Jam Report #62: 10/28/07
Oct. 28th, 2007 06:51 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)
sutures1 joins us for the first time, armed with another guitar and a hammered dulcimer; in which we play mostly a lot of nifty instrumental stuff; in which I still can't play D minor; and in which we confirm that the previous suggestion of pumpkin pie with dark chocolate sauce on top does indeed go amazingly well with port. Songs: "Trois Navires de Ble", "Duncan's Dance", "Brian Boru's March", "The Road to Lisdoonvarna", "Nonesuch / Maltese Bransle", "Web of Love".
Former Murkworks denizen--in fact, so former that she was a member of the original Murkworks!--sutures1 showed up to join us today. For one thing, it was excellent to see Ellen again. For another, she brought another guitar and her hammered dulcimer, and both of them were very welcome in today's endeavors. This brought our number up to five, and as we had more new people than former members of Three Good Measures, it occurred to me that we may have to think up a new name if we keep at this for a while.
But as that day hadn't yet come, today we focused instead on telling Ellen a bit about what we'd been playing before. I introduced her to "Trois Navires de Ble", and this time we kept it in B flat assolarbird expressed her desire to get used to dealing with difficult keys. I actually sang through it the first time and remembered all the verses in the correct order, which is not usual. It also didn't last, since I totally blew the second verse the second time through.
After that we jumped over to pretty much all instrumentals--which is why Aubrey and Maturin get to be the featured icon for this Jam Report. ;) "Duncan's Dance" out of the Heather Alexander songbook was up next, since the other two pieces that were recorded with that have D minors in them. While I did work a bit with that chord in the interval between sessions (it's important in Elvis Presley's "Home is Where the Heart Is", of which I am very fond), I'm still not comfortable enough with it to play it at speed. More practice is required. Anyway, though, that left "Duncan's Dance", which I can mostly play just fine now on the guitar except for the bit in the C part where the chord changes jump really fast from D over to A minor. I need to go through that one a few times on my own and see if I can figure it out.
It was here that Ellen first decided to break out the dulcimer, which proved to be quite cool when paired up withcflute's bass flute. Something about the interaction of the high strings and the deep voice of the flute, punctuated by Dara's higher flute, works really well. And we thought a bit, too, about how to make the arrangement of instruments more interesting when doing this song. technoshaman tapping out a rhythm under Callie's initial run through the A part worked splendidly, and then I came in on the second run through the A part, Ellen on the dulcimer on B. If we can tighten this up some it'll sound quite cool.
This particular arrangement of instruments suited us for the remainder of the Jam. Callie whipped out a few trad ditties she knows, which conveniently had easily playable chord lines that mostly involved E minor and D. In her experience, in fact, this can be said of most jigs. I shall have to compare this against what few jig-type things I know--though I can see why, even if a jig wasn't originally written in E minor, someone might transpose it into that. The chords are indeed simple to play. The problem is, they're simple to play. ;) I will have to think a bit about how to dress up the strum patterns on something where I'm playing only E minors and Ds. Getting better at arpeggio-type strumming might be called for.
So we whipped through something called "Brian Boru's March" and something else called "The Road to Lisdoonvarna", both of which sounded vaguely familiar to me; I'm sure I've heard the latter on my iPod somewhere. That involved a lot of E minor and D on my part, just trying to figure out what to play along on the chord lines. The pairing of "Nonesuch / Maltese Bransle" also sounded at least somewhat familiar, and specifically Ellen on the dulcimer; I'll have to check that recording I have of Colonial-era music and see if it's on there somewhere.
We thought about playing with Meg Davis' "Monster's Lullabye" since Ellen knew that one--it was a pleasure to see that Meg Davis was familiar to her--and Callie did as well. We also thought about doing "Elf Glade" since that's the only Meg Davis song I have practiced to any degree at all. We didn't do either of these, though. Instead, we jumped over to something else that Callie had sheet music for: a thing called "Web of Love".
I didn't recognize it, but again we had a nice pairing of bass flute and dulcimer, with Dara doing some work on her higher flute. Ellen whipped out a line of chords for me to play, and once we had that settled, we figured out that me on the guitar and Glenn on his drum would give us a bit of an intro. This all sounded pretty nice for a first run, though as we play more with this, we may have to split up the melody so that Dara can have more to do with her high notes. The thing's written out in two contrapuntal melody lines, and we could get this sounding really good if we worked at it.
After that Glenn called it Pie. And since he and Callie had brought not only the pumpkin pie but also some dark Ephemere sauce to put on it and some excellent port, Pie was eagerly initiated. Turns out we also had subsidiary snacks courtesy of Ellen, and so some tasty snackage and conversation about Japan was had. Who knew that dark chocolate sauce on pumpkin pie worked so well? And for the record, it worked excellently with the port as well.
Next time is tentatively scheduled for Sunday the 11th. Local folks, sing out if you want to join us!
sutures1 joins us for the first time, armed with another guitar and a hammered dulcimer; in which we play mostly a lot of nifty instrumental stuff; in which I still can't play D minor; and in which we confirm that the previous suggestion of pumpkin pie with dark chocolate sauce on top does indeed go amazingly well with port. Songs: "Trois Navires de Ble", "Duncan's Dance", "Brian Boru's March", "The Road to Lisdoonvarna", "Nonesuch / Maltese Bransle", "Web of Love".Former Murkworks denizen--in fact, so former that she was a member of the original Murkworks!--
sutures1 showed up to join us today. For one thing, it was excellent to see Ellen again. For another, she brought another guitar and her hammered dulcimer, and both of them were very welcome in today's endeavors. This brought our number up to five, and as we had more new people than former members of Three Good Measures, it occurred to me that we may have to think up a new name if we keep at this for a while.But as that day hadn't yet come, today we focused instead on telling Ellen a bit about what we'd been playing before. I introduced her to "Trois Navires de Ble", and this time we kept it in B flat as
solarbird expressed her desire to get used to dealing with difficult keys. I actually sang through it the first time and remembered all the verses in the correct order, which is not usual. It also didn't last, since I totally blew the second verse the second time through.After that we jumped over to pretty much all instrumentals--which is why Aubrey and Maturin get to be the featured icon for this Jam Report. ;) "Duncan's Dance" out of the Heather Alexander songbook was up next, since the other two pieces that were recorded with that have D minors in them. While I did work a bit with that chord in the interval between sessions (it's important in Elvis Presley's "Home is Where the Heart Is", of which I am very fond), I'm still not comfortable enough with it to play it at speed. More practice is required. Anyway, though, that left "Duncan's Dance", which I can mostly play just fine now on the guitar except for the bit in the C part where the chord changes jump really fast from D over to A minor. I need to go through that one a few times on my own and see if I can figure it out.
It was here that Ellen first decided to break out the dulcimer, which proved to be quite cool when paired up with
cflute's bass flute. Something about the interaction of the high strings and the deep voice of the flute, punctuated by Dara's higher flute, works really well. And we thought a bit, too, about how to make the arrangement of instruments more interesting when doing this song. technoshaman tapping out a rhythm under Callie's initial run through the A part worked splendidly, and then I came in on the second run through the A part, Ellen on the dulcimer on B. If we can tighten this up some it'll sound quite cool.This particular arrangement of instruments suited us for the remainder of the Jam. Callie whipped out a few trad ditties she knows, which conveniently had easily playable chord lines that mostly involved E minor and D. In her experience, in fact, this can be said of most jigs. I shall have to compare this against what few jig-type things I know--though I can see why, even if a jig wasn't originally written in E minor, someone might transpose it into that. The chords are indeed simple to play. The problem is, they're simple to play. ;) I will have to think a bit about how to dress up the strum patterns on something where I'm playing only E minors and Ds. Getting better at arpeggio-type strumming might be called for.
So we whipped through something called "Brian Boru's March" and something else called "The Road to Lisdoonvarna", both of which sounded vaguely familiar to me; I'm sure I've heard the latter on my iPod somewhere. That involved a lot of E minor and D on my part, just trying to figure out what to play along on the chord lines. The pairing of "Nonesuch / Maltese Bransle" also sounded at least somewhat familiar, and specifically Ellen on the dulcimer; I'll have to check that recording I have of Colonial-era music and see if it's on there somewhere.
We thought about playing with Meg Davis' "Monster's Lullabye" since Ellen knew that one--it was a pleasure to see that Meg Davis was familiar to her--and Callie did as well. We also thought about doing "Elf Glade" since that's the only Meg Davis song I have practiced to any degree at all. We didn't do either of these, though. Instead, we jumped over to something else that Callie had sheet music for: a thing called "Web of Love".
I didn't recognize it, but again we had a nice pairing of bass flute and dulcimer, with Dara doing some work on her higher flute. Ellen whipped out a line of chords for me to play, and once we had that settled, we figured out that me on the guitar and Glenn on his drum would give us a bit of an intro. This all sounded pretty nice for a first run, though as we play more with this, we may have to split up the melody so that Dara can have more to do with her high notes. The thing's written out in two contrapuntal melody lines, and we could get this sounding really good if we worked at it.
After that Glenn called it Pie. And since he and Callie had brought not only the pumpkin pie but also some dark Ephemere sauce to put on it and some excellent port, Pie was eagerly initiated. Turns out we also had subsidiary snacks courtesy of Ellen, and so some tasty snackage and conversation about Japan was had. Who knew that dark chocolate sauce on pumpkin pie worked so well? And for the record, it worked excellently with the port as well.
Next time is tentatively scheduled for Sunday the 11th. Local folks, sing out if you want to join us!