Jam Report #49: 7/28/02
Jul. 28th, 2002 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 2/4/06.
In which there is pie-related spazziness and drum death; in which we play a good amount of the key of D, and play with each other's instruments as well. Songs: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Old Black Rum", "Acres of Clams", "The Guitar", "Trois Navires de Ble".
Fred, who has not been able to attend a jam session for the last several weeks due to being on duty (stupid Navy! Don't they know we need our dulcimer and concertina player?), was first to arrive at the Murkworks today -- and I knew that we were in for some spazziness, at least on my part, when I opened the door at Fred's knock and greeted him with, "PIE!"
This, I figure, was an obvious sign of what was on my little mind. I took some comfort in knowing, however, that I wasn't the only one being a spazz. Fred had in fact dropped the pie getting out of his truck and reported that it had landed upside down! Miraculously, however, it appeared to be none the worse for wear when we opened up the box and found the pie more or less intact therein.
Aside from these notes of spazziness, though, we also had a note of distress.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka (Mimi) came up from her part of the house to join us, only to discover that her djembe's head has split along the top rim of the drum. None of us who live in the upper part of the Murkworks recollected it being knocked over, and we were all also fairly sure that the cat hadn't jumped on it or anything of that nature... so for the life of us, we couldn't figure out what had brought about the damage to the head. It was a real shame, though. The djembe is now more or less unplayable, and this dejected Mimi enough that she wound up sitting out this session after all, trying to make some calls around and figure out where she can get her drum a new head.
This wound meaning that at least for the first part of the session, the only ones present were myself,solarbird (Dara), Fred, and Monica. And because Fred had only brought the one dulcimer, the larger and newer one, we decided to try to play stuff in D at least for a while, so that Fred would not have to keep retuning the dulcimer between songs. "Dancing With Mrs. White", too, was shot right down on the grounds that Fred did not have the required explosive capo releases for changing from D to G in the middle of the song.
Accordingly, "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" became our first song of the session, since it is in fact in D, even though we definitely misseddaspatrick's (Patrick's) guitar on this ditty. Between the lack of Patrick and the lack of Mimi, we had our usual messy tempo issues as well.
I did my little mand as usual on the first take, but wound up switching to the big one for the second and third, which helped us sound a little less chaotic. With a significant chunk of the lower end of our instruments missing, playing the big mand instead did round us out a bit better, and also made it easier to hear both Monica and me singing. Plus, trying to improvise a bit of an intro on the big mand to make up for Patrick not being present didn't entirely suck. Still, though, I can't quite sing "till it grew cold" on the bridge, not while strumming at the same time.
Onward to "Old Black Rum", the next thing I could think of that we play in D... though I still don't have strong enough pipes for this song. Dara andssha (Cyn) are both advising me that I am singing from the throat, which (#1) is bad for you, and (#2) is, at least for me on this particular ditty, not conducive to belting out this song the way it should be properly belted out. I still can't sing louder than my instrument, which is quite vexing. So I need to do some combination of standing up and/or being close to the mike, not to mention working on singing from the diaphragm.
Morever, I still can't get smoothly through the syncopated bits of the verses yet either. Monica and I yakked about this a bit, and I mentioned how I'd been trying to mimic what Great Big Sea does with this ditty on Road Rage; we decided that we're fairly sure they're just simply striking a G, A, and D chord in quick succession, as opposed to bouncily strumming them as most of the rest of the chords all throughout the song are done. You can strum through them as you do the rest of the chords, but it makes it harder to keep the rhythm going; it's slightly easier to just make the requisite mental shift to do a simple strike on each chord and then make the shift back to the bouncy, syncopated strumming.
Monica and I also discovered we were playing different chords on the choruses. Specifically, on the bit that goes "will I live for another day, HEY!" I had been playing G-A-Bm, which sounded wrong to Monica, and after I just sang and strummed my way through the chord progression it sounded wrong to me, too. We played around with it till we found that D-A-Bm sounded much better; now, I'll just have to practice it that way till it sticks.
Cyn arrived in the middle of our first take of "Acres of Clams", which was a pleasant surprise, since she hadn't been able to attend any sessions for a while either. She jumped in to help sing backup through the rest of the first take, and since she hadn't brought her bass with her, opted to just sing for subsequent takes of the song as well.
We had some flute issues, too. Dara reports that she found herself flailing on a lot of things, and I had yet another incident of dropping out entirely on the Frolic. But it also occurred to me to wonder whether it would sound cool if as many of us as possible dropped off our instruments on the last chorus to join in on the singing, or whether we could maybe stick in an extra a capella chorus before going into the Frolic. We didn't get to actually try that this time, though.
Instead we skipped over into playing "The Guitar", which required Fred to retune into A. Once more, amusement value was gotten out of the notion of me trying to play this particular song on the mandolin, though this time the amusement was Dara's, and it was also short-lived. I opted to play on Rags instead, since I am more comfy with C#m on the guitar than I am on the mandolin despite the fact that I have recently learned a good barre chord version of that particular chord on the mand; also, I just liked playing the low chords on Rags while Monica did barre chords further up the neck of her guitar.
I tried to do some pretty strummy bits during the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" interludes on this song, but I'm not sure they came out quite well. When we listened to this week's recording during Pie, I couldn't make myself out much, possibly because Rags is not a very bold guitar and also because I just wasn't that close to the mike! Monica is also not yet sure quite how to end this song either.
Lastly we took on "Trois Navires de Ble" -- and yet again I wound up doing an instrument shift, starting off on the big mand with the same idea that I'd had during "Neighborhood", i.e., playing that instrument with this particular subset of us seemed to work pretty well. However, I wound up switching to the guitar instead because it made us sound significantly less muddy when I played Rags. Of course, this meant that we had two guitars instead of one screwing up on the Bm chords in the bridge, but as we have observed in past reports, Bm does basically stand for Bite Me, when it comes to guitar chords. Monica and I both had issues with chords getting away from us.
On an up note, though, I have finally nailed down what I want to sing as a harmony part on this, more or less based on what I hear being sung in the harmony on Great Big Sea's recording -- including the harmony going up while the melody goes down, leading into the first bridge, and the harmony covering the entire last verse. Monica dug it. I thought it was particularly nifty on the very last repetition of the chorus on the final verse, when the guitars dropped out, too.
Monica started having wrist issues, though, and had to leave for evening engagements, so we wound up having a fairly early Pie. Which was Dutch apple, and which was as mentioned above surprisingly intact for a pie that had been dropped upside down.
It must also be noted that during the Pie phase of the session there was a notable amount of people playing with each other's instruments, as well. Monica played with Fred's dulcimer some, trying to play "Old Black Rum" along with the recording of us, and Dara wound up getting some amazingly good notes out of Cyn's fiddle despite never having picked up a fiddle before. Dara certainly did a much better job of getting notes out of it than I did; I tried after Dara, though the fiddle does quite intimidate me. Dara has a much better sense of how to hold the thing, as well as where to put the fingers to get proper notes. I suspect that since I do tend to suck at judging distances, this may be contributing to my state of fiddle intimidation, and my brain going "AAAAAAH! Where do I put my FINGERS?!"
Next time: Session #50!
Till then,
Anna the Piper
In which there is pie-related spazziness and drum death; in which we play a good amount of the key of D, and play with each other's instruments as well. Songs: "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Old Black Rum", "Acres of Clams", "The Guitar", "Trois Navires de Ble".
Fred, who has not been able to attend a jam session for the last several weeks due to being on duty (stupid Navy! Don't they know we need our dulcimer and concertina player?), was first to arrive at the Murkworks today -- and I knew that we were in for some spazziness, at least on my part, when I opened the door at Fred's knock and greeted him with, "PIE!"
This, I figure, was an obvious sign of what was on my little mind. I took some comfort in knowing, however, that I wasn't the only one being a spazz. Fred had in fact dropped the pie getting out of his truck and reported that it had landed upside down! Miraculously, however, it appeared to be none the worse for wear when we opened up the box and found the pie more or less intact therein.
Aside from these notes of spazziness, though, we also had a note of distress.
mamishka (Mimi) came up from her part of the house to join us, only to discover that her djembe's head has split along the top rim of the drum. None of us who live in the upper part of the Murkworks recollected it being knocked over, and we were all also fairly sure that the cat hadn't jumped on it or anything of that nature... so for the life of us, we couldn't figure out what had brought about the damage to the head. It was a real shame, though. The djembe is now more or less unplayable, and this dejected Mimi enough that she wound up sitting out this session after all, trying to make some calls around and figure out where she can get her drum a new head.This wound meaning that at least for the first part of the session, the only ones present were myself,
solarbird (Dara), Fred, and Monica. And because Fred had only brought the one dulcimer, the larger and newer one, we decided to try to play stuff in D at least for a while, so that Fred would not have to keep retuning the dulcimer between songs. "Dancing With Mrs. White", too, was shot right down on the grounds that Fred did not have the required explosive capo releases for changing from D to G in the middle of the song.Accordingly, "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" became our first song of the session, since it is in fact in D, even though we definitely missed
daspatrick's (Patrick's) guitar on this ditty. Between the lack of Patrick and the lack of Mimi, we had our usual messy tempo issues as well.I did my little mand as usual on the first take, but wound up switching to the big one for the second and third, which helped us sound a little less chaotic. With a significant chunk of the lower end of our instruments missing, playing the big mand instead did round us out a bit better, and also made it easier to hear both Monica and me singing. Plus, trying to improvise a bit of an intro on the big mand to make up for Patrick not being present didn't entirely suck. Still, though, I can't quite sing "till it grew cold" on the bridge, not while strumming at the same time.
Onward to "Old Black Rum", the next thing I could think of that we play in D... though I still don't have strong enough pipes for this song. Dara and
ssha (Cyn) are both advising me that I am singing from the throat, which (#1) is bad for you, and (#2) is, at least for me on this particular ditty, not conducive to belting out this song the way it should be properly belted out. I still can't sing louder than my instrument, which is quite vexing. So I need to do some combination of standing up and/or being close to the mike, not to mention working on singing from the diaphragm. Morever, I still can't get smoothly through the syncopated bits of the verses yet either. Monica and I yakked about this a bit, and I mentioned how I'd been trying to mimic what Great Big Sea does with this ditty on Road Rage; we decided that we're fairly sure they're just simply striking a G, A, and D chord in quick succession, as opposed to bouncily strumming them as most of the rest of the chords all throughout the song are done. You can strum through them as you do the rest of the chords, but it makes it harder to keep the rhythm going; it's slightly easier to just make the requisite mental shift to do a simple strike on each chord and then make the shift back to the bouncy, syncopated strumming.
Monica and I also discovered we were playing different chords on the choruses. Specifically, on the bit that goes "will I live for another day, HEY!" I had been playing G-A-Bm, which sounded wrong to Monica, and after I just sang and strummed my way through the chord progression it sounded wrong to me, too. We played around with it till we found that D-A-Bm sounded much better; now, I'll just have to practice it that way till it sticks.
Cyn arrived in the middle of our first take of "Acres of Clams", which was a pleasant surprise, since she hadn't been able to attend any sessions for a while either. She jumped in to help sing backup through the rest of the first take, and since she hadn't brought her bass with her, opted to just sing for subsequent takes of the song as well.
We had some flute issues, too. Dara reports that she found herself flailing on a lot of things, and I had yet another incident of dropping out entirely on the Frolic. But it also occurred to me to wonder whether it would sound cool if as many of us as possible dropped off our instruments on the last chorus to join in on the singing, or whether we could maybe stick in an extra a capella chorus before going into the Frolic. We didn't get to actually try that this time, though.
Instead we skipped over into playing "The Guitar", which required Fred to retune into A. Once more, amusement value was gotten out of the notion of me trying to play this particular song on the mandolin, though this time the amusement was Dara's, and it was also short-lived. I opted to play on Rags instead, since I am more comfy with C#m on the guitar than I am on the mandolin despite the fact that I have recently learned a good barre chord version of that particular chord on the mand; also, I just liked playing the low chords on Rags while Monica did barre chords further up the neck of her guitar.
I tried to do some pretty strummy bits during the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" interludes on this song, but I'm not sure they came out quite well. When we listened to this week's recording during Pie, I couldn't make myself out much, possibly because Rags is not a very bold guitar and also because I just wasn't that close to the mike! Monica is also not yet sure quite how to end this song either.
Lastly we took on "Trois Navires de Ble" -- and yet again I wound up doing an instrument shift, starting off on the big mand with the same idea that I'd had during "Neighborhood", i.e., playing that instrument with this particular subset of us seemed to work pretty well. However, I wound up switching to the guitar instead because it made us sound significantly less muddy when I played Rags. Of course, this meant that we had two guitars instead of one screwing up on the Bm chords in the bridge, but as we have observed in past reports, Bm does basically stand for Bite Me, when it comes to guitar chords. Monica and I both had issues with chords getting away from us.
On an up note, though, I have finally nailed down what I want to sing as a harmony part on this, more or less based on what I hear being sung in the harmony on Great Big Sea's recording -- including the harmony going up while the melody goes down, leading into the first bridge, and the harmony covering the entire last verse. Monica dug it. I thought it was particularly nifty on the very last repetition of the chorus on the final verse, when the guitars dropped out, too.
Monica started having wrist issues, though, and had to leave for evening engagements, so we wound up having a fairly early Pie. Which was Dutch apple, and which was as mentioned above surprisingly intact for a pie that had been dropped upside down.
It must also be noted that during the Pie phase of the session there was a notable amount of people playing with each other's instruments, as well. Monica played with Fred's dulcimer some, trying to play "Old Black Rum" along with the recording of us, and Dara wound up getting some amazingly good notes out of Cyn's fiddle despite never having picked up a fiddle before. Dara certainly did a much better job of getting notes out of it than I did; I tried after Dara, though the fiddle does quite intimidate me. Dara has a much better sense of how to hold the thing, as well as where to put the fingers to get proper notes. I suspect that since I do tend to suck at judging distances, this may be contributing to my state of fiddle intimidation, and my brain going "AAAAAAH! Where do I put my FINGERS?!"
Next time: Session #50!
Till then,
Anna the Piper