and I have been doing this thing for the last several weeks where we go to session only every other week–and use the off-week as a practice night. Meanwhile, I’ve shifted from taking the General to session to taking my piccolo instead, and focusing on learning the actual melody lines for various tunes.
This is working out pretty well! I can only play five or six tunes semi-reliably–by which I mean, I can actually play “Si Bheag Si Mhor” by heart, and about five others if I’m reading the sheet music at the time. I ALMOST have “Banish Misfortune” down by heart but the C part is still eluding me. What this tells me though is that by practicing, I CAN learn these things. And it gets noticed in session, too! Once you start showing up and being able to play the tunes, you get significantly more cred, even if you’re still pretty much a newbie like me.
Right now I’m focusing my efforts on the handy dandy PDF session leader Matt gave me, with about 25 tunes he’s fond of and considers a good introduction to sessions in general. From that, I’ve been working on “Banish Misfortune”, “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Morrison’s Jig”, and a bit of “Blarney Pilgrim”. Although I haven’t actively practiced them yet, I can also whip through “Kesh Jig” and “Foggy Dew” if I’m reading the PDF.
Meanwhile, I’ve got TunePal on the iPad and I spend a good chunk of session these days just listening to what the others are doing–and seeing if TunePal can figure out what the tunes are so I can save ’em for later exploration. Half the time, the app has a pretty good idea of what it’s hearing. If it wibbles and has no goddamn idea, I’ll just ask! Then I can look it up manually. And once you have a tune in the app, you can make it play it for you, adjusting the tempo if you need to. It’s a GREAT learning/reference tool for session newbies. Highly, highly recommended if you have an iPad.
Last night’s session in particular was relaxed and groovy, with just me, Dara, Matt, and a couple new folks Dara and I hadn’t met before, a woman who played fiddle and mandolin and a guy who played guitar and bodhran, and from them I picked up a couple more tunes to add to TunePal for later investigation: “The Yellow Tinker” and “The Frieze Breeches”. Plus, I had to giggle and giggle at one particular wibble TunePal had trying to identify tunes–when it offered me “Whiskey Makes You a Lunatic”. Which had NOT A GODDAMN THING to do with what was actually being played, but the title alone made me LOL, so I had to add it to my list.
And to tie back to my French Canadian fangirling post, I’ve also decided I have designs on learning “The Jig of Slurs”, “Irish Washerwoman”, and “Atholl Highlander”, which make up the “Fortierville” set that’s track one on La Volee d’Castors’ kickass live album. It’ll be approximately oh, I dunno, EIGHT YEARS before I’m able to play that set nearly as fast as they do, but TunePal helpfully provided me the sheet music to each. I’m armed. I’m dangerous. I HAVE A PICCOLO. BRING IT.
On better notes (several, actually)
I continue to be somewhat intimidated by the Serious Business(TM) level of musicians that show up for the sessions at A Terrible Beauty. We had two more show up last night, one lady named Beth who’s a local harpist and flautist, who has taught harp in Ireland, and who has played with a local folk band, and another lady (whose name I have sadly forgotten) who had a pretty awesome looking instrument that was either a mandobanjo or a banjolin (
solarbird
The intimidating part for me here was that both of them very, VERY clearly knew what they were doing and could hear the places where I was screwing up. On the other hand, they were also very kind about cluing me in as to when we all went into a key I had a hard time recognizing by ear, or when chord changes I hadn’t quite grasped were happening. I had the strange reaction to this of being simultaneously prickly and grateful for it–a feeling I think any of my fellow authors will recognize when somebody offers you beta reading advice you’re not entirely convinced you need, and then you get over it and realize that actually, yeah, you did kinda need that. I’m here to tell y’all, it applies to music, too. *^_^*;;
That said, it was good to finally have some of the pieces Matt and Annie like to get into identified as having parts in the key of B minor. This is NOT a key I’ve played in before that I can recall, at all, even with a capo on and faking it by doing the base chords of G or A. The good part of this was, though, that I have enough chord exposure now that I could pick out the base chords I needed once the key was identified. I.e., a lot of B minor and A, with occasional D’s and E’s and F# minors thrown in for good measure, all of which are chords I can play at this point. The tricky part is just being able to recognize that key by ear when I hear it.
It was also vaguely intimidating to see the newcomers clearly not quite knowing what to make of me and Dara belting out our version of “Old Black Rum”. This is what we get for the songs we know being either GBS, GBS-influenced in style, or Dara’s very own unique concoctions, none of which are exactly “Irish”. I continue to be very grateful to Matt and Annie for indulging us periodically and inviting us to sing, and at least it gave me another chance to make the “well, Newfoundland is NEAR Ireland” joke. ;) Also, it gave Dara and me a chance to show off singing in harmony, which we’ve actually been practicing a bit, and which I feel works for us!
Still though I must start learning some songs (and I specifically mean ‘songs’ as opposed to ‘tunes’, i.e., stuff with words) that would fit better in a session environment. I’ve already mentioned the ones I’m interested in, I think–I just need to allocate practice time for them, in between rehearsing with Dara on her stuff so that I can play support for her at Norwescon. To wit: *gulp*. Yeah, I know, I’ve already been playing the guitar in public for a while thanks to these sessions, but being part of a formal set with Dara is not the same thing. *^_^*;; Playing at a session is ‘hanging out with fellow musicians and learning from them’. Playing a formal set is performing.
Meanwhile though I was very grateful as well to Annie for giving me a listening ear before we got started–as well as for introducing me to a drink called the Irish Truffle, which is Guinness mixed with raspberry lambic! I’ve tried Guinness before and hadn’t cared for it, but if you mix it up with raspberry lambic I suddenly find it quite drinkable. Those of you who have been following my ongoing admiration of the Lovely and Talented Pike Place Marketboys will be familiar with my affection for raspberry-related things. This has now been expanded to include ‘booze’.
Giggles as well to solcita
(This has led today on Facebook to fredpdx
So yeah. Session homework for me: figure out how the hell to play and sing “As I Roved Out”, in whatever key I can manage. So I can have something a bit more Irish on hand next time Matt asks me to sing!
And also, for those of you who may be interested, the aforementioned Beth is Beth Kollé, and she was in a Seattle-based folk band called Crookshank a couple years back. They have an EP on iTunes, and I may just have to check it out.
Oh look, more session pics!
Liz Jackson took a whole bunch more awesome pictures of the Terrible Beauty sessions when we had the nice big session on the 9th–which is the one solcita
Here are my two favorites of me from it, and I particularly like the black and white one where I’m all I LUV U GUITAR. All the rest of ’em are right over here!
This past Wednesday's session
Writing this now since I haven’t had a chance or the brain to blog about it until this afternoon, but here we go!
There were a couple of extra fiddlers at this past Wednesday’s session at A Terrible Beauty–people who turned out to be stunningly awesome, a couple of professional performers, Andrea Beaton and Glenn Graham. What really sold me on Andrea and Glenn’s playing was its liveliness and the excellent foot-stomping rhythm they had going at the same time–very, very familiar to me from all the listening I’ve been doing to La Volee d’Castors and La Bottine Souriante and Le Vent du Nord. It turned out that the reason their music resonated so strongly with me was because they are in fact Canadian, Cape Breton specifically, so no wonder. :D
I’d already been pleasantly challenged trying to keep up with Matt and Annie, as I’ve written before–but trying to keep up with Andrea and Glenn? WHOA. WHOA AND DAMN, people. I’m just this fortysomething chick who likes to noodle around on her guitar in her living room, y’know? And there I am in the session trying to provide a decent rhythm line underneath two hardcore fiddle players, who, I might add, proceeded just last night to go perform with Matt at Benaroya Hall for the Mastery of Scottish Arts concert.
I have been in sessions now with people who have performed in Benaroya Hall, people!
Only by focusing with laser-guided intensity on every motion of Glenn and Andrea’s bows was I able to keep up, and more than once, I lost track of their key changes. But I was at least able to come back around when they jumped back to a key I could recognize. A lot of what I’ve been doing at the sessions so far has just been playing the same six or seven chords in different keys and strum patterns, just trying to be decent rhythm backup for all the people who actually know the tunes. But these two took it up a whole extra order of magnitude for me, and I haven’t had so much fun on a guitar in ages.
Afterwards a couple of older gentlemen came over to say hi to Dara and me, and to admire the General! I got asked what kind of Taylor it was, and I was happy to say it was a 210, and I thanked the gents nicely for the kind things they said about my playing. I also went over to Andrea to make a point of telling her how awesome their playing was, and she was very gracious too.
I am so, SO outclassed at these sessions, it’s kind of scary! But in a good and exciting way, one which is making me go OH SHIT I’d better practice. So this afternoon I whipped out the piccolo, worked my way through an octave of scales, and then tried to stumble my way through “Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Morrison’s Jig”, and “Drowsy Maggie”. I made it through the first two, more or less, before my embouchure fell over and started sending me “you haven’t played piccolo in a long goddamned time, have you?” signals.
I’ve also gone through my songbook and yoinked out the little sheet music bits of the various tunes GBS have used as bridges on their songs, in the hopes that I can then track down fuller versions, and use those for practice fodder. I have “Si Bheag Si Mhor” too, along with “Fisherman’s Frolic”, which those of you who read the TGM Jam Reports may remember as our outro to “Acres of Clams”. I have a LOT of source material to learn from. And it’s awesome to be able to have a reason to use it.
ETA: OO OO OO and I forgot to mention that when called upon to do a song by Matt, I stood up and did GBS’ arrangement of “The Night Pat Murphy Died”. *^_^*;; I cannot roar it like Séan McCann does and I really need to learn to project, but at least I managed to go through the whole thing without falling over. And when I went DARA, Dara whipped into the bridge on cue; she’s been practicing the Bitchin’ Bouzouki Solo.
Another practice assignment I want to do is to see if I can whip up a proper version of “As I Roved Out”; the arrangement I’m most familiar with is the one by the Fables, but I can’t sing it in their key so I’ll need to finagle it some.
Chibi session tonight
It’s kind of lulzy that technoshamansolarbird
But it was all good. Annie was technically our session leader but we took it really casually and just took turns picking things to play. This wound up meaning that Annie, being the one who knew various actual tunes, focused on those while Dara, Glenn, and I mostly chose the GBS ditties we knew and a couple of the other non-GBS things from Jam as well: “Elf Glade” and “Pirate Bill and Squidly”. The biggest reaction we got from the crowd in the bar though was the last thing we did: “Last Saskatchewan Pirate”. That got a big ol’ roar of approval, and that was very cool. :D
Y’all remember though how I said that at last week’s session, the guys at the bar let me have one of my drinks for free?
This time they let Dara and me eat for free, so I only had to fork over for my two Irish creams. Dara and I have been paid for making public music with tasty foods! WOO!
Hopefully next time we’ll be back up to a more normal size of group, but in the meantime I’m clearly going to have to check out Matt’s band. See previous commentary re: that dude can PLAY.
Levelling up a bit in Musician
Last night was arguably the most awesome of the sessions we’ve had yet at A Terrible Beauty, for quite a few reasons!
I actually got there first, it turned out–since I wanted to make a specific point of ordering food from the pub so as to support the place, I jumped on the 101 pretty much right after I got my daily market berries. That got me down there by 6:20, plenty of time to have tasty pub foods. This gave me a chance to note with GREAT amusement when a very familiar song came over the sound system: none other than “Rant and Roar” by my very own beloved B’ys! Y’all may imagine how at home that made me feel in the place. ;D
Shortly after I showed up, session leader Matt did, getting his instruments together–and then , formally joining the session for the first time, and armed with drum and shakers. I introduced him to Matt, and while the others started showing up, we got settled in back in what’s rapidly becoming the rhythm support section of the session. And, this gave Glenn an opportunity to give me an early birthday present! Specifically, a SIGNED hardcover copy of this, which was pretty damned awesome. Thanks Glenn! Props to him as well for acquitting himself nicely on the drum, especially when Matt called upon him to drive the beat of one set.
was running late due to rehearsing other music with , but showed up in time for the session’s beginning. And Annie started us off quite nicely with the “Road to Lisdoonvarna/Morrison’s Jig/Drowsy Maggie” set–2/3rds of which, I can now happily say, I can keep up with pretty well. I still need to get down the chord’s to Morrison’s, though. More homework is required!
The biggest unexpected thing of the session turned out to be this QUITE boisterous dude who proclaimed more than once that despite looking Mexican, he was actually Scottish; certainly his brogue backed him up on that, so he was either actually Scottish or did a hell of an impersonation of the accent. He got in on the session with us on three different songs, one of which was–wait for it–“MARI-MAC”. Not the same arrangement I know from the B’ys, of course, but close enough that I could follow along well enough on backup, AND we had the opportunity to trade off little instrumental solos while Looks-Mexican-Sounds-Scottish guy kept cueing us in.
Which leads me to mentioning that I actually played the piccolo this time, after being initially reluctant to get it out due to it not feeling quite properly session-y enough. But then I remembered what I’d already known from Jam: i.e., it may not be Irish but it’s pretty close to tin whistle in sound, so hey! And I did in fact start pulling back bits of my previous piccolo twiddles as long as we were all tearing through “Mari-Mac”. Which, it must be said, ROCKED.
Dara gamely went through “I’m a Rover”, and I backed her up as best I could, but we’re going to need to practice that one some more, I think. I’m also seriously going to have to practice “Salmon Tails Up the Water”, better known to me and mine of course as the bridge to “Jolly Butcher”. If I’m going to be showing up at these things with my piccolo, I’m going to have to damn well start learning more of these tunes! AND, next time we get called upon for a song, I’m going to have to be prepared to belt out “Paddy Murphy”. ‘Cause I mean, seriously, next best place for that song after “GBS concert”, wut? ;)
Looks-Mexican-Sounds-Scottish guy got perhaps a wee bit TOO boisterous for this crowd when Navy guy John, the other mandolin player besides Dara, started in on “Wild Rover”. Let’s just say some of the verses took on a distinct theme of sheep-shagging, and there was almost some dancing on the bar; L-M-S-S didn’t quite make it to the bar, but he was up on a chair at one point! But hell, he was clearly having such an awesome time that you couldn’t really hold that against him at all, and it must be said that the dude COULD indeed lead a song. After we finished up, he even hugged me at the bar. Aw!
And here’s the other thing that happened when I was at the bar paying the bill for me and Dara: the bartender (who, if HIS accent is any indication, is actually Irish) gave me one of my drinks for free.
This means, ladies and gentlemen, that I have been given complimentary booze for playing music in a public place.
I think this means I’ve levelled up a bit in Musician. :D
Session homework FTW!
I’ll say this for the session that 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. :D Session homework FTW!
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 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 is a big fan of that one and likes playing it at Jam. :D
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!