Jam Report #50: 8/11/02
Aug. 11th, 2002 06:22 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 we start making noises about playing for Monica's wedding; in which Fred breaks a string and fascinates the cat; in which Mimi turns Australian; in which we discuss flying underwear, and celebrate 50th Jam. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Old Brown's Daughter", "Jolly Butcher", "Dancing With Mrs. White", "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble".
WHOO HOO! A new lateness record on getting a Jam Report posted! But well hey, this time I have a whole pile of good excuses. Those of you who are actually interested in what's kept me from getting Jam Reports done lately can go check out
my Livejournal, wherein I chronicle recent adventures in doing my duty on the Great Big Sea Street Team, trying to get myself another job and in fact doing so (even if it IS only a temporary job), my annual late-summer dose of the Newfoundlanders, going to Worldcon in San Jose... and, most importantly, preparing to play in public. More on this later.
But, to head back a bit in time, 8/11 was an auspicious occasion for Three Good Measures: our 50th Jam!
Present were myself,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daspatrick (Patrick), solarbird (Dara), Monica, ssha (Cyn), mamishka (Mimi), and Fred, which has turned out to be our usual roster as of late, though we had to check out who amongst us was going to play at the wedding. Which pretty much meant that Patrick was required -- since, although I can play guitar, Patrick is way better than I am. And we made some noises about checking out "Old Brown's Daughter", since Monica was really anxious for us to play that for her wedding and we didn't know it yet, as well as "Whiskey in the Jar", since we were vaguely interested in playing with something brand new. Or, as was pointed out would be appropriate to utter for Great Big Sea fans, "brandly new".
Mimi also came up with a stand-in drum for her djembe: her ashiko, which is a deeper-voiced drum and which she's had about as long as the djembe. The ashiko turned out to serve drumming purposes admirably.
However, we opted to warm up on something we knew first, and to go through the list of things we know and have played lately for the sake of getting an idea of what to do for the wedding.
This made "Mari-Mac" first. The first lesson I came out of playing with this song in this session was that I miss my trill cue on it way more often when we don't have Cyn present on the fiddle; fortunately, she did in fact arrive in the middle of us playing with this song, so we did get her for the later takes. We told her we'd need her to leave her part with us if she does in fact eventually go to Kentucky, but since it is her andkathrynt's (Kathryn's) part she said she'd just come here to play it for us. Commuting clear across the country just to play for us; ain't that dedication, folks?
At any rate, once Cyn actually arrived and we did "Mari-Mac" again, which turned out to be a decent warmup take for Cyn. For both the takes that included her, we were actually rather sizzling on the tempo. This was rather impressive to us, as it actually put us up into the ballpark of tempo often exhibited on this song by Great Big Sea live in concert. We're here to tell you, folks, that's a tough tempo to maintain -- but we would have impressed ourselves more if we hadn't been rather messy at it.
Mimi momentarily turned Australian, as Patrick mentioned the Breeders all smoking between songs at a concert of theirs, and Mimi made a crack about nicotine "screypin'" the throat. Which, naturally, turned into making jokes about how Meems and I had watched two Russell Crowe flicks in a row recently. Patrick inquired as to whether he'd thrown any swords in either of these flicks, and we concluded that all of his flicks really do require swords to be thrown in them.
We got into talking about "Old Brown's Daughter" next and checked with Fred and Patrick as to whether they wanted in on singing this. Fred asserted that he'd had a beer and could therefore do anything -- including, it turned out, a pretty decent Scottish accent. Discussion of Mr. Doyle's wandering on the pitch of the Great Big Sea recorded version was done, and Mimi was much relieved that she does not in fact have to change keys in the middle. However, we wound up taking only a brief stab at it since we didn't have decent harmony at the time, and although Kathryn had relayed word that she'd arranged out some vocal parts in the key of C, we hadn't gotten them from her at that point.
"Jolly Butcher" was up to be next, and Cyn and Mimi decided to sing it together since Monica would not of course be in a position to sing it with Cyn at the wedding. This required Cyn and Mimi to figure out what they wanted to do with the little trade of dialogue that Cyn and Monica have been doing on the final verse. Monica reminded us that children would be present at said wedding, so we'd have to be careful to sing what we have dubbed the Wal-Mart Version of the Butcher.
We more or less just fell into the first take because Cyn and Mimi were trying to figure out how to start off, and we all just happened to play along with them; we had to alter the vocal arrangement because of needing to figure out who is singing lead and such... and Cyn and Mimi also had to practice the little trade of dialogue that Cyn and Monica have been doing on the final verse.
That take came out painfully slow, though! I was really, really, loud that time around as well -- the mike was picking me up quite clearly, and it made me piercingly clear. And piercingly obvious when I screwed up on the bridge. Ow ow ow.
Fred wound up breaking a string in the middle of that take, too, and the impressive thing was that we didn't drop a beat. However, this did require Fred to take the time to restring his dulcimer when we were done playing, and that entertained the living daylights out of the cat, since dangling string is her most favorite toy in the universe. She also wound up waiting next to Fred's dulcimer for some time, throughout the rest of the session, and I caught her at one point lifting her paw up towards the dulcimer as if she were about to play it.
After that we moved on to "Dancing With Mrs. White", which Monica wanted for her recessional. We did point out that this was a bit fast for a recessional, but Monica noted that the wedding party would be getting out as fast as possible. Accordingly, it seems we'll be helping them do a Recessional Sprint.
The good thing turned out to be that I had actually started getting to the point of memorizing bits of this song; the bad thing was, I was still awfully damned breathy on a lot of my parts. It didn't help me much either that I had my part spread out across four different pieces of paper, all of which had a bunch of scribbling on them, so I determined I would need to write it out again in Music Write so I could have a cleaner page from which to read.
We had some issues initially with Fred's dulcimer and needing to figure out what chords he should be playing -- since the song does change keys in the middle. But we determined that the second half, although it is pretending to be in G, seems to be some sort of wacky mode of G in which all the C's are sharp. Plus, the guitars are doing a lot of E minor, B minor, and D in that part. So Monica helped Fred write out the proper chords to play.
We also started working out staggering who should come in when... Mimi suggested and we all agreed that it sounded a bit goofy for me to play the first run through of the A part all by myself and then BOOM to have everybody else come in. So we opted to have Patrick come in on Dara's first run through of the A part, and Fred to come in when we swing around to the B part... and Cyn dropping in little twiddles on the fiddle until she's ready to play fully with us.
It must be noted, however, that in the middle of workshopping on "Dancing With Mrs. White", we reached what may arguably be described as a nadir of MurkJammer discussion: getting into talking about the aerodynamics of underwear, since Fred is the only person in our number who can claim that his underwear has actually been touched by Alan Doyle. Fred did offer to fling underwear on Monica's behalf, which made the rest of us reply that while we are in fact perfectly capable of flinging underwear at Mr. Doyle, we choose not to! And besides, feminine underwear doesn't sail and billow quite as nicely as boxers.
"Acres of Clams" was next on the roster. It needed some rearrangement as well, since Cyn won't be playing her bass on this song at the wedding, and Monica won't be singing lead. Since neither Mimi nor Patrick were used to singing lead on it, our initial take came out way too slow. I thought momentarily about dropping the piccolo out on the choruses, but decided this would just get me off my groove too much; hopefully, we'll have four voices on the chorus at the wedding, anyway, if Fred will be able to come in on the choruses. Patrick ultimately got drafted to sing lead for the wedding on this song, which is a switch for him, but it's also a really good range for him to sing.
We had a bit of debate as to whether Mimi should play drums on this; initially she had thought that a drum wouldn't sound good, but she considered playing her bodhran "flat", with her hand inside it, which may help make up for the loss of the bass. A bit of a problem was had with the guitar and the dulcimer suddenly cutting out when we kicked over into the Frolic as well, since Fred and Patrick weren't quite used to making the jump out of the main body of the song into our "outro".
Moving on to "Trois Navires de Ble", I switched over to the big mandolin, since Fred had the "twangy" portion of our sound covered with the dulcimer. Mimi took over singing lead again, though we could barely hear her -- due to a combination of her not yet being confident enough with the ditty to sing it loudly, and her being too far back from the mike. So the instruments definitely drowned her out, and this all also prevented me from getting the cues I needed to come in for my harmony. (Which struck me as a bit weird at the time, as I seemed to be needing not only instrumental cues but vocal cues for when to sing. I know when the words come in, but if I can't hear the melody, I start singing melody myself on the bits I sing.)
After that, we played a little bit with "Little Beggarman", since that was on the list of stuff Monica thought might be nice to have at the wedding. But since it had been quite some time since we did this one, this mostly amounted to Mimi taking a moment to listen to the Friends take we have of this song, with Kathryn singing. We also opted out of playing with "Old Woman of Wexford" or "Lukey" on the grounds that it was getting kind of late, we wanted cake and ice cream, and Monica in theory had to scram by six (though she wound up leaving at a quarter after; doh!).
At any rate, we more or less got to Pie time at this point, though in honor of our 50th Jam we had cake and ice cream instead. The cake: yer basic store-bought white cake, but it was quite tasty. The ice cream: Breyer's fudge ripple. Because yum.
Jam #51 to come post-haste,
Anna the Piper
In which we start making noises about playing for Monica's wedding; in which Fred breaks a string and fascinates the cat; in which Mimi turns Australian; in which we discuss flying underwear, and celebrate 50th Jam. Songs: "Mari-Mac", "Old Brown's Daughter", "Jolly Butcher", "Dancing With Mrs. White", "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble".
WHOO HOO! A new lateness record on getting a Jam Report posted! But well hey, this time I have a whole pile of good excuses. Those of you who are actually interested in what's kept me from getting Jam Reports done lately can go check out
my Livejournal, wherein I chronicle recent adventures in doing my duty on the Great Big Sea Street Team, trying to get myself another job and in fact doing so (even if it IS only a temporary job), my annual late-summer dose of the Newfoundlanders, going to Worldcon in San Jose... and, most importantly, preparing to play in public. More on this later.
But, to head back a bit in time, 8/11 was an auspicious occasion for Three Good Measures: our 50th Jam!
Present were myself,
daspatrick (Patrick), solarbird (Dara), Monica, ssha (Cyn), mamishka (Mimi), and Fred, which has turned out to be our usual roster as of late, though we had to check out who amongst us was going to play at the wedding. Which pretty much meant that Patrick was required -- since, although I can play guitar, Patrick is way better than I am. And we made some noises about checking out "Old Brown's Daughter", since Monica was really anxious for us to play that for her wedding and we didn't know it yet, as well as "Whiskey in the Jar", since we were vaguely interested in playing with something brand new. Or, as was pointed out would be appropriate to utter for Great Big Sea fans, "brandly new".Mimi also came up with a stand-in drum for her djembe: her ashiko, which is a deeper-voiced drum and which she's had about as long as the djembe. The ashiko turned out to serve drumming purposes admirably.
However, we opted to warm up on something we knew first, and to go through the list of things we know and have played lately for the sake of getting an idea of what to do for the wedding.
This made "Mari-Mac" first. The first lesson I came out of playing with this song in this session was that I miss my trill cue on it way more often when we don't have Cyn present on the fiddle; fortunately, she did in fact arrive in the middle of us playing with this song, so we did get her for the later takes. We told her we'd need her to leave her part with us if she does in fact eventually go to Kentucky, but since it is her and
kathrynt's (Kathryn's) part she said she'd just come here to play it for us. Commuting clear across the country just to play for us; ain't that dedication, folks?At any rate, once Cyn actually arrived and we did "Mari-Mac" again, which turned out to be a decent warmup take for Cyn. For both the takes that included her, we were actually rather sizzling on the tempo. This was rather impressive to us, as it actually put us up into the ballpark of tempo often exhibited on this song by Great Big Sea live in concert. We're here to tell you, folks, that's a tough tempo to maintain -- but we would have impressed ourselves more if we hadn't been rather messy at it.
Mimi momentarily turned Australian, as Patrick mentioned the Breeders all smoking between songs at a concert of theirs, and Mimi made a crack about nicotine "screypin'" the throat. Which, naturally, turned into making jokes about how Meems and I had watched two Russell Crowe flicks in a row recently. Patrick inquired as to whether he'd thrown any swords in either of these flicks, and we concluded that all of his flicks really do require swords to be thrown in them.
We got into talking about "Old Brown's Daughter" next and checked with Fred and Patrick as to whether they wanted in on singing this. Fred asserted that he'd had a beer and could therefore do anything -- including, it turned out, a pretty decent Scottish accent. Discussion of Mr. Doyle's wandering on the pitch of the Great Big Sea recorded version was done, and Mimi was much relieved that she does not in fact have to change keys in the middle. However, we wound up taking only a brief stab at it since we didn't have decent harmony at the time, and although Kathryn had relayed word that she'd arranged out some vocal parts in the key of C, we hadn't gotten them from her at that point.
"Jolly Butcher" was up to be next, and Cyn and Mimi decided to sing it together since Monica would not of course be in a position to sing it with Cyn at the wedding. This required Cyn and Mimi to figure out what they wanted to do with the little trade of dialogue that Cyn and Monica have been doing on the final verse. Monica reminded us that children would be present at said wedding, so we'd have to be careful to sing what we have dubbed the Wal-Mart Version of the Butcher.
We more or less just fell into the first take because Cyn and Mimi were trying to figure out how to start off, and we all just happened to play along with them; we had to alter the vocal arrangement because of needing to figure out who is singing lead and such... and Cyn and Mimi also had to practice the little trade of dialogue that Cyn and Monica have been doing on the final verse.
That take came out painfully slow, though! I was really, really, loud that time around as well -- the mike was picking me up quite clearly, and it made me piercingly clear. And piercingly obvious when I screwed up on the bridge. Ow ow ow.
Fred wound up breaking a string in the middle of that take, too, and the impressive thing was that we didn't drop a beat. However, this did require Fred to take the time to restring his dulcimer when we were done playing, and that entertained the living daylights out of the cat, since dangling string is her most favorite toy in the universe. She also wound up waiting next to Fred's dulcimer for some time, throughout the rest of the session, and I caught her at one point lifting her paw up towards the dulcimer as if she were about to play it.
After that we moved on to "Dancing With Mrs. White", which Monica wanted for her recessional. We did point out that this was a bit fast for a recessional, but Monica noted that the wedding party would be getting out as fast as possible. Accordingly, it seems we'll be helping them do a Recessional Sprint.
The good thing turned out to be that I had actually started getting to the point of memorizing bits of this song; the bad thing was, I was still awfully damned breathy on a lot of my parts. It didn't help me much either that I had my part spread out across four different pieces of paper, all of which had a bunch of scribbling on them, so I determined I would need to write it out again in Music Write so I could have a cleaner page from which to read.
We had some issues initially with Fred's dulcimer and needing to figure out what chords he should be playing -- since the song does change keys in the middle. But we determined that the second half, although it is pretending to be in G, seems to be some sort of wacky mode of G in which all the C's are sharp. Plus, the guitars are doing a lot of E minor, B minor, and D in that part. So Monica helped Fred write out the proper chords to play.
We also started working out staggering who should come in when... Mimi suggested and we all agreed that it sounded a bit goofy for me to play the first run through of the A part all by myself and then BOOM to have everybody else come in. So we opted to have Patrick come in on Dara's first run through of the A part, and Fred to come in when we swing around to the B part... and Cyn dropping in little twiddles on the fiddle until she's ready to play fully with us.
It must be noted, however, that in the middle of workshopping on "Dancing With Mrs. White", we reached what may arguably be described as a nadir of MurkJammer discussion: getting into talking about the aerodynamics of underwear, since Fred is the only person in our number who can claim that his underwear has actually been touched by Alan Doyle. Fred did offer to fling underwear on Monica's behalf, which made the rest of us reply that while we are in fact perfectly capable of flinging underwear at Mr. Doyle, we choose not to! And besides, feminine underwear doesn't sail and billow quite as nicely as boxers.
"Acres of Clams" was next on the roster. It needed some rearrangement as well, since Cyn won't be playing her bass on this song at the wedding, and Monica won't be singing lead. Since neither Mimi nor Patrick were used to singing lead on it, our initial take came out way too slow. I thought momentarily about dropping the piccolo out on the choruses, but decided this would just get me off my groove too much; hopefully, we'll have four voices on the chorus at the wedding, anyway, if Fred will be able to come in on the choruses. Patrick ultimately got drafted to sing lead for the wedding on this song, which is a switch for him, but it's also a really good range for him to sing.
We had a bit of debate as to whether Mimi should play drums on this; initially she had thought that a drum wouldn't sound good, but she considered playing her bodhran "flat", with her hand inside it, which may help make up for the loss of the bass. A bit of a problem was had with the guitar and the dulcimer suddenly cutting out when we kicked over into the Frolic as well, since Fred and Patrick weren't quite used to making the jump out of the main body of the song into our "outro".
Moving on to "Trois Navires de Ble", I switched over to the big mandolin, since Fred had the "twangy" portion of our sound covered with the dulcimer. Mimi took over singing lead again, though we could barely hear her -- due to a combination of her not yet being confident enough with the ditty to sing it loudly, and her being too far back from the mike. So the instruments definitely drowned her out, and this all also prevented me from getting the cues I needed to come in for my harmony. (Which struck me as a bit weird at the time, as I seemed to be needing not only instrumental cues but vocal cues for when to sing. I know when the words come in, but if I can't hear the melody, I start singing melody myself on the bits I sing.)
After that, we played a little bit with "Little Beggarman", since that was on the list of stuff Monica thought might be nice to have at the wedding. But since it had been quite some time since we did this one, this mostly amounted to Mimi taking a moment to listen to the Friends take we have of this song, with Kathryn singing. We also opted out of playing with "Old Woman of Wexford" or "Lukey" on the grounds that it was getting kind of late, we wanted cake and ice cream, and Monica in theory had to scram by six (though she wound up leaving at a quarter after; doh!).
At any rate, we more or less got to Pie time at this point, though in honor of our 50th Jam we had cake and ice cream instead. The cake: yer basic store-bought white cake, but it was quite tasty. The ice cream: Breyer's fudge ripple. Because yum.
Jam #51 to come post-haste,
Anna the Piper