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Saturday, February 18th, 2006
Some friends were over this afternoon, among them Eileen Eliot, who recently learned "Keep your lamps trimmed and burning" (the Hot Tuna version) from tablature. I was interested because I learned the song a few years ago in the only Woody Mann workshop I ever took, and promptly forgot it. So Eileen showed me the fingerings a couple of times through, and handed me my guitar. I surprised myself by playing a pretty recognizable version straight off the bat, but in first position rather than the fingerings Eileen had been showing me. I was pretty happy about being able to shift it into first position so easily -- it made me feel like I understood the music pretty well -- I have always preferred to play in first position rather than learning new finger positions and playing up the neck. And, "Keep your lamps" turns out to be a totally addictive tune to play on fiddle. I was whistling it all evening after Eileen showed it to me, and I finally picked up my fiddle to try it out, and the notes just rolled off my bow.
posted evening of February 18th, 2006: Respond
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Sunday, February 12th, 2006
My brother just started a new blog! It is, Better than the Rest(aurant).
posted evening of February 12th, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
This evening I played the version of "John Hardy was a Desperate Man" I'd been thinking about all day, and it was really nice, for a first attempt. I wasn't able to do some of the fast, trilling variations I had been thinking about, and didn't have the vocals integrated into the song very well; but I did have a nice degree of variety between each repetition of the verse. And I actually played a couple of verses in second position, without it sounding awful!
posted evening of February 7th, 2006: Respond
➳ More posts about Music
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I woke up this morning singing "John Hardy was a Desperate Little Man" and it's been with me all morning. I was singing it on the street as I walked to work. And wow! I think I have come up with a harmony to it, which I will be able to play on my fiddle, simple with interesting variations. If this works out (I will try it when I get home, hope it stays in my head that long), it will be the first song that I know an actual fiddle part to rather than just playing the melody with ornamentation.
posted morning of February 7th, 2006: Respond
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Sunday, February 5th, 2006
On Friday I was in Borders bookstore on 2nd Ave. and thought I would take a look at their music section, where I have found several interesting records in the past. And boy did I come up lucky this time! My eye was caught by "Will the Circle Be Unbroken", by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band -- I've been working on learning that song lately, and I've always heard good things about that band, so I bought it. Turns out to be one of the greatest things ever. In 1972 the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band hooked up with a lot of older, more established country musicians including Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson and Jimmy Martin. They recorded an album together that just soars -- it has all of the songs I want to hear together, absolutely ideal performances. Well I was listening to that all weekend, and especially liking the songs that featured Mother Maybelle -- "Sunny Side" and "Wildwood Flower" come to mind -- and that made me think I ought to listen to the Carter Family some. I was listening to a record of theirs this afternoon, and thinking this could be the music that I wrap my own musical ideas around -- the sound of it really gets to me, and I think I could play and sing a lot of it in a good and interesting way. "John Hardy Was a Desperate Man" is maybe the first thing I want to learn.
posted evening of February 5th, 2006: Respond
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Thursday, February second, 2006
Fantastic -- I just got a referral from Google.hu (which I am thinking is Hungary), for the query "get on board" ride the blind conductor prodigal son blues.
posted morning of February second, 2006: Respond
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Last night I had a second fiddle lesson, this one was with Lisa Gutkin. Good time -- Lisa is very free and easy with the positive reinforcement which I sse as a critical element of lessons that I am taking. We worked on "May the Circle be Unbroken" primarily, and she showed me how I can work on my hand and wrist position holding the bow in order to sweeten my tone. I will be back for more.
posted morning of February second, 2006: Respond
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Monday, January 30th, 2006
ABC Notation is described over here, it's an ASCII system of musical notation. Shareware products are available for translating ABC to standard musical notation and to audio files; of these I have tried abc2ps, abc2win, and ABCEdit. I couldn't get the first two to work properly but ABCEdit is awesome. Very basic user interface but powerful enough to do everything I want it to; I can cut-and-paste from ABC notation on the web and see and hear the music right away.
posted morning of January 30th, 2006: Respond
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Saturday, January 28th, 2006
Pressing ahead with the music-reading -- today I played a couple of the jigs I had been playing yesterday, and learned two new reels -- "Judy's Reel" and "Paddy Handley's Goose". The latter is the first song I have been able to play from memory after reading from sheet music.
posted morning of January 28th, 2006: Respond
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Friday, January 27th, 2006
Tonight we watched Duck Soup again, this time on DVD which I recommend strongly -- I have never seen such a good print of a Marx Brothers film before. Sylvia was way into it and wrote her grandparents a long e-mail about the mirror scene.
posted evening of January 27th, 2006: Respond
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