Jam Report #51: 8/25/02
Aug. 25th, 2002 06:30 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 have the Smallest Official Jam Ever; in which we break out a second mike, and Anna and Patrick sing a lot; and in which we have yummy raspberry truffle torte. Songs: "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Dancing With Mrs. White", "Mari-Mac", "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Old Black Rum", "Jolly Butcher".
Until session #51 we had not yet officially jammed with only three people present -- but there's a first time for everything, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daspatrick (Patrick) was the only person who was able to show up on the 25th. mamishka (Mimi) had gone out of town that weekend to attend a kite festival she goes to every year, Fred had been dinged for duty, and ssha (Cyn) had overslept due to being up for 36 hours prior to Jam Day. But, since we desperately needed to get in some practice time before solarbird (Dara) and I scampered off to Worldcon, the three of us opted to go ahead and practice anyway.
In the interests of getting us used to singing in front of a mike, since we knew we'd have to do it at the wedding, Dara broke out a speaker, another mike, and an old tape deck. This let us fake a P.A. system and get a vocalist miked for our practice along with the mike doing the recording... though since there were so few of us present, this basically meant that Patrick and I took turns at the mike.
Patrick got to sing first, as we went for "Acres of Clams" first in the lineup. Having him miked worked amazingly well, though we played the song a bit slow a couple of times since he still wasn't used to singing it. He had issues with rearranging the lyrics, even with a printout of the lyrics in front of him; he managed to leave out a chorus, and replace "world and its shams" with "world and its charms". This made me expect him to sing "I think of my pleasant condition / surrounded by acres of farms!" I was almost disappointed when he didn't. ;)
I got dinged to sing "Trois Navires de Ble", since I can more or less vaguely sing my way through it. However, singing my low octave on this is an issue. And I'm not comfy with the high octave, either. I can't manage to get out enough power to be heard over my mand in either octave; definitely, I'm more comfortable singing backup on this song.
It was a switch, however, playing the octave mandolin while standing up. I was pleased to note that I apparently do know the chords to this song as well as my own fretboard well enough that I really didn't need to watch my fingers too terribly much, and I also noted that it does completely change how the instrument sounds to me when I'm standing as opposed to when I'm sitting.
"Dancing With Mrs. White" was doable with only the three of us -- though I kept having an issue of some sort with the A part, in this session. It involved one of my notes coming out oddly sharp four measures in. I'm not quite sure why; Dara seemed to think it might be because of my wrapping my piccolo around somehow (where "wrapping" involves my instrument shifting in towards me or out away from me, as I'm playing), but I didn't think I was moving the instrument. I thought also that it might be because of issues with my keys sticking when moving from B to C sharp and back again, but just checking whether those keys were sticking didn't show any oddity in key behavior. Grf.
As a general note, I would like to announce that it is very difficult to practice "Mari-Mac" when you have no vocalists present whatsoever. Or, for that matter, the person responsible for helping you all keep tempo by playing her drums. We also lacked Cyn and her fiddle cues, so we basically really had absolutely no idea where to stop and start and where to speed up in general. It was a challenge to give it a shot, though.
My being in charge of the intro on "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" became more or less official as of this session. Or at least the first half of the intro. We're doing this double-intro thing now where I play a bit of syncopation on the big mand, then we count off, and come in for four more measures before the actual first verse kicks in. Patrick wasn't comfy singing this, so I wound up singing my backup bits by myself, which was a trifle weird to hear later when we listened to the minidisc recording.
The fun part about working with this song in this session, though, was Patrick showing me a bit about how to dress up the rhythm for the strumming. Now that I am sort of the lead rhythm instrument on this ditty, it's nice to be able to jazz up what I'm doing just a bit. I am still having syncopation issues trying to do the "till it grew cold" on the bridge; though that's really more Mimi's thing than mine, I wanted to try it anyway.
Syncopation issues are also keeping me from playing the big mand while I sing "Old Black Rum", so I let Patrick strum while I sang. I learned -- or perhaps more properly, re-learned, since this was not the first session in which I'd sung this on my feet, sans instrument -- that I can in fact sing this rather easier when standing up. Furthermore, with a mike in front of me I actually could hear myself and focus more on tone and breath, and I got through two takes of this pretty well. The happy result: I was actually not embarrassed to listen to the recording of myself belting this one out, later.
Last up, "Jolly Butcher", of which we did just one take for the sake of practicing. I went ahead and sang on it, though my voice had taken a bit of a workout doing "Old Black Rum" and I was beginning to flag.
I had purchased pie, but we wound up having another cake stand-in this time because guests of my household had kindly purchased a raspberry truffle torte for us from the Dilettante, a local dessert place. So this time, the role of the Pie was played by raspberry truffle torte, and it was gooooooooood.
Next up: Jam #52, and hardcore rehearsal,
Anna the Piper
In which we have the Smallest Official Jam Ever; in which we break out a second mike, and Anna and Patrick sing a lot; and in which we have yummy raspberry truffle torte. Songs: "Acres of Clams", "Trois Navires de Ble", "Dancing With Mrs. White", "Mari-Mac", "You Woke Up My Neighborhood", "Old Black Rum", "Jolly Butcher".
Until session #51 we had not yet officially jammed with only three people present -- but there's a first time for everything, and
daspatrick (Patrick) was the only person who was able to show up on the 25th. mamishka (Mimi) had gone out of town that weekend to attend a kite festival she goes to every year, Fred had been dinged for duty, and ssha (Cyn) had overslept due to being up for 36 hours prior to Jam Day. But, since we desperately needed to get in some practice time before solarbird (Dara) and I scampered off to Worldcon, the three of us opted to go ahead and practice anyway.In the interests of getting us used to singing in front of a mike, since we knew we'd have to do it at the wedding, Dara broke out a speaker, another mike, and an old tape deck. This let us fake a P.A. system and get a vocalist miked for our practice along with the mike doing the recording... though since there were so few of us present, this basically meant that Patrick and I took turns at the mike.
Patrick got to sing first, as we went for "Acres of Clams" first in the lineup. Having him miked worked amazingly well, though we played the song a bit slow a couple of times since he still wasn't used to singing it. He had issues with rearranging the lyrics, even with a printout of the lyrics in front of him; he managed to leave out a chorus, and replace "world and its shams" with "world and its charms". This made me expect him to sing "I think of my pleasant condition / surrounded by acres of farms!" I was almost disappointed when he didn't. ;)
I got dinged to sing "Trois Navires de Ble", since I can more or less vaguely sing my way through it. However, singing my low octave on this is an issue. And I'm not comfy with the high octave, either. I can't manage to get out enough power to be heard over my mand in either octave; definitely, I'm more comfortable singing backup on this song.
It was a switch, however, playing the octave mandolin while standing up. I was pleased to note that I apparently do know the chords to this song as well as my own fretboard well enough that I really didn't need to watch my fingers too terribly much, and I also noted that it does completely change how the instrument sounds to me when I'm standing as opposed to when I'm sitting.
"Dancing With Mrs. White" was doable with only the three of us -- though I kept having an issue of some sort with the A part, in this session. It involved one of my notes coming out oddly sharp four measures in. I'm not quite sure why; Dara seemed to think it might be because of my wrapping my piccolo around somehow (where "wrapping" involves my instrument shifting in towards me or out away from me, as I'm playing), but I didn't think I was moving the instrument. I thought also that it might be because of issues with my keys sticking when moving from B to C sharp and back again, but just checking whether those keys were sticking didn't show any oddity in key behavior. Grf.
As a general note, I would like to announce that it is very difficult to practice "Mari-Mac" when you have no vocalists present whatsoever. Or, for that matter, the person responsible for helping you all keep tempo by playing her drums. We also lacked Cyn and her fiddle cues, so we basically really had absolutely no idea where to stop and start and where to speed up in general. It was a challenge to give it a shot, though.
My being in charge of the intro on "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" became more or less official as of this session. Or at least the first half of the intro. We're doing this double-intro thing now where I play a bit of syncopation on the big mand, then we count off, and come in for four more measures before the actual first verse kicks in. Patrick wasn't comfy singing this, so I wound up singing my backup bits by myself, which was a trifle weird to hear later when we listened to the minidisc recording.
The fun part about working with this song in this session, though, was Patrick showing me a bit about how to dress up the rhythm for the strumming. Now that I am sort of the lead rhythm instrument on this ditty, it's nice to be able to jazz up what I'm doing just a bit. I am still having syncopation issues trying to do the "till it grew cold" on the bridge; though that's really more Mimi's thing than mine, I wanted to try it anyway.
Syncopation issues are also keeping me from playing the big mand while I sing "Old Black Rum", so I let Patrick strum while I sang. I learned -- or perhaps more properly, re-learned, since this was not the first session in which I'd sung this on my feet, sans instrument -- that I can in fact sing this rather easier when standing up. Furthermore, with a mike in front of me I actually could hear myself and focus more on tone and breath, and I got through two takes of this pretty well. The happy result: I was actually not embarrassed to listen to the recording of myself belting this one out, later.
Last up, "Jolly Butcher", of which we did just one take for the sake of practicing. I went ahead and sang on it, though my voice had taken a bit of a workout doing "Old Black Rum" and I was beginning to flag.
I had purchased pie, but we wound up having another cake stand-in this time because guests of my household had kindly purchased a raspberry truffle torte for us from the Dilettante, a local dessert place. So this time, the role of the Pie was played by raspberry truffle torte, and it was gooooooooood.
Next up: Jam #52, and hardcore rehearsal,
Anna the Piper