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Fiddling
I've played violin for a bit more than 30 years -- except that for about 20 of them, I wasn't playing violin. Suzuki lessons from about 5 years old to about 14 years old, quit in disgust, took it back up when I was 35. I have a lot of fun with it nowadays.
If you're looking for abc notation of fiddle tunes, be sure to check out The Fiddler's Companion.
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Ok, I'm pretty happy with this recording. Not perfect, there are several places where I have rhythm trouble and I generally have a little trouble with starting the verses; but the ratio of moments that work to embarrassing gaffes is a good deal higher than on the previous attempt.
(I re-recorded this tune. See the new post for the recording.)
Here is a story about "John Hardy Was a Desperate Man": It is my very favorite Carter Family song out of those that I have heard, which is a fair portion of their catalog. (Yes -- I even like it better than "Will the Circle be Unbroken".) Listening to it just puts me into a trance. Sadly I have not listened to it in a couple of years because I lost the disc on which it is recorded -- but this has a very nice upshot. In all that time of not being able to listen to the original I feel like I have come up with a very worthwhile version that is properly my own. The chords are different from the Carter Family's version, the key is different, the melody is different. This is about the only song that I cover where my version is really substantially different from the version I am covering. (Not to imply that my covers are of similar quality to the originals, just that they are imitative.) Anyway, listen to it and let me know what you think.
I am thinking maybe I should try playing this in A minor or G minor, that that might be better suited to my vocal range. I had originally chosen D minor because the guitar part is really easy there; but seeing as that's not a concern currently....
Yes! It sounds way better in G minor. I will re-record it later this morning.
posted evening of December 22nd, 2007: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Songs
I'm starting to use my new mixing program, Audacity. In the spirit of audacity, I'll post a working version of "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning". Not satisfied with much of this but I think some individual bits work very well. My laptop's microphone captures my fiddle surprisingly well; I think for further vocal work I am going to need to get a microphone. And a better sense of rhythm -- it's surprisingly difficult to figure out where to come in when you are listening to a track you laid down previously.
posted evening of December 21st, 2007: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Music
I worked out a little melody on my viola this evening, and wrote it down! Thanks to the magic of ABC Notation, I can make it available here, in ABC format or PDF. I used ABCEdit to enter it, and boy is that useful -- I had thought the 3-note runs were triplets but ABCEdit's playback feature showed me that was wrong, and that I wanted two short notes and a longer one.
You can repeat the verse many times, there are a lot of rhythmic variations and note-order variations that are pretty easy to find. Also I think there was a bridge when I was playing but I could not find it when I was writing the tune down.
Update: Ok, I expanded it a little, found a part that sounds kind of like a bridge. Again, to make this sound at all interesting when you're playing it you will need to add in a lot of variations on your own.
Another fun thing about ABCEdit is it makes it pretty easy to play around with the time signature and stuff. I tried this out in 12/8, with a sort of swingy feel -- it sounds really corny that way.
Further to yesterday's post: I think I've found the best of all configurations, which is to have the shoulder rest on the violin and no chin rest. The sound is lovely and it feels completely natural to hold it this way -- easier to hold than it ever was with the chin rest on, shoulder rest or no. My head leans down so that my jaw is holding the violin completely steady, and my ear is right next to the sound box.
Still not totally sure what to do about the pickup. I might mount it again, but on the right side of the instrument. Might seek out a new, lighter weight pickup. Might just learn how to play with a microphone.
Lately I have been experimenting with taking stuff off my violin. Like for the past couple of months I have been playing without a shoulder rest. I kind of like the feel of the violin that way; and when I tried to figure out what it is I like about it, I came up with that my ear is in closer to the sound box -- that is, the natural position of my head when I don't have the shoulder rest is leaned in next to the fiddle, so my cheek is against the chin rest instead of my chin, and it feels like I'm closer to the sound. Well with that going on, I've been thinking the next logical step is to remove the chin rest, so my cheek and jaw will be against the actual sound box. I tried that tonight and I'm not sure yet -- it does sound really nice*, but it's a lot of work to keep the violin in the correct position. I will try it out for a while though and see how it goes, if I can adjust to this position it would be nice. The adjustment to no shoulder rest didn't take very long.
Also, I took the pickup off -- time to learn how to play into a microphone. The pickup was throwing off the instrument's balance.
*Also I think I am getting a better sense of how well I am making contact with my bow -- the distinction in sound between full contact and partial contact is really sharp, I think moreso than it was with the chin rest on. Although another possible explanation is that when I was playing with the chin rest on, my bow hold was much more consistent.
I am a better violinist than I am a guitarist -- not really surprising considering I have been playing violin much more than guitar over the past few years. At the show tonight, I felt like I played a really respectable fiddle on "Smile to Pretend" -- like the performance was pleasurable in the same way that listening to really good music is, like I was tight and in the groove. My guitar parts felt more like flailing and nerve-wracking. So I think I am going to work on my violin and let my guitar serve as an aid to writing chord charts for songs, more than a performance instrument. (It can be hard to figure out what the chords are, to tell to other musicians, when you're only playing a melody.)
Something I really appreciate about the work I did with Hannah for this gig, is her helping me to work out a violin part to "Smile to Pretend" -- the chart she wrote for me helped me to listen to her CD in a way of actually hearing what the violinist was playing and how I could adapt that to my own voice. I'm not used to listening to music this way but it is something I ought to do more of. A feature of this fiddle part was long baritone notes during the lyric, moving into fills between the lines -- this sounds really good.
After the show, the second act was Felt, whom I haven't seen in a year or so. They asked me to sit in on "Angel from Montgomery" -- I was really happy to have the evening end up with more fiddling and not have to think as much about the flaily guitar playing.
posted morning of December 15th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about Guitar
The gig is tonight! I'm pretty excited and nervous. Hannah has been wonderful and encouraging throughout our brief acquaintance -- I hope I don't let her down! This will be the first time I have played in a bar other than at an open mic or jam. Looks like I'll be playing guitar on "Misguided Angel" (Cowboy Junkies), "River" (Mitchell, seasonally appropriate), "Can't Tear Myself Away" (Reimann, featuring horribly unfamiliar chord shapes, and that change throughout the song), and possibly one other song; and fiddle on "Smile to Pretend" (Reimann).
This was fun. As always I find myself in need of a rhythm instrument behind me. If I were playing with a pianist and a singer or something, that could be a moderately long song with lots of verses and choruses. (And with fewer missed notes and beats.)
Update ...and in this tune, I go on without benefit of rhythm for a number of verses:
If you're around Maplewood next Friday, the 14th, and would like to hear me playing guitar and fiddle behind Hannah Reimann, come to the bar formerly known as Here's to the Arts at 97 Baker St. (That's still the name painted in the window, but they have taken their sign down and I think there is a name change in the works) at 8 pm. I'm so excited! An actual gig!
I figured out how to use the audio recorder on my computer; so here is the melody I came up with last night. Things it would benefit from: rhythm instrument like guitar/piano/drums; a bridge; lyrics; harmony. Still I think it is pretty nice.
posted afternoon of December first, 2007: 2 responses
