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annathepiperIn which we make up for not having jammed for a whole month with a vengeance; in which the fabulous ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka rejoins us from her sojourn in the East; in which sutures1 also returns with her much-missed dulcimer; and in which new folk join us! Songs: "Elf Glade", "Thought You Knew", "Mari-Mac", "Brian Boru", "Road to Lisdoonvarna", "Staten Island", "Lukey", "Captain Kidd", "The Night Pat Murphy Died", "Chemical Worker's Song", "Trois Navires de Ble".
So, yeah! We haven't been able to meet for a while due to various scheduling obligations, not the least of which was Norwescon! But that very convention got us a couple of potential new folk who will hopefully come back: Molly and Trey, who came armed with a guitar, a violin, a bodhran, and a whole bunch of recorder/whistle/flute-type instruments between them. This was category 1 Awesome, as it's always good to meet new folks over music, especially when they say wonderful things to me like "what key are we in? I'll follow along." <3
Anyway, big welcome to Molly and Trey, who hopefully will get a chance to see this very Jam Report soon.
Of equal levels of Awesome was thatmamishka showed up for her very first Jam following her winter sojourn back East. She came armed, dangerous, and ready, and damn but it's good to have her voice and her drum back amongst us. And, and, and, we also had sutures1 back after a long absence as well. Also very, very good. Her dulcimer and her company have been missed!
So we wound up having a very full living room, and we also had a longer than normal Jam as well as we did a fairly decent sweep through a lot of different songs to give the new folks a sampling of what we typically play. This did of course include a few obligatory passes on the stereo through Great Big Sea ditties as well--this of course being what happens when new people come into my house. But I did also encourage Molly and Trey to bring us songs they love, too. *^_^*;;
Molly and Trey were in fact the first folks to show up, buttechnoshaman and kendaer and Ellen weren't far behind. So we all hung out for a bit and made social noises, until I decided it was high time we played something. But I wasn't about to play "Mari-Mac" until Meems showed up, so instead we started off with "Elf Glade".
(Another round of awesome: Molly and Trey recognizing Meg Davis' name and knowing several of her songs. We actually had enough voices today that we could have done "Captain Jack and the Mermaid" if we'd wanted; if we continue to have this number of people for a while I may have to actually roll that into the queue.)
We got one take of "Elf Glade" out with me singing lead and JT singing backup before Meems andcflute arrived, at which point we had more introductions all around. Dara, also, played some of "Thought You Knew" for Molly, which actually got a good little bit of fluting out of Callie as well, so I queued that up for the second full song to work on. But first we did a second take of "Elf Glade" to accommodate the new arrivals and also to bring in Callie's nifty flute parts.
"Thought You Knew" required a round of handing out the chords, but once that was done and Dara was able to sing for us, it came together all right. I started thinking I'd actually like to sing on the choruses, but I don't know the song well enough to tackle that yet. We did get a couple decent enough takes, although I did have to advise everybody for take 2 that each line of the bridge was repeated. Dara had forgotten to notate that, doh.
Third up was "Mari-Mac", just so we could get it out of the way while Mimi still had punch to her voice. And mmmm, satisfying. ;) As I always assert, if you're not tired by the time you're done with "Mari-Mac", you're playing it WRONG. Meems and I did have a little bit of "wait, what?" about the long bit in the middle, but that's okay; we'll get that ironed out over the next few rounds, I daresay. Also neat: having a second guitar, and having Dara being able to whip out her flute part. Best of all: I didn't have to sing lead! But I can be tight harmony backup on the chorus in E minor, so it's all fabulous.
That got us into a general E-minor-y sort of mood so we took a spin through a couple of Callie's favorite instrumentals, "Brian Boru" and "Road to Lisdoonvarna", which I actually am starting to recognize. Some. Eventually I'll recognize them well enough to not have to ask Callie their names every time! Fortunately though the chords are easy, and I spent a bit of time just showing them to JT as we were playing along. It helped that they were all pretty much the exact same chords as in "Mari-Mac", only, y'know, slower.
Ellen met and matched Callie with "Staten Island", which we took a spin through in the key of D. This of course necessitated connecting it to "Lukey", and I broke out the original GBS version thereof for benefit of the new folks and also so that we could all remind ourselves how the hell "Staten Island" works as a bridge. (I am also reminding myself that I really, really need to send Ellen the melody to "Gone by the Board" so that she can work it through for playing the later, livelier version of "Lukey", which of course is the way to play it Right.)
We had a bit of back and forth about what to do next, then. There were calls for "Zombie Taylor", although I think we'll have to make a group compromise as to when to do that particular shanty with zombies, and when to do it without. Meems proposed "Paddy Murphy"; JT called for both "Chemical Worker's Song" and "Captain Kidd".
It should surprise none of you reading this that we wound up doing all three. I wanted to get in "Captain Kidd" just because it's one of the easiest songs chord-wise and that gave JT a chance to flex his guitar fu. Plus, needed to brief Meems on what we were doing differently in the last verse.
"Chemical Worker's Song" got us a couple of not half bad runs, and Meems did very, very nicely cutting us cleanly off.
"Paddy Murphy" took a little doing. GBS records it in A; I know how to play it with chords in G. But G is definitely too low for Meems, and A wasn't terribly happy either. B flat is Not Dulcimer Friendly, so we kicked it up another notch to C--or at least we did after everybody pointed out OH HEY ANNA you're actually capoed to B, not C, oops. But that turned out to be a Not Mimi Friendly key either since that rides right on a break in her range.
So we finally actually transposed it into D, which worked out well enough; the chords were easy to transpose on the fly and that made it a comfy range for Mimi to sing in and for Ellen to work on a dulcimer line. We didn't do the bridge just because nobody knows it well enough yet--Dara and I can both play it in G but neither of us have transposed that bit into D. That'll take practice.
Last up we went out on a mellower note, with "Trois Navires de Ble", which we hadn't done in some time. Which of course gave me an opportunity to tell the new folks the Why Anna Sings This Song in Atrociously Accented French Story. But, Dara's got nice flute fu on this and Callie improvised with her nicely too. Very, very nice to have Molly following me on the song as well, even given the bridge-y bits.
After a pass through that we realized that it was almost five o'clock, which was later than we'd gone in Jam for a while as well. So we called Pie, which this time around was key lime, tastily provided by Glenn!
Next Jam is the 10th. Look for the word from your faithful Jam Reporter then!
mamishka rejoins us from her sojourn in the East; in which sutures1 also returns with her much-missed dulcimer; and in which new folk join us! Songs: "Elf Glade", "Thought You Knew", "Mari-Mac", "Brian Boru", "Road to Lisdoonvarna", "Staten Island", "Lukey", "Captain Kidd", "The Night Pat Murphy Died", "Chemical Worker's Song", "Trois Navires de Ble".So, yeah! We haven't been able to meet for a while due to various scheduling obligations, not the least of which was Norwescon! But that very convention got us a couple of potential new folk who will hopefully come back: Molly and Trey, who came armed with a guitar, a violin, a bodhran, and a whole bunch of recorder/whistle/flute-type instruments between them. This was category 1 Awesome, as it's always good to meet new folks over music, especially when they say wonderful things to me like "what key are we in? I'll follow along." <3
Anyway, big welcome to Molly and Trey, who hopefully will get a chance to see this very Jam Report soon.
Of equal levels of Awesome was that
mamishka showed up for her very first Jam following her winter sojourn back East. She came armed, dangerous, and ready, and damn but it's good to have her voice and her drum back amongst us. And, and, and, we also had sutures1 back after a long absence as well. Also very, very good. Her dulcimer and her company have been missed!So we wound up having a very full living room, and we also had a longer than normal Jam as well as we did a fairly decent sweep through a lot of different songs to give the new folks a sampling of what we typically play. This did of course include a few obligatory passes on the stereo through Great Big Sea ditties as well--this of course being what happens when new people come into my house. But I did also encourage Molly and Trey to bring us songs they love, too. *^_^*;;
Molly and Trey were in fact the first folks to show up, but
technoshaman and kendaer and Ellen weren't far behind. So we all hung out for a bit and made social noises, until I decided it was high time we played something. But I wasn't about to play "Mari-Mac" until Meems showed up, so instead we started off with "Elf Glade".(Another round of awesome: Molly and Trey recognizing Meg Davis' name and knowing several of her songs. We actually had enough voices today that we could have done "Captain Jack and the Mermaid" if we'd wanted; if we continue to have this number of people for a while I may have to actually roll that into the queue.)
We got one take of "Elf Glade" out with me singing lead and JT singing backup before Meems and
cflute arrived, at which point we had more introductions all around. Dara, also, played some of "Thought You Knew" for Molly, which actually got a good little bit of fluting out of Callie as well, so I queued that up for the second full song to work on. But first we did a second take of "Elf Glade" to accommodate the new arrivals and also to bring in Callie's nifty flute parts."Thought You Knew" required a round of handing out the chords, but once that was done and Dara was able to sing for us, it came together all right. I started thinking I'd actually like to sing on the choruses, but I don't know the song well enough to tackle that yet. We did get a couple decent enough takes, although I did have to advise everybody for take 2 that each line of the bridge was repeated. Dara had forgotten to notate that, doh.
Third up was "Mari-Mac", just so we could get it out of the way while Mimi still had punch to her voice. And mmmm, satisfying. ;) As I always assert, if you're not tired by the time you're done with "Mari-Mac", you're playing it WRONG. Meems and I did have a little bit of "wait, what?" about the long bit in the middle, but that's okay; we'll get that ironed out over the next few rounds, I daresay. Also neat: having a second guitar, and having Dara being able to whip out her flute part. Best of all: I didn't have to sing lead! But I can be tight harmony backup on the chorus in E minor, so it's all fabulous.
That got us into a general E-minor-y sort of mood so we took a spin through a couple of Callie's favorite instrumentals, "Brian Boru" and "Road to Lisdoonvarna", which I actually am starting to recognize. Some. Eventually I'll recognize them well enough to not have to ask Callie their names every time! Fortunately though the chords are easy, and I spent a bit of time just showing them to JT as we were playing along. It helped that they were all pretty much the exact same chords as in "Mari-Mac", only, y'know, slower.
Ellen met and matched Callie with "Staten Island", which we took a spin through in the key of D. This of course necessitated connecting it to "Lukey", and I broke out the original GBS version thereof for benefit of the new folks and also so that we could all remind ourselves how the hell "Staten Island" works as a bridge. (I am also reminding myself that I really, really need to send Ellen the melody to "Gone by the Board" so that she can work it through for playing the later, livelier version of "Lukey", which of course is the way to play it Right.)
We had a bit of back and forth about what to do next, then. There were calls for "Zombie Taylor", although I think we'll have to make a group compromise as to when to do that particular shanty with zombies, and when to do it without. Meems proposed "Paddy Murphy"; JT called for both "Chemical Worker's Song" and "Captain Kidd".
It should surprise none of you reading this that we wound up doing all three. I wanted to get in "Captain Kidd" just because it's one of the easiest songs chord-wise and that gave JT a chance to flex his guitar fu. Plus, needed to brief Meems on what we were doing differently in the last verse.
"Chemical Worker's Song" got us a couple of not half bad runs, and Meems did very, very nicely cutting us cleanly off.
"Paddy Murphy" took a little doing. GBS records it in A; I know how to play it with chords in G. But G is definitely too low for Meems, and A wasn't terribly happy either. B flat is Not Dulcimer Friendly, so we kicked it up another notch to C--or at least we did after everybody pointed out OH HEY ANNA you're actually capoed to B, not C, oops. But that turned out to be a Not Mimi Friendly key either since that rides right on a break in her range.
So we finally actually transposed it into D, which worked out well enough; the chords were easy to transpose on the fly and that made it a comfy range for Mimi to sing in and for Ellen to work on a dulcimer line. We didn't do the bridge just because nobody knows it well enough yet--Dara and I can both play it in G but neither of us have transposed that bit into D. That'll take practice.
Last up we went out on a mellower note, with "Trois Navires de Ble", which we hadn't done in some time. Which of course gave me an opportunity to tell the new folks the Why Anna Sings This Song in Atrociously Accented French Story. But, Dara's got nice flute fu on this and Callie improvised with her nicely too. Very, very nice to have Molly following me on the song as well, even given the bridge-y bits.
After a pass through that we realized that it was almost five o'clock, which was later than we'd gone in Jam for a while as well. So we called Pie, which this time around was key lime, tastily provided by Glenn!
Next Jam is the 10th. Look for the word from your faithful Jam Reporter then!
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-27 11:54 am (UTC)(edited becuase for some odd reason I cannot English at a keyboard when thinking about the flavour of limes....)
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Date: 2009-04-28 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-27 01:24 pm (UTC)Yesterday was fun, i'm looking forward to next time when hopefully i'll have heard the songs more than a handfull of times before atempting to play them. I mean, watching your hands for the chords isn't really ideal
oh, that was road to lisdoonvarna?!?!? i should have known that instead of winging it like that. what key did we play it in?
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Date: 2009-04-28 04:50 am (UTC)Thank you again for coming, though, it was great to have you--and I appreciated the tip with the C chord! I did try futzing around with it and realized OH HEY you're talking about the bottom bit of the chord I know as Cadd9, which I've actually learned in a different song. But it's a darker chord than the C I usually play. Don't think I want it in "Lukey", but it's a good thing to know about for other songs.
That was indeed "Road to Lisdoonvarna", and that was E minor, I believe; Callie likes to whip both it and "Brian Boru" out periodically, and they flowed well after "Mari-Mac" since it was E minor all the way.
Looking forward to having you and Trey back! And oh yes, I've set up the mailing list now so if you guys want on it, wing me an email with appropriate addresses and I'll subscribe you.