Jam Report #61: 10/14/07
Oct. 14th, 2007 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperIn which ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
technoshaman and cflute join us again for musical hanging out at the Murkworks, which makes twice in a row we've done this, and if this keeps up it might actually be a habit; in which I re-confirm that I cannot play a Dm chord if you paid me; and in which we learn that Heather Alexander instrumentals can go as blazing fast as Great Big Sea ones. Songs: "Trois Navires de Ble", "Cat and the Fiddle", "Creature of the Wood", "Goodbye You Willamette", "Chickies in the House / Napoleon's Rant / Duncan's Dance".
This morning I had to go down to the nearby shops on a mission to fetch my next round of thyroid meds. I mention this on the grounds that while I was down there, it struck me that "hey, we need PIE!" That it actually took me until this morning to realize that we were sans pie is perhaps a measure of how rusty I am at the jamming habit. I am tentatively hopeful that this will get sharpened up again, as there is a sad dearth of pie in my diet.
Once I got home again I settled in for pre-Jam tuning of instruments. I am sheepish to admit that I completely and utterly forgot that Callie had restrung Ragamuffin before--and I wound up completely snapping my high E string. DOH. Fortunately I did have an extra, so I swapped that in. But this did mean that I was forced to retune Rags pretty much after every single song we did through the course of the afternoon.
This time along with Callie's flutes, she and Glenn showed up with a drum for Glenn to beat on along with us, so we had some percussion! Yay! And since Callie was no longer plague-stricken, she let Dara and me both play with the bass flute. That was quite a bit of fun, since I'd never tried to get a real sound out of one before. And wow, it's hard. You have to loosen up your embouchure a lot to get enough air going through the thing. And it's heavy, a lot heavier to hold up than I expected. I don't think I could play it for very long, at least not until I got used to it.
Once we settled in to do something, the first thing we did (aside from random futzing around on my part trying to find out how long I could play Rags before another retune was required) was "Trois Navires de Ble". We only went through that once, mostly because I am still not happy with singing it either in the key of G or in the key of B flat. I think I need to see if I can land in the middle and see if I can play it in A--either with the base A chords, or else the G ones capoed. That'll probably be my best chance to actually still sound halfway decent singing and be in a key that lets Dara play okay. Callie has no such restrictions since she's armed with silver flutes, regular and bass, but the bamboos still need to be reckoned with.
We wandered over into Heather Alexander land after that, breaking out both our copies of the songbooks and looking for something amusing to play with. Aside from a few random strums through "Tomorrow We Leave for Battle" on my part, we settled on "Cat and the Fiddle"--which we'd actually played before in Jam, back in the day. It was fun to see it in the songbook now, since I'm pretty sure that we were completely off on a tangent with the chords we'd worked out before. And it was fun to take a spin or two through it just to assure myself that yes, I could handle the strum pattern just fine. This will require further visits, I think.
Right on the very next page in the songbook was another Heather favorite of mine: "Black Jack's Lady". However, I took one look at that chord pattern and went "Uh, NO." But I will definitely have to look further at that song, just to see if I can figure out how to do it. But since none of us wanted to tackle that one today, we tried "Creature of the Wood" instead.
Callie had worked this song out before for performance purposes, so she took over Rags and sang while Dara and I tried to improvise something on flutes. For this we broke out my iPod to listen to the recorded track, so that Callie could remind herself of the structure of the song, and so I could actually hear how the strum patterns went. This came out pretty fun--though the song kind of intimidates me for performance purposes. ;) You really need to have an aggressive delivery for these lyrics to work at all, and ideally, some power to your voice. (I could probably manage the necessary growl in the tone, but not so sure about the power.) I think if we continue to play with this one, I'll either work on the guitar part or twiddle on the flute. Don't know yet; the song doesn't feel to me like it wants much ornamentation on it, but this may also be because I'm used to hearing the recorded versions. I did get hit with a couple of bits, though, where I felt like I could hear a flute doing something--a high A coming out of the bridge, and Callie's bass flute really wants to be holding a sustained rumbly note on the final measures.
There was some more dithering for a bit, and I threw around some random measures of "Jack Hinks" and "Old Black Rum" while we tried to decide what to do next. Callie broke out her Echo's Children songbook, and we played one of the songs off the CD of theirs I actually have: "Goodbye You Willamette", which is on the album Nuts from the Hazel Tree. Sweet little ditty, and I did it on the big mand since Rags was all weird with the high E and the tuning and the flatness, and the song kind of worked that way. I think I might like it better with the zouk, though; this will require a test, assuming I get the zouk properly restrung by next time.
After that we settled on seeing what we could do with some of the instrumental songs in the Heather songbook, since with this current mix of people, we are mostly instrumentalists. The thing we settled on at last was a trio of ditties that appears on the Heather Alexander album A Gypsy's Home: "Chickies in the House", "Napoleon's Rant", and "Duncan's Dance".
There are two problems with this trio of songs: 1) at least in the recording, especially on the last part, the tempo is ZOMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! fast. Certainly fast enough that I have no earthly idea how to keep up with most of those chords yet, and will require quite a bit of practice to get the hang of it; 2) the first two bits, "Chickies in the House" and "Napoleon's Rant", involve chords I have not a prayer of being able to play. I can do D minor, but I can't do it fast, and B flat is right out. I think I remember how to play it--but again, not fast.
So we played the recording and pretty much laughed ourselves silly at our lack of ability to keep up with the tempo of the final part, and instead turned back to the songbook to at least play with the "Duncan's Dance" part, since that was in G and theoretically playable by my amateur fingers. I say theoretically, since that strum pattern is pretty wacky--a lot of swift strikes on chords that I'm sure work a lot better at the insane tempo in the recording, but which sound awkward when they're slower. At least when they're played slower by me. Heh. It was fun, though, especially in the C part where there's D chord I have to glance off of really fast before jumping over into a measure of A minor.
And I'll even disregard the part where my songbook apparently has a misprint. The three ditties are supposed to appear on pages 102, 103, and 104, but in mine, the pages were put in 102, 104, and 103. Apparently my 103/104 page got flipped around. My copy is special. ;)
After that, Glenn called it pie. So I broke out the pie, yammered about Great Big Sea for a while, and beamed a lot as Callie asked to be informed the next time the B'ys come to town on tour. Glenn advised her that it will be impossible to miss, since the coming of Great Big Sea is loudly heralded by the explosion of Squee all over my journal. Glenn knows me very, very well.
The pie: strawberry rhubarb, which was not bad for pie purchased at the last minute at Albertson's. But we can do better. I'll have to see if I can nail down how far the Snohomish Pie Company is from here, or hell, if nothing else, check out what the Honey Bear Bakery might have to offer in the way of pie.
By the way, people, we seem to be making this a habit again. The next tentatively scheduled jam will be at the Murkworks on 10/28, modulo any medical upheaval in my schedule. If you want in, letsolarbird and me know!
technoshaman and cflute join us again for musical hanging out at the Murkworks, which makes twice in a row we've done this, and if this keeps up it might actually be a habit; in which I re-confirm that I cannot play a Dm chord if you paid me; and in which we learn that Heather Alexander instrumentals can go as blazing fast as Great Big Sea ones. Songs: "Trois Navires de Ble", "Cat and the Fiddle", "Creature of the Wood", "Goodbye You Willamette", "Chickies in the House / Napoleon's Rant / Duncan's Dance".This morning I had to go down to the nearby shops on a mission to fetch my next round of thyroid meds. I mention this on the grounds that while I was down there, it struck me that "hey, we need PIE!" That it actually took me until this morning to realize that we were sans pie is perhaps a measure of how rusty I am at the jamming habit. I am tentatively hopeful that this will get sharpened up again, as there is a sad dearth of pie in my diet.
Once I got home again I settled in for pre-Jam tuning of instruments. I am sheepish to admit that I completely and utterly forgot that Callie had restrung Ragamuffin before--and I wound up completely snapping my high E string. DOH. Fortunately I did have an extra, so I swapped that in. But this did mean that I was forced to retune Rags pretty much after every single song we did through the course of the afternoon.
This time along with Callie's flutes, she and Glenn showed up with a drum for Glenn to beat on along with us, so we had some percussion! Yay! And since Callie was no longer plague-stricken, she let Dara and me both play with the bass flute. That was quite a bit of fun, since I'd never tried to get a real sound out of one before. And wow, it's hard. You have to loosen up your embouchure a lot to get enough air going through the thing. And it's heavy, a lot heavier to hold up than I expected. I don't think I could play it for very long, at least not until I got used to it.
Once we settled in to do something, the first thing we did (aside from random futzing around on my part trying to find out how long I could play Rags before another retune was required) was "Trois Navires de Ble". We only went through that once, mostly because I am still not happy with singing it either in the key of G or in the key of B flat. I think I need to see if I can land in the middle and see if I can play it in A--either with the base A chords, or else the G ones capoed. That'll probably be my best chance to actually still sound halfway decent singing and be in a key that lets Dara play okay. Callie has no such restrictions since she's armed with silver flutes, regular and bass, but the bamboos still need to be reckoned with.
We wandered over into Heather Alexander land after that, breaking out both our copies of the songbooks and looking for something amusing to play with. Aside from a few random strums through "Tomorrow We Leave for Battle" on my part, we settled on "Cat and the Fiddle"--which we'd actually played before in Jam, back in the day. It was fun to see it in the songbook now, since I'm pretty sure that we were completely off on a tangent with the chords we'd worked out before. And it was fun to take a spin or two through it just to assure myself that yes, I could handle the strum pattern just fine. This will require further visits, I think.
Right on the very next page in the songbook was another Heather favorite of mine: "Black Jack's Lady". However, I took one look at that chord pattern and went "Uh, NO." But I will definitely have to look further at that song, just to see if I can figure out how to do it. But since none of us wanted to tackle that one today, we tried "Creature of the Wood" instead.
Callie had worked this song out before for performance purposes, so she took over Rags and sang while Dara and I tried to improvise something on flutes. For this we broke out my iPod to listen to the recorded track, so that Callie could remind herself of the structure of the song, and so I could actually hear how the strum patterns went. This came out pretty fun--though the song kind of intimidates me for performance purposes. ;) You really need to have an aggressive delivery for these lyrics to work at all, and ideally, some power to your voice. (I could probably manage the necessary growl in the tone, but not so sure about the power.) I think if we continue to play with this one, I'll either work on the guitar part or twiddle on the flute. Don't know yet; the song doesn't feel to me like it wants much ornamentation on it, but this may also be because I'm used to hearing the recorded versions. I did get hit with a couple of bits, though, where I felt like I could hear a flute doing something--a high A coming out of the bridge, and Callie's bass flute really wants to be holding a sustained rumbly note on the final measures.
There was some more dithering for a bit, and I threw around some random measures of "Jack Hinks" and "Old Black Rum" while we tried to decide what to do next. Callie broke out her Echo's Children songbook, and we played one of the songs off the CD of theirs I actually have: "Goodbye You Willamette", which is on the album Nuts from the Hazel Tree. Sweet little ditty, and I did it on the big mand since Rags was all weird with the high E and the tuning and the flatness, and the song kind of worked that way. I think I might like it better with the zouk, though; this will require a test, assuming I get the zouk properly restrung by next time.
After that we settled on seeing what we could do with some of the instrumental songs in the Heather songbook, since with this current mix of people, we are mostly instrumentalists. The thing we settled on at last was a trio of ditties that appears on the Heather Alexander album A Gypsy's Home: "Chickies in the House", "Napoleon's Rant", and "Duncan's Dance".
There are two problems with this trio of songs: 1) at least in the recording, especially on the last part, the tempo is ZOMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! fast. Certainly fast enough that I have no earthly idea how to keep up with most of those chords yet, and will require quite a bit of practice to get the hang of it; 2) the first two bits, "Chickies in the House" and "Napoleon's Rant", involve chords I have not a prayer of being able to play. I can do D minor, but I can't do it fast, and B flat is right out. I think I remember how to play it--but again, not fast.
So we played the recording and pretty much laughed ourselves silly at our lack of ability to keep up with the tempo of the final part, and instead turned back to the songbook to at least play with the "Duncan's Dance" part, since that was in G and theoretically playable by my amateur fingers. I say theoretically, since that strum pattern is pretty wacky--a lot of swift strikes on chords that I'm sure work a lot better at the insane tempo in the recording, but which sound awkward when they're slower. At least when they're played slower by me. Heh. It was fun, though, especially in the C part where there's D chord I have to glance off of really fast before jumping over into a measure of A minor.
And I'll even disregard the part where my songbook apparently has a misprint. The three ditties are supposed to appear on pages 102, 103, and 104, but in mine, the pages were put in 102, 104, and 103. Apparently my 103/104 page got flipped around. My copy is special. ;)
After that, Glenn called it pie. So I broke out the pie, yammered about Great Big Sea for a while, and beamed a lot as Callie asked to be informed the next time the B'ys come to town on tour. Glenn advised her that it will be impossible to miss, since the coming of Great Big Sea is loudly heralded by the explosion of Squee all over my journal. Glenn knows me very, very well.
The pie: strawberry rhubarb, which was not bad for pie purchased at the last minute at Albertson's. But we can do better. I'll have to see if I can nail down how far the Snohomish Pie Company is from here, or hell, if nothing else, check out what the Honey Bear Bakery might have to offer in the way of pie.
By the way, people, we seem to be making this a habit again. The next tentatively scheduled jam will be at the Murkworks on 10/28, modulo any medical upheaval in my schedule. If you want in, let
solarbird and me know!