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Session homework FTW!

I’ll say this for the session that userinfosolarbird and I have started attending: I haven’t been this inspired to start working on learning new stuff to play in ages. Playing with a group of people who are all very clearly not only comfortable with the material they’re playing but also in several cases comfortable with switching off between diverse instruments is a new experience for me! And the pressure is on for me to step up my game. Noodling around on my guitar in the living room is all well and good. But I’ve come to the realization that it had stopped being really challenging; I can noodle around without thinking about it.

I am ready for something more, and I hadn’t really realized this until I was called upon to play “Lukey” at last week’s session. I’ve been hit upside the head with a resurgence of the same feeling I got in the very earliest days of my Great Big Sea fandom, to wit: THIS. I WANT TO DO THIS.

Where by “this”, I mean, “play this type of music along with people who are as engaged by it as I am!”

For the first time I finally have a reason to start looking through these various songbooks I’ve got–in particular, the Celtic Guitar book, the Irish flute book, and the guitar fakebook. In which I found proper sheet music, including chords, for both “Drowsy Maggie” and “Morrison’s Jig”! I don’t appear to have “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, but a quick Google pointed me here, which more than served the purpose. (Although I’m not a hundred percent sure about that AF#m–Dara says that’s just an inversion of an F#m chord, so I can work with that, sure.)

All of this of course was leading up to the fact that I’ve got multiple recordings of both “Drowsy Maggie” and “Morrison’s Jig”, and in particular, those of you who are fans of Heather Alexander or her Heir, Alexander James Adams, will recall that on the album Insh’allah, there’s a kickass set of Road, Morrison’s, and Maggie all tearing right through one another.

Tonight, ladies and gents, I more or less played along with it! I say “more or less” mostly because I just need to memorize these chords. But you know what’s awesome? Being able to play rhythm guitar along with AJA ripping away on his fiddle. Even if it IS just a recording.

And then jumping over to The Fables on a recording of theirs that ALSO paired up Morrison’s and Maggie was fun, too–since their style was significantly different, it meant I needed to play around a bit with how to strum in support.

Altan’s got a recording with Maggie in it, but they don’t line it up with Morrison’s, they’ve got it instead with “Rakish Paddy” and “Harvest Storm”. Yet here too the style was significantly different.

I came out of this pretty sure I’ll properly recognize “Drowsy Maggie” now, anyway! And a few more times playing it, I should have it down cold.

Something else I’ll need to consider, too: I’ve been mostly a guitarist the last few years, but I’m also a goddamn flute player, and I want to remind myself of that! However, my piccolo ain’t exactly in keeping with the overall idea of an Irish session, so I’m thinking I’ll have to break out the bamboos instead. Most likely Jade, who’s in E minor, and Sparrow, who’s in G (which will also let me cover D), but possibly also Sorrel, who’s in A minor.

I look forward to the Bringing of It next week. 😀 Session homework FTW!

January 13, 2011 by
Music

My very first Irish session!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a decent Jam Report around here, so I will now make up for it with a new twist on that: a Session Report!

Last night my beloved userinfosolarbird and I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in with our very first Irish session. For those of you not familiar with those, they’re events where musicians gather together to hang out and play traditional Irish music. Last night’s was one starting up for the very first time at a pub called A Terrible Beauty in Renton! Dara found out about it courtesy of someone I believe she said she’d met at the Highland Games a few months back, and Dara relayed it to me.

Since I do of course have a ton of Irish music on my iPhone, I’ve known about the custom for some time; it gets mentioned a lot in lyrics, of course. And you hear about it when you are a fan of the appropriate genre of musicians. But I’d never been to one and so when Dara told me about this one, I leapt at the chance for us to go.

Several of you who follow my blog in whatever form will be familiar with filk circles. A session is kind of like that–but not quite, at least in comparison to the filk circles and housefilks I’ve attended. The main difference, aside from the obvious focus on traditional Irish music, is that the filks I’m used to are situations where one person plays one thing, and then another person takes a turn, etc. At filks, you may or may not get people playing along with the primary performer, depending on how strict a bardic circle you’re conducting. At this session, though, everybody was playing, and focusing on the melody being played in particular.

We had an excellent balance of instruments as well, which helped. As Dara and I were a) new to sessions in general, b) new to these folks in particular, and c) the only ones with rhythm instruments being regularly played (Annie, Dara’s friend, also had a guitar but primarily focused on her fiddle), we hung out over on the side of the group trying to follow along and play accompanying chords. Everyone else drove the melodies, trading off between their instruments. It was very neat to watch and I was very impressed that these folks were all very clearly comfortable with several instruments between them.

Dara, being more heavily practiced the last couple years than I am of course, got fancier with her strumming than I did. Me, I was working very, very hard on trying to pick out the keys of several unfamiliar melodies–just to try to improve my ear. I counted it a victory when I realized a few bars in on one melody that OH HEY THAT’S IN A! But I did also have the quiet satisfaction of figuring out unfamiliar (to me) ways to strum, to try to support the melodies being played. That was a fun learning experience and I want to do more of that.

Also, not ALL of the melodies were unfamiliar. Several of them tugged at my memory just because, these being Irish trad tunes of course, I KNOW I’ve heard a lot of them as part and parcel of the dozen or so albums I have with this material all over them. I just don’t know a lot of the specific tunes by name yet. But I DID very specifically recognize “Si Bheag Si Mhor” and “Road to Lisdoonvarna”–the latter, specifically, because userinfocflute is a big fan of that one and likes playing it at Jam. 😀

I must give props to Annie for a few things. One, I noticed she had a Luna guitar, a lovely green one, and my fellow Drollerie author Heather Ingemar had been plugging those guitars to me before I bought the General. Two, Annie is a fellow GBS fan and it is always, ALWAYS a pleasure to meet another person who loves the B’ys. Three, I was sheepishly relieved that while she was the other guitarist present, she spent most of her time giving love to her fiddle, so I didn’t feel entirely dorky back there playing rhythm on the General. ;D

Props must also be given to Matt, the guy who was hosting the session. Dude can play, and he traded off adroitly between his own fiddle, an Irish flute (I am STILL coveting an Irish flute despite the dozen+ flutes I already own), and a very cool-looking harp decked out in Christmas lights which did wonderful things for lighting him up while pictures were being taken of us. I am very grateful to him for letting Dara and me sit in, and in particular for encouraging us to try to join in more by playing stuff we know.

We admitted that we know more things with vocals than without–in the parlance of a session, that means we know songs rather than tunes. So Dara nudged me in to do “Lukey”! I capoed up 2 so I could get it into a key I could credibly sing, and scooted over to sit on the floor in the middle of the circle so the others could see my changes if they wanted to follow along. And I tried to describe the arrangement I knew before I started playing, hoping to give enough data that if anybody wanted to improv something, they could! That didn’t happen but I strongly suspect that was just a function of the others not knowing the song as I was playing it per se–and even given that, they all followed along very solidly.

There is something heady and magical about whipping out a fairly solid performance of a song with people you have never played with before in your life. Not to mention HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS, I have played AND SUNG “Lukey” in an actual Irish pub. In front of COMPLETE AND TOTAL STRANGERS. *^_^*;; I hope I did my B’ys proud. <3

And I totally want to do this again, in no small part because it'll give me an excuse to play my instruments more often. I say instruments because the opportunity to swap out between the General and my long and sadly neglected zouk and octave mandolin, not to mention my flutes, is too shiny to resist!

And oh yeah, it must also be said that A Terrible Beauty is a lovely place, and the food Dara and I ordered was nommable. And served us by a guy who from the sound of him was either Irish or doing a damn good impression of it. 😉

Last but not least, I must plug the photos taken of all of us musicians by one Liz Jackson, a very nice lady who clearly knows the business end of a camera. And the crowning pic of her collection would be this one right here! Please go over and give her some comment love, people!

Thank you Matt and Annie and Liz and everyone else for welcoming us, and I hope we can play with you all some more!

January 6, 2011 by
Music

Recently listened-to new music

I have continued to work through my Not Recently Played playlist, in my ongoing quest to play everything in my musical collection at least once this year. Right now I’m spread out between the letters L and O, which has had the happy side effect of letting me play several new purchases roughly where they appear in the alphabet. (Although several of these were actually earlier in the alphabet so I had to go ahead and play them too.)

One of the first notable ones of these was the new album by Danielle Spencer, who y’all may or may not remember is Russell Crowe’s wife. She’s a musician in her own right and I first heard about this when the Grunts were on tour in 2001; I bought the first album she had out at the time. Now her new one, Calling All Magicians, is available on iTunes. Her voice is still very strong and she’s got some nice work on here.

Second up, I picked up the new two deluxe 2-CD editions of a-ha’s first two albums, Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days, and have finished listening to the former. These have been put out as part of a-ha’s final push before they retire, and they’ve put all sorts of extra material on here, including demo versions of stuff and a bunch of things never released in the States. I’ve now listened to the 2-CD version of Hunting High and Low, and it was odd and enlightening to hear all the demo versions of every track on the original released album–and how Morten Harket clearly hadn’t nailed his own style down yet when those demos were cut. He’s a lot more wavery and wobbly in his delivery; userinfosolarbird thinks he may have been trying to channel Bowie some, or perhaps Klaus Nomi. All the material never released in the States is fun to listen to, too.

userinfos00j‘s new album Mischief is delightful and well worth your listening time. I already knew “Ravens in the Library” from live performances of hers and Tricky Pixie’s, but I also quite liked “Neptune”, partial as I am to Greco-Roman mythology.

Gaelic Storm’s new album Cabbage is a nice strong addition to their discography overall; it’s their usual mix of lively instrumentals and songs with lyrics about whiskey, sex, or death. In other words, traditional Celtic music. ;>

Last but not least I must mention that I’ve finally listened to an album by the Storm Weather Shanty Choir, heartily recommended to me by userinforedcolumbine! These guys are great fun, and the particular album I chose, Off to Sea Once More, has versions of “Rolling Down to Old Maui”, “Leaving of Liverpool”, “Leave Her, Johnny”, and “South Australia”, all of which were familiar to me from other artists and groups. But most importantly, this album has a version of “General Taylor”. Which is of course sacred–SACRED, I TELL YOU–to me in my GBS fandom, and it was really cool to hear an alternate take of this song, with a whole bunch of other verses I hadn’t heard before. Lots more stuff in here about Santa Ana, and their chorus is different from GBS’ as well. Thanks, userinforedcolumbine, for recommending them!

Still on the “Not Played Yet” playlist: a recording of Daphnis Et Chloe, picked up after I heard the Seattle Symphony and Chorale perform it live (although the recording is the Boston Symphony); the 2-CD version of Scoundrel Days; Karan Casey’s Ships in the Forest; Benjamin Doerr’s Sketches of a Real Life; Shanneyganock’s Volume VII; Jane Siberry’s When I Was a Boy; a 2-hour Marian Call performance I picked up as a freebie from her mailing list; and La Volee d’Castors Y a Du Monde À’ Messe!. And oh yes, a whole bunch of Doctor Who podcasts, as well as the next chapter of the second book of the 7th Son trilogy by J.C. Hutchins.

Lots to listen to!

August 22, 2010 by
Great Big Sea, Music

Song prequel giggles

Those of you on Twitter may have seen the #songprequel trending topic, wherein the idea was to post titles of songs that came before actual songs. Much hilarity ensued!

With a hat tip to userinfotechnoshaman, userinfospazzkat, userinfosolarbird, and userinfofredpdx, here are the Great Big Sea ones we all came up with so far:

  • Young Brown’s Mother
  • Acting Third Lieutenant Taylor
  • The Day Pat Murphy Got Sick
  • Nagging Girlfriend
  • Showing Up At the Kitchen Party With Mrs. White

Dara and Paul and I also came up with these:

  • Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Bedtime” and “School is Just Starting”
  • Simon and Garfunkel’s “Construction Crew Arriving at Bank of Troubled Water”
  • Elvis Presley’s “(You Ain’t Nothin’ But a) OMG PUPPY” and “I’ll Do Anything to Get Into Some Blue Suede Shoes”
  • Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the Colonies, I Was”
  • The Day the Music Bought a Cheap Ticket on a Small Plane in Bad Weather
  • Slightly Darker than Usual Day of the Heart
  • Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star
  • From O Brother, Where Art Thou?, “Boy of Periodic Sadness”
  • Kenny Rogers’ “You Picked a Fine Time for Our First Date, Lucille”
  • Duran Duran’s “Peckish Like the Wolf Cub”
  • Kiss Him Hello (may be more obvious if you sing “na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, HELLO”)
  • And last but definitely not least, from Dr. Horrible, “Misbehaving Pony Solo”

Got more? Drop ’em in the comments!

April 16, 2010 by
Music

Fine food, fine conversation, and fine music

very kindly offered , , and me free tickets to last night’s Seattle Symphony and Chorale performance at Benaroya, and we were delighted to take her up on that. We hadn’t hung out with Kathryn and for a while in general, for one thing. For another, we agreed to meet for dinner at Wild Ginger downtown, right across the street from Benaroya.

And oh my word. I hadn’t eaten there before, but it was a delight all around. Our waiter was amazing, and they was another gentleman who was very eager to offer us wine suggestions even though we didn’t actually wind up buying any wine. So thumbs up for the staff, all around. As for the food: WOW. A bit on the pricy side, but worth every penny. Dara and I shared this tasty seven flavor beef dish, and it was so much a pleasure to be served a portion size that was exactly the right amount of food for the two of us to eat. The chocolate torte we both had for dessert was, in a word, orgasmic. Calorie-laden? Oh god yes. But I REGRET NOTHING, even though I made myself get on the treadmill this morning to earn that orgasmic dessert. *^_^*;;

Over such a delightful dinner, we had lovely conversation about the music we were about to see as well as our various thoughts on who ought to be in the cast for The Hobbit, previous experiences with high school reunions, Lillian giving herself her first haircut, and other fun topics. A wonderful experience all around and a splendid lead-in to the main event of the evening.

The orchestra first performed Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op. 102, Double. I wasn’t familiar with this work, but my Aubrey-Maturin fandom naturally inclines me to be fond of anything involving violin and cello together, so hey! The soloists did do perfectly lovely work, and once or twice the violin hit this high sweet sustained note that made me grin. On the whole though it wasn’t as musically interesting to me as I’d have hoped, and this may be because we weren’t in the best seats on the floor to get the richest sound experience. Overall the piece seemed a little distant and removed to me. I think I’d like to hear it again on a home stereo or perhaps through decent headphones, just to get a more personal idea of its flavor.

After that the chorale came out on stage to join the orchestra for the feature performance: Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, with which I had not been previously familiar. But Q gave us an overall summary of the story, since it was originally written as the score for a ballet, and between that and the program notes I got a decent idea of where in the story the various parts of the piece were. I was quite impressed by this overall–in no small part because of the variety of instrumentation. There were multiple flavors of clarinet involved, and, which was very near and dear to my heart, an alto flute solo! And there was even a wind machine at certain key moments, emphasizing where the god Pan was supposed to appear.

Dara told us all afterwards that she had an experience with it much like I had when I finally saw Casablanca: i.e., that after seeing all of the movies and TV shows and books and such that were riffing off stuff in that classic film, it was very odd to actually go back and see the original work. Same deal with this performance, since it was full of a lot of motifs and styles that heavily influenced quite a bit of Disney and Hollywood scores that came after. She particularly recognized bits that showed up in the soundtracks for Buckaroo Banzai and Tron.

I’m thinking I may want a recording of this, so I’m going to have to hunt through iTunes to find a good one.

Thanks, , for a lovely musical evening!

March 20, 2010 by
Music

Valentine's Day, with music

came to the realization this weekend that she really needed a decent bodhran to finish up her CD, given that her little Kimi, which is essentially a toy, just wasn’t cutting it. So since we’re recovering well financially, we scampered down to Dusty Strings yesterday to get her a real drum!

They didn’t have the drum she really wanted–mostly because those, Dusty String’s highest end bodhrans–are made by an artisan in Ireland who makes new drums quite slowly and there was no real estimate on when he might get more to them. But happily they had a couple of drums that were kind of the next tier down, and Dara ultimately chose one of those. The new drum’s got a nice deep resonant voice to it and should sound awesome recorded. Its only drawback is that Dara can’t do that nifty rip noise around the rim, but it ain’t like she’s tossing Kimi, so she can still break out the little drum for that.

Meanwhile, because this is pretty much mandated any time I set foot in that place, I checked out their wall of acoustic guitars. They had a few Seagulls as well as two smaller guitars that said Art & Lutherie on the heads–and the Dusty Strings staff said that those were actually made by the same parent company, which was kind of neat. The A&L guitars I liked were these guys, and the one I particularly liked was about the size of Rags but with a bit more punch. Ultimately though Dara and I agreed that that instrument didn’t really have the capability to roar, so I started playing with the Seagulls, and the third one I tried had a really lovely voice to it, a good deep low end and some clear, precise upper notes as well.

I have to admit that a good Seagull is very likely a contender for the Cargo for the guitar I’ll ultimately buy. I have more than a little fear that the Cargo is possibly way more guitar than I actually need, since I have no aspirations to be a real performer; I just want a nice guitar I can play at jams and take to local conventions for filking purposes, and occasional busking as well. The Seagull very well may be about right.

On the other hand, Dara pointed out quite correctly that it’s very possible that I could grow enough as a guitarist to match the Cargo. The Seagull would certainly give me good room to grow–but I shouldn’t necessarily dismiss the possibility of growing to match the Cargo, either. What I would really like to do is go to the Bellevue store that carries the Cargos, see if they have Seagulls as well, and then just compare both instruments side by side and see which one calls to me louder.

Of course, this depends upon me selling enough copies of Faerie Blood to actually afford the Cargo. *^_^*;;

In the meantime, in the interests of giving me more room to grow as a guitarist, I snagged a copy of the same fakebook I’d bought for mandolin, only this is the guitar version. So I’ll see if I can start picking out some of these melodies on Rags, which will give me some fingerwork practice. Looking forward to that!

Last but not least, I snagged a couple of CDs from the store since they do have a small selection–and I was stunned, stunned I tell you, to see that they actually had a couple of La Bottine Souriante CDs! So I promptly grabbed one of those, as well as one by an Irish lady named Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh who appears on a previous CD I bought. Also, the name Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh is just awesome.

All in all a lovely way to spend Valentine’s Day afternoon, and Dara and I were the last ones out of the store since we were there right up until they closed. Always a pleasure to visit there! Because as far as I’m concerned, music is love.

February 15, 2010 by
About Me, Music

Conflikt was fun

Several of you who read my journal in whatever iteration already know this since you were actually there, but hey, Conflikt! That was fun.

This was the first year that and I got to attend the whole convention, which was nice. We still pulled a commuter con, which was not quite so ideal; next year, I think we’ll be getting a hotel room, just because driving all the way back to Kenmore at 2am or later is crazytalk. Especially when things like the Jury panels happen around 10:30 in the morning!

Dara did of course do more active music playing than I did since she has a CD in progress; me, I mostly hung out and beat on one of the novels in progress. And a nice lady I hadn’t met before even told me she quite liked Faerie Blood, to which I double-taked hugely, and was all ‘wait, a complete stranger actually read my novel? Whoa!’ (Nice Lady Who Read My Novel, if you’re reading this, I have forgotten your name and LJ, but if you drop a comment I shall make sure to note it again properly for the future!)

I did periodically also whip out Rags and do impromptu jamming near the registration table, which was also good fun. Special shout-outs on that are due to and Jeri Lynn who was managing the registration table, and whose LJ, if she has one, I do not know! We managed to play a not too bad little pass through “Si Bheag Si Mhor”, a song to which I am partial of course from its connection to Mr. Crowe and the Grunts. (Mmm, “Judas Cart”, I should listen to that again.)

Also participated in the Band Scramble, which let me meet a few nice folks and play music with them; we did “Elf Glade”, which is a standard at the Murkjams, and it was an interesting musical exercise to try to follow somebody else’s version of the guitar line. Also fun to try to invent piccolo twiddles on the fly since I never play flute on this thing at home.

The main attraction of the whole shebang was , though! Since my original exposure to filk was in the Midwest and my and Dara’s housemate at the time, , was an old college buddy of Tom’s, I’m real familiar with Tom and fond of his music quite a bit. He’s a superb musician, and I was very pleased to see that he hasn’t missed a step in live performance since I saw him last. His voice and guitar playing are both very strong, still! It was with great glee that I plunked down money for three, count ’em, three of his albums at the con–and furthermore picked up two more off of iTunes when I got home. Tom’s just that awesome.

Secondary highlight: seeing Alexander James Adams perform. I really want Alec to start writing more new stuff, just because as a long-standing Heather Alexander fan I have the original versions of a lot of his songs stuck in my brain and they don’t really want to be budged out by newer versions. He’s got a quite nice new vampire song though as well as a new one called “The Dance of Hoof and Horn”, and of course his fiddle playing is still sublime. Extra bonus points for Dara and I getting to sit near him in the big Sunday afternoon Jam, too. And I got to remind him of the incident in 1997 when he looked me in the eye at a room party and said “Play something!” and I squeaked and almost melted into the floor. Now? Now I can actually whip out a guitar and do something with it. He told me he was pleased to have inspired via terror. 😉

(Another shoutout to as well for whipping out that fiddle of hers and duo’ing with Alec on “Si Bheag Si Mhor”. Lovely and very well done!)

Alec has a work print of his next new album, so although it’s mostly reworked versions of Heather-era songs, I put down for that too since hey, again, awesomeness. And it may amuse as well that I bought a Heather Dale album–one of the CD vendors in the tiny dealer’s room had a whole bunch of her albums, so I got The Hidden Path and in fact listened to it tonight on the way home from work.

All in all a pleasant and relaxing way to spend the weekend. I may have been “hanging out on the periphery” girl for the most part, but it was a lovely periphery to be at. And “surrounded by musicians” is strangely conducive to getting actual writing done, not to mention guitar playing. <3 Looking forward to next year!

And maybe next year, I'll actually have a proper chord line to "How Many Hugos?", one of the few filk songs I've actually written. Not to mention, maybe I'll finish that Doctor Who filk still haunting my brain, and also have that shiny green guitar!

February 3, 2010 by