here and playing! Our lineup for session #48 was myself and solarbird (Dara), daspatrick (Patrick), Monica, and mamishka (Mimi); no Fred, as Fred is on duty this weekend, and no ssha (Cyn), as Cyn is in Portland visiting her father.

First up: "Acres of Clams". We only did this song once today -- but we got a really nice, jaunty take! Dara and I got a bit rusty in a couple of places on the Frolic, but we all voted that we didn't care, and so now we'll have a take of this to go up.

We definitely missed Cyn's bass part on this, though.

Patrick suggested that after a good take we probably didn't want to screw it up by doing worse ones after, so we zoomed on to butcher the Butcher.

Monica had lyrics issues all over the place on the first take of "Jolly Butcher", dropping entire verses -- but to Monica's credit, she did help us keep the song going, and she did come back in where she was supposed to once she got herself back together. She more or less held it together on the second take as well, until the last verse where she had a momentary spazz as to whether to sing the R-rated version of that verse, or the Wal-Mart version. ;)

I actually managed to hit my high G's in the bridge, more or less, though I missed some notes AROUND them. But as on "Acres of Clams", Cyn was missed here as well, as her fiddle on the bridge really does add a nice extra layer -- and her vocal tradeoffs with Monica add amusement value to the last verse.

While we were working on this song, Mimi had gone downstairs to fetch a tape for taping Farscape off the Tivo, but came back in to join us on the third take. It's amazing how much having Meems on her djembe adds to the song, not to mention a second vocalist!

Thanks to Mimi's resumed presence at Jam we naturally had to practice "Mari-Mac" as our third ditty; here yet again, Cyn was missed, as her fiddle part really does add some spice to this song, and we lacked her final cue on the fiddle to finish us off as well. Mimi improvised a good substitute for us with a good strong whack on the drum, though.

Even though I have continued to be quite neglectful of the need to practice "Dancing With Mrs. White", we decided to do this one next -- and my lack of practice really showed this time around! I was completely breathy for some reason on this song today; for whatever reason, I just didn't seem to be able to get my air through the instrument. I thought it might be attributable to my low octave on the piccolo being weaker than my upper octaves, but Mimi opined that I have played this song better on other takes. And at any rate, when I tried to kick up my harmony on the B part to the next octave, I noted that I was flat in several places; furthermore, trying to play the other parts of the song an octave up seem to make the song too high.

Just to see if we could, we tried to increase the tempo on subsequent takes. Dara is used to practicing it very fast, so I wanted to see if we could match what she's used to doing, not to mention that Great Big Sea does in fact do this ditty very quickly and I want to eventually try to match that tempo. On the last take, just for giggles and grins, we tried to play it extremely fast, closer to how GBS actually plays it -- but to put into perspective exactly how much of a bad idea that was, it was not only a train wreck, it also involved an airplane and busses full of schoolkids and supermodels. I lost entire phrases, and Dara scampered all over the place ahead of everybody else, and it was in general a spectacular, almost glorious mess. The one good thing that can be said about that take is that we did in fact stumble our way through the entire song, but this is more or less like saying that the Titanic did in fact make it to the bottom of the ocean.

Onward, then, to "Trois Navires de Ble". Monica has given me some harmony tips here -- I'm still following my mandolin chords on some of the harmony, which I am advised sounds good on the first "nous irons jouer sur le bord de l'eau", but Monica suggests I try taking my harmony up on the second recurrence of this line in each verse, which I want to try. The chorus, "sur le bord de l'eau nous irons jouer dans l'île", I'm having less trouble with... and although Monica and Mimi have also helped me figure out a good easy harmony to sing there, there's still the different harmony line I want to do on the transition into the first bridge, where the vocals go right into the first E minor in the bridge.

Here, too, we missed Cyn, lacking her fiddle part on the bridges; if Cyn winds up moving back to Kentucky I may have to figure out how to finger the bridge parts on the mandolin. I did ask Dara if she wanted to maybe play the fiddle part, but Dara already had something different to play there, so having Dara cover for the lack of a fiddle won't quite work.

"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" was next, made amusing by a Battle of the Cheese as Monica and Patrick kept tossing extra final cheesy bits at one another on the end of the first take. On the second, Monica had tempo issues and went off (by her own description) into her own little world, so we had stop and try again. The second take, too, featured me BREAKING A STRING! There I was strumming away, and suddenly *POW*, Summer popped one of her E strings. I don't know whether this was because I was playing with so much force or too thick of a pick or both.

Once we got going, though, Mimi added in a couple of neat little extra deep *thumps* on the djembe on her rhythm line, which was cool. Patrick and Dara discovered that Patrick was moving over into Dara's rhythm with his current strumming, so there was some negotiation as to whether Patrick could play the higher, "shinier" flavored notes he wanted higher up his neck while not making problems that would put him and Dara out of sync and throw off the whole song. And on the last take, I had to pick up Autumn, which really doesn't help too much for this song. The big mand is just a bit brighter than the guitars, but right in the same ballpark for notes, so I pretty much vanish entirely when I play Autumn along with the guitars. Patrick zoomed through the cheese, asserting that we "didn't need to waste time" on that take, to which we all pretty much agreed.

As long as I was holding Autumn, though, I announced that I wanted to play "Old Black Rum". So Monica and Mimi and Dara and I tore into it, but Patrick mostly just stood around and looked confused because we forgot to ask him if he knew how to play it! Doh!

Monica needs to print herself off a new copy of the chords for this ditty, though, since we have them about in about seven million different keys, and while it's easy for her and me to remember that we're doing it in D, that doesn't help Patrick much when he's leaning over trying to look at chords that are sideways from his view. We also determined that I just don't sing loud enough, either. I have a really rough voice, which you do want for "Old Black Rum", but I don't know how to sing loud enough, which is also really required for this ditty. I could try to sing and not play at the same time, but there is also a little riff I hear in my head and want to add to the chorus! And I need to be able to add that in there if I can. Ergo, we'll have to see if I can 1) sing more from the diaphragm, and 2) stand up.

Two takes of "Old Black Rum" were quite enough, so then we moved from Great Big Sea on to They Might Be Giants, and "The Guitar". Which was quite fun; I was quite amused to be playing the mandolin on a song called "The Guitar". I actually got to play C sharp minor, which I've had to learn to play "Clearest Indication" but which I find a bit tricky to finger on the mand; after trying it for a take or two, I opted to switch over to playing the chords for the key of G with my capo on my second fret.

Patrick and Monica noted that the TMBG take of this has a prominent bass part but we don't know what to do about that yet -- whether we can try to get lyricae (Cheryl) to whip up something on her sax, or whether this might be something I can fake on the octave mand until Cyn rejoins us with her bass, or what. More experimentation will be required with this, as the notion of They Might Be Giants went over well with us in general.

All that can be said about "House of the Rising Sun" is that we did in fact mess around with it, as Patrick started to play it and we more or less fell into messing around with it with him. We didn't stay on this song long.

Continuing the theme of Stuff We Need to Play Today Because We Haven't Played It In Some Time, we did "Jennie's Jealous". And Dara came up with a great suggestion for this song, involving the guitars halving their strum pattern, and adjusting everything else in the song to account for that. This worked extremely well and made the song a lot more dancy (from my perspective) and more or less on the edge of punk (from the perspective of Mimi and Monica), and made Dara feel like Tom Hanks in That Thing You Do (which will probably make sense to those of you that have seen the movie; it's a cute movie, check it out). As a general rule, though, Mimi and I should probably be closer to the mike for backups, I could barely hear us on the recording. Monica thinks as well that since all of Patrick's backup vocals on this song are being sung by girls, we'll have to sing them in third person -- so every time he sings "I" we should do "he", and such. But we hit some nice harmony on the tail end, between Monica doing her higher harmony and me figuring out where I wanted to come in low on "why oh why".

A bit of discussion as to how exactly cut off the tail end of the song ensued, as Monica and Dara were cutting off after Patrick did, but we decided we liked Patrick's way better because it cuts off the song more cleanly.

Last but not least, breaking us in on trying a ditty off Great Big Sea's current album, we took on "A Boat Like Gideon Brown". Monica and I had played with this some last week, though we hadn't actually officially jammed -- and we're both quite partial to it. Monica likes it because of course her family is Brown, and what's more, her dad is in fact in search of a boat. ;) Monica, therefore, wants to sing lead on it. I like it because of Great Big Sea's lovely layered vocals on the last chorus.

However, we also determined that we don't want to sing it in B flat, which is what GBS sings it in; we're going to kick it into G instead. Mimi did some nice flourishes coming in on the drums as we played this, and Patrick occasionally found some twangy bits on the Colonel that seemed to work; me, I'm going to sing harmony, and I already know a bit of harmony I want to do on the choruses. I don't, however, know how to play and sing this one at the same time, so it's going to require some practice. Especially some vocal practice, since although I can pick up the strum patterns by listening to GBS's recording, I don't think there's a way I'll be able to capo my voice.

We had TWO pies, because I had not been sure as to whether or not Monica would show up with pie, so I got apple. Monica, however, showed up with marionberry. However, better too much pie than no pie at all, sez us; as Monica pointed out, had I not bought pie, Murphy's Law would have dictated that she would have in fact forgotten to bring her pie, and then we would have had no pie. Besides, after 11 songs in one session, a record for Three Good Measures, this really was a two-pie sort of jam!

Monica says she is showing up next week, as she wants to play some Elvis with me -- so hopefully there will be a jam report for next week as well.

Till then,
Anna the Piper