Sunday, Jamless Sunday

[annathepiper]

Well, we were going to have Jam today, but unfortunately nobody showed up. mamishka has been ill, ladymondegreen got her plans crosswired so couldn't show up after all, fredpdx had other plans come up, ssha's calendar failed a dexterity roll... ah well. These things happen. So I wound up just noodling around on my guitar and my piccolo for a while, since I wanted to play with the various chords I'd scarfed off the OKP for ditties off The Hard and the Easy.

"Tickle Cove Pond" seems the most promising of the ones I played with, with the most interesting chords--some Dsus4 and some Cadd9 in there for me to get used to playing. I don't quite have the strum pattern down, but I do have at least a bit of an idea of how it's supposed to go.

The chords I found for "Charlie Horse", it turned out, were wrong--unless they're chords for the tail end of the song after it modulates up in key. The chords were for G--and the song starts off in F. So the fun thing there is going to figure out what chords to play such that I either don't have to use my capo at all, or I can plunk it down on one fret and keep it there. So far I'm suspecting that I'll have to plunk it onto the third fret and start with playing the D chords GBS usually uses to play stuff in F, then punt up to E chords to handle the key change. And I have no earthly idea how the bridge goes yet, but it'll be fun to figure it out.

I even broke out my piccolo for a bit to try to play with "Tishialuk Girls Set", but only got far enough to realize that oh my yes, I am definitely out of practice with the piccolo. I couldn't hold a coherent tone for very long.

I twiddled a bit with "Old Polina" as well--long enough to figure out that I'm not entirely sure what I think about the chords I scarfed off the OKP. They do say to capo on the first fret to kick up into E flat, which sounds right for the key, but the chords sound weird, like they're chords for a harmony line or something. Or perhaps that I actually ought to be playing the chords for some other base key and capoing somewhere else on the neck. (I find it weird and cool that I can make a rhythm line sound totally different depending on what base key's chords I'm playing and whether or not I'm using the capo. Playing "Lukey" in G sounds totally different than playing "Lukey" in A, if I am capo-free, for example.)

And I broke out the Great Big DVD, since I felt like playing around with the karaoke videos on there to get a better idea of how the rhythm lines of "Goin' Up" and "Ordinary Day" go. The good news is, I have a better idea of how those go than I thought I had. The bad news is, I still can't play them well enough to start singing the lyrics while I'm strumming. Clearly I need to play them a few thousand more times. ;)

Round about then solarbird came in from her horsetail annihilation mission outside, and since she wanted to play a bit too, we kept twiddling for a while after that as well. Nothing much in depth--I just jumped around the DVD looking for all the songs I knew how to play, since Dara had no particular thing she wanted to play with. But she did come up with a few neat-sounding twiddles for stuff we hadn't ever played with before in Jam, like "Clearest Indication" and "Boston and St. John's". Her biggest flute turns out to be a really good flute for that latter ditty, too, though her hand was really cranky about having to stretch to hit the fingerholes on that one.

I did have pie--since although I suspected Jam was going to be off, I wanted to have something on hand just in case I was wrong. And Dara and I did in fact have pie along with the music! And after going through the karaoke "Goin' Up" video several times and ogling scruffy-looking Alan on a rooftop playing the song, I had to have me a brand new official musicgeeking icon, too.

So not an official Jam, but hey, music still happened. So a pretty good Sunday anyway.

Comments

[casirafics.livejournal.com]

And today was boring! It was just all sorts of dull stuff that had to get done... that, and me being slightly pre-occupied with job-hunting-related issues, so I'm not doing much good with planning anything BUT that. ;)

(now I want ice cream. Oh, bother.)

[annathepiper]

We didn't have ice cream! But we did have Doctor Who. :D So that was good!

Sorry your day was boring, though. :(