Liberty is not a woman walking the streets, she is not sitting on a bench waiting for an invitation to dinner, to come sleep in our bed for the rest of her life.
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Music
I've had a pretty complex relationship with music over the years... ought to write about that sometime. Anyways: I listen to a lot of it, in genres like "rock" and "pop" and "folk", and play some of it, primarily in the genres "old-time" and "classical".
At Norway's Cafe Mono, Robyn Hitchcock reminisces on his first visit to Norway, on tour with the Egyptians in 1982, and the years since then. Morris Windsor posts a cover of "The End", live in Oslo in '82, the "culmination of one of the weirdest tours ever" -- "The closing remarks contain the seeds of 2009's Goodnight Oslo."
Mountain Station is opening Friday's Songwriter Showcase at Studio 12 in Montclair. Come on time at 8 if you want to hear our music! -- We're doing two short sets, the first at 8 and the second later on after some of the featured acts have their sets. We'll be playing a couple of our old favorites and a couple of brand-new songs. Hope to see you there.
Bob and Janis are coming over this afternoon to play some tunes -- I'm eagerly anticipating my first jam using the custom shoulder rest I carved this morning. Ever since I got this fiddle I have been thinking that a wooden block shoulder rest would work better than the contraption the maker provided, to attach a standard violin shoulder rest. Fate forced my hand a few weeks ago by ordaining that I should lose the said contraption... (come to think of it, I've been playing with no shoulder rest for a few weeks, and have been making some interesting music that way too... Mountain Station recorded a fun take on Odds & Ends last week.) Turns out I was right! It's extremely comfortable to hold the violin with this extension.
I've been listening to some old (well not that old I guess but from like last year) Mountain Station tracks lately and enjoying our sound. And it is just getting better -- our new "St. James Infirmary" is a different, more organized and complex song than our first recording of it.
Also -- bought a pickup for the fiddle, I decided to get a saxophone pickup that will clip onto the bell. This will help with amplification when we play at Studio 12 in Montclair next Friday.
Last night was a blast! Met up with Christine and Miriam and John to see Crooked Still's show at The Bell House, and fell in love with the opening act.
Two sets of high energy old time music from two such distinctly different bands was about as much as I could have asked for. Amazing fiddling and banjoing and singing and thumping. Brought home two CD's from the merchandise table.
This song has been in my head all day since last night when I was listening to Old & In the Way playing it, on the Sonoma State concert tape. Vassar Clemens' fiddling is extraordinary of course; but there is a whole lot to be said for the original as well.
The Studio 12 open mic at Tapastry restaurant in Montclair is a great scene -- based on my and John's experience there tonight it is one of the few open mics I've ever been to that I would invite non-musician friends to... A really friendly crowd and a lot of good-to-great music. We played a 15-minute set, a pretty satisfying length of time to be on stage -- our set list:
Running to Stand Still, medley into Arms of Love
Meet Me in the Morning
Drowsy Maggie, medley into Dancing Barefoot
It sounded from on stage like we were doing very well. John taped it on his Zoom, so we'll see how that comes out -- maybe we'll post some clips.
John came over tonight and we had some fun playing songs we did not know... It was a change from our practice routine because John had left our songbook in Andrea's car, so we did not have words and music written out, so we just jammed on a bunch of songs that we have not played before. Highlights included "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (which I find incredibly fun to sing but do not have much of a fiddle part to), "Harvest Moon" (which turns out to be really easy to come up with a fiddle part for), "When the Ship Comes In" (fast, with lots of instrumentals -- not sure what song the instrumentals were from but they seemed to fit ok), "Banks of the Ohio" (dedicated to Martha -- again, a lot of fun to sing, not sure what I should do instrumentally), "Rolling in my Sweet Baby's Arms," "Frankie and Johnny." Also, "Long Black Veil," and a medley of "Odds and Ends" into "Johnny 99."
The fixed fiddle sounded all right. It was going out of tune more than usual, which I put down to the new strings; the tone is clear and even and the volume is there. An irritating buzz I had noticed in recent weeks is gone -- not sure if that had anything to do with the bridge.
posted evening of October second, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
Well... that modification I made to my fiddle's bridge last month did not work out so well, as it turns out. Some notes on what came of it and what I think my mistakes were.
What I did was to take a small amount of material off the top of the bridge to lessen the vertical pressure on the bridge so that it would not buckle. However, I was not thinking about how the tension of the strings has to remain constant (assuming they are to be in tune, which is desirable); so relieving the vertical pressure on the bridge would put additional horizontal pressure on the tailpiece. After a couple of weeks I noticed that it was getting difficult to keep my violin in tune; "difficult" soon became "impossible" and I had to sit down and figure out what was going on.
Some examination of the instrument made it clear that the tailpiece was no longer fixed stably to the body. So I got a chance to learn about how tailpieces are connected to violins: There is a little piece of vinyl cord called a tail gut, with threaded connectors on each end, that go into holes in the end of the tailpiece. On a traditional violin this cord loops around the end pin; on my Stroh fiddle as you can see to the left, it loops around a bolt in the violin body (usually covered by a metal attachment for the chin rest). Tail guts are cheap, which is useful as I went through a couple before figuring out that the problem was the bridge... Now I have a brand-spanking new bridge (manufactured by Aubert, courtesy of Menzel Violins -- not expensive and vastly better than the bridge that came with the fiddle) and everything is looking shipshape. I'll be jamming with Mountain Station this afternoon and see how it sounds...
A few things I learned about my violin:
I need to pay attention to the way the strings are wrapped on the pegs. I sort of knew this as an abstract rule but had not really been following it.
The bridge is not bilaterally symmetrical. The bass side is higher than the treble side, and putting it on the violin backwards is a mistake.
It's important to keep the bridge perpendicular to the body of the violin. It has a tendency to lean forward as you tighten the strings, and you need to correct for this.
posted morning of October second, 2011: 1 response
Nominations are open for cleek's 2011 Reader's Poll -- what are your favorite records of all time, as of 2011? I'm interested to see what records get nominated -- the readers there are a group of good, eclectic tastes.
I've been thinking about what records I should submit for a week or so, since cleek announced the poll... A nice state to be in since it means I have songs from my favorite records running through my head. What I came up with (some Dylan, some Robyn Hitchcock, some folk music...) will generally not be too surprising for anybody that knows the inside of my head like I do. I was a little surprised to find early on that it was important to include in the list a record that I have not listened to or thought about much in years, viz.I.R.S. Greatest Hits vols. 2 & 3 -- I spent a lot of time listening to this record in high school and college and, while I never was into the New Wave very much besides this record, it seems like it shaped my musical ear in some important ways.
So anyways, I'm listening to it right now for like I say, the first time in years, and the songs sure hold up. Recommended. (It was never released on CD; but if you search for it you'll find torrents that people have ripped from vinyl.) I'm putting the track listing and YouTube playlist below the fold -- Seriously every track is giving me the "great song" response, where as I listen to the first couple of bars I get an ecstatic wave of recognition and melt into the song. (Well I don't love "Uranium Rock" like I love every other song -- but it is not out of place either. Sort of interesting bit of punk rock rockabilly.)
Ellen's birthday was a couple of weeks ago now; tonight we're getting together with some of our friends for a belated celebration. I made her a birthday mix tape to spin for the occasion:
The WS Walcott Medicine Show -- The Band
Heaven -- Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Our Swingin' Pad -- Jonathan Richman
Take Me Higher -- Al Green
Up on Cripple Creek -- The Band
The Arms of Love -- r.e.m.
The Ballad of John and Yoko -- The Beatles
Dancing Barefoot -- Mountain Station
I Feel Beautiful -- Robyn Hitchcock
Go on with your bad self -- Eddie Kendricks
Strawberry Fields Forever -- The Beatles
I want to sing that rock and roll -- Gillian Welch
When the Earth Moves Again -- Jefferson Airplane
Big Yellow Taxi -- Joni Mitchell
The Way it Will Be -- Gillian Welch
Ophelia -- The Band
Stop Breakin Down -- Lucinda Williams
Fortune Teller -- Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
Electrolite -- r.e.m.
Pretty as You Feel -- Jefferson Airplane
If I am understanding correctly how to use Spotify, this should be a link to Ellen's birthday playlist (approximately -- I substituted publicly-available tracks for some of the ones on this list).
posted morning of September 24th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Birthdays
fiddle I have been thinking that a wooden block shoulder rest would work better than the contraption the maker provided, to attach a standard violin shoulder rest. Fate forced my hand a few weeks ago by ordaining that I should lose the said contraption... (come to think of it, I've been playing with no shoulder rest for a few weeks, and have been making some interesting music that way too... Mountain Station recorded a fun take on 
After a couple of weeks I noticed that it was getting difficult to keep my violin in tune; "difficult" soon became "impossible" and I had to sit down and figure out what was going on.
can see to the left, it loops around a bolt in the violin body (usually covered by a metal attachment for the chin rest). Tail guts are cheap, which is useful as I went through a couple before figuring out that the problem was the bridge... Now I have a brand-spanking new bridge (manufactured by Aubert, courtesy of 
-- the readers there are a group of good, eclectic tastes.
