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annathepiperIn which we again have a fairly tiny Jam, but we don't let that stop us; in which we're mostly instrumental, but that's quite okay; and in which I am not up to snuff as Emergency Backup Mimi! Songs: "Goin' Up", "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate", "Stars", "Duncan's Dance", "Napoleon's Rant", "Banish Misfortune / Lark in the Morning / Butterfly Priest", "Heather's Hound", "Elf Glade", "Chemical Worker's Song", "Captain Kidd".
We were fairly tiny at Jam this past weekend, thanks to various ongoing scheduling conflicts. And so, because of this particular combination of folks, we spent a whole lot of time playing with instrumentals. Well, that, and also because my right shoulder still isn't quite up to speed with the guitar strumming, so I had to let![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cflute and solarbird drive a lot of the music.
It took us a little bit to get started, due to my having to run out to purchase foodstuffs. I came back to findkendaer pulling into our driveway just ahead of me. Fortunately he did come right back out of the house and move his vehicle, so I could put mine in the garage! cflute and pocketnaomi weren't too far behind, but Callie soon discovered she was down a songbook and her main flute, so she had to book back to her place to get them.
In the meantime Dara and I wound up doing an impromptu noodling of "Goin' Up". Kudos go to JT for being able to peg what chords I was playing just by observation. Of course, "Goin' Up" is AKA "Four Chords No Braining", so that does help. But still!
I realized after strumming through that though that I was still going to be having issues being main guitar. JT's not yet comfortable playing his guitar in the group, so I wound up jumping on and off of guitar as our song choices dictated.
Which meant that when Dara started playing with "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate", I did only some scattered chords on take 1, and piccolo noodling on take 2. Dara got to share some of the revisions she's been doing to this song while busking, which was cool. She's got a different way of ending it than the Captain Tractor recording does.
"Stars" was next, by general request. I went back to guitar for this, and determined that as long as I'm playing Rags for backup strings for Dara on this, I need one of my pointy picks. Otherwise I don't get a crisp enough sound to properly accompany Dara on Summer. Some of her chord progressions in the verses are still throwing me, but I more or less kept up. And Callie did nifty things on the flute that Dara noted, although by her own admission she couldn't pay close enough attention to them as she herself is still trying to sharpen her ability to play her own song.
It must be tangentially noted that lyrics have now occurred for "Stars", which should take the challenge of tackling this up another notch. I look forward to it.
We got into an instrumental mode after that, led by Callie's interest in revisiting some of the Heather Alexander instrumentals we've played with before. "Duncan's Dance" is still throwing me in the C part with that one little syncopated chord progression; "Napoleon' Rant" was pretty much beyond me with all the D-minor-y goodness. Dara kept up on the mandolin, though. We had some good geeking about the tail end of the Rant in the songbook, since it was confusingly notated--because, or so we determined, it's supposed to lead right over into the Dance.
Callie next did a bit of impromptu noodling of her own and whipped through an entire song by herself. JT ID'd the tunes she played as "Banish Misfortune", "Lark in the Morning", and "Butterfly Priest".
One more instrumental then: "Heather's Hound". This was another out of the Heather Alexander book, one of the older ones from Midsummer. This one's barely made an impression on me, but I was impressed by it having four different parts to it. I need to go find it on my Heather playlist and get a better idea of how it's supposed to go.
I had about one take of "Elf Glade" in me, though that take wasn't too awful. The pointy pick seems helpful for the riffs, although in this particular case, it didn't keep me from screwing up several times towards the end. But! We didn't have that sync problem we had the last time we went through this song.
"Process Man" was next, to give my strumming arm a break. Since we were down Mimi, JT took over as lead vocal on the song; this necessitated a bit of twiddling with the key, in order to get in low enough to sound better for his range. I didn't sing much with this. On impulse, I grabbedtechnoshaman's drum instead (it's been living here at the Murk so he doesn't have to haul it all the way up the hill when he takes the bus to come to Jam), and became backup drum.
That was actually kind of neat. I'm not nearly as good a drummer asmamishka but I feel like I do at least have a sense of interesting things to do with a drum. Dara had to remind me where to drop out to give space for her tricks on the rim of the bodhran, but that was all good.
Last but not least, bypocketnaomi's request as she wanted something she could join in on, we did "Captain Kidd". Also not too bad! Still, Mimi's drum ornamentations were sorely missed here as well, along with her vocals.
The pie: pumpkin, with whipped cream on top! Yum.
Next Jam is tentatively scheduled for 11/2, to keep the weekend before Halloween free for interesting scheduling purposes. We may have amusing Halloween-y musical news before then, though; watch this space for more.
We were fairly tiny at Jam this past weekend, thanks to various ongoing scheduling conflicts. And so, because of this particular combination of folks, we spent a whole lot of time playing with instrumentals. Well, that, and also because my right shoulder still isn't quite up to speed with the guitar strumming, so I had to let
cflute and solarbird drive a lot of the music.It took us a little bit to get started, due to my having to run out to purchase foodstuffs. I came back to find
kendaer pulling into our driveway just ahead of me. Fortunately he did come right back out of the house and move his vehicle, so I could put mine in the garage! cflute and pocketnaomi weren't too far behind, but Callie soon discovered she was down a songbook and her main flute, so she had to book back to her place to get them.In the meantime Dara and I wound up doing an impromptu noodling of "Goin' Up". Kudos go to JT for being able to peg what chords I was playing just by observation. Of course, "Goin' Up" is AKA "Four Chords No Braining", so that does help. But still!
I realized after strumming through that though that I was still going to be having issues being main guitar. JT's not yet comfortable playing his guitar in the group, so I wound up jumping on and off of guitar as our song choices dictated.
Which meant that when Dara started playing with "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate", I did only some scattered chords on take 1, and piccolo noodling on take 2. Dara got to share some of the revisions she's been doing to this song while busking, which was cool. She's got a different way of ending it than the Captain Tractor recording does.
"Stars" was next, by general request. I went back to guitar for this, and determined that as long as I'm playing Rags for backup strings for Dara on this, I need one of my pointy picks. Otherwise I don't get a crisp enough sound to properly accompany Dara on Summer. Some of her chord progressions in the verses are still throwing me, but I more or less kept up. And Callie did nifty things on the flute that Dara noted, although by her own admission she couldn't pay close enough attention to them as she herself is still trying to sharpen her ability to play her own song.
It must be tangentially noted that lyrics have now occurred for "Stars", which should take the challenge of tackling this up another notch. I look forward to it.
We got into an instrumental mode after that, led by Callie's interest in revisiting some of the Heather Alexander instrumentals we've played with before. "Duncan's Dance" is still throwing me in the C part with that one little syncopated chord progression; "Napoleon' Rant" was pretty much beyond me with all the D-minor-y goodness. Dara kept up on the mandolin, though. We had some good geeking about the tail end of the Rant in the songbook, since it was confusingly notated--because, or so we determined, it's supposed to lead right over into the Dance.
Callie next did a bit of impromptu noodling of her own and whipped through an entire song by herself. JT ID'd the tunes she played as "Banish Misfortune", "Lark in the Morning", and "Butterfly Priest".
One more instrumental then: "Heather's Hound". This was another out of the Heather Alexander book, one of the older ones from Midsummer. This one's barely made an impression on me, but I was impressed by it having four different parts to it. I need to go find it on my Heather playlist and get a better idea of how it's supposed to go.
I had about one take of "Elf Glade" in me, though that take wasn't too awful. The pointy pick seems helpful for the riffs, although in this particular case, it didn't keep me from screwing up several times towards the end. But! We didn't have that sync problem we had the last time we went through this song.
"Process Man" was next, to give my strumming arm a break. Since we were down Mimi, JT took over as lead vocal on the song; this necessitated a bit of twiddling with the key, in order to get in low enough to sound better for his range. I didn't sing much with this. On impulse, I grabbed
technoshaman's drum instead (it's been living here at the Murk so he doesn't have to haul it all the way up the hill when he takes the bus to come to Jam), and became backup drum.That was actually kind of neat. I'm not nearly as good a drummer as
mamishka but I feel like I do at least have a sense of interesting things to do with a drum. Dara had to remind me where to drop out to give space for her tricks on the rim of the bodhran, but that was all good.Last but not least, by
pocketnaomi's request as she wanted something she could join in on, we did "Captain Kidd". Also not too bad! Still, Mimi's drum ornamentations were sorely missed here as well, along with her vocals.The pie: pumpkin, with whipped cream on top! Yum.
Next Jam is tentatively scheduled for 11/2, to keep the weekend before Halloween free for interesting scheduling purposes. We may have amusing Halloween-y musical news before then, though; watch this space for more.