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Songs
Some songs I like to play. See also my Charts page.
READIN
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.
So I've been practicing this folk tune called "Devil's Dream" -- I happened on it in my book of tunes, and recognized it pretty well so I thought I'd try learning it. It's starting to sound alright -- not 100% yet, and not up to speed, but it's getting to where it sounds like a song. And then today, I was sort of noodling around with the idea of it and started playing a different song, in triple time, which I'm calling "Devil's Drunk" for now -- it is recognizably based on a similar tune idea, but it sounds drunk. Here is a rough recording of the two pieces:
At The Fiddler's Companion, I found another Napoleon-themed Irish reel: "Napoleon Crossing the Alps". I've been playing it this morning and have uploaded the music in PDF format. I am curious what it means that the key signature is one sharp, but the tune resolves to A -- is this some kind of wacky modal thing? Also weird: The source at Fiddler's Companion has an accidental sharp marked at every occurrence of F♯, which seems redundant and makes the music difficult to read. I removed the accidentals.I was thinking it might be possible to make a medley of "Napoleon Crossing the Rhine" with this; but I'm not sure what kind of transposing I should do or alternately, how to modulate between the two.
Update: My mom (who knows about such things) says, this is Dorian mode:
A tune can be built (and resolve) around any of the notes in the
scale - this is modal writing. The mode that resolves to the 1st
note of the scale is what we call major. The one that resolves to the
6th note is what we call minor. the one that resolves to the second
tone of the (major) scale is called dorian. This modal writing is
used a lot in traditional tunes.
You can get the idea of the sound by playing a scale using only white
notes. First play c-c, that's ionian (major). Then play d-d,
that's dorian. e-e is phrygian , f-f is lydian, g-g is mixolydian. a-a
is æolian (minor), and b-b is locrian.
(Edited with some suggestions from my brother, who also wants to point out that ionian and æolian modes are Not Really major and minor, because tonal music is different from modal music. My sister wanted to point out in this regard that "we have the nerdiest family EVER.")
I've been messing around further with Napoleon Crossing the Rhine; here it is with "Bonaparte's Retreat" added as a chorus. Big jam at Menzel Violins this afternoon, maybe I will lead this tune.
posted morning of October 19th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
It seems to me like the line "You know that was the last thing on my mind" admits of two not mutually exclusive readings. It could just be a restatement and intensifier of "Didn't mean to be unkind"; or it could also be a separate statement, that he just wasn't thinking about how he was behaving toward the woman he's singing to. The difference here keys on whether that takes "I could have loved you better" or "to be unkind" as its antecedent; I like the ambiguity.
(Yeah, any excuse to post this song... I was listening to Chet Atkins' cover of it last night in the soundtrack to Stroszek and it became the song I want to have in my head all the time. Maybe I will try and learn the words and figure out a violin part for the October jam. Do you know there are like 50 covers of this song -- most of the ones I can find on YouTube are inferior to the original although Dolly Parton's version is pretty easy on the ears. Oh also: here is a tape of Tom Paxton singing "Rambling Boy" on Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest" show.)
So I'm pretty mystified by this Lightnin' Hopkins lyric. Leaving aside the obsession with women who wear wigs, what's up with the rats? Am I hearing this wrong?
(I am definitely hearing at least some of it wrong -- "ain't her own line", "all over mine", "I went to swing out" are all approximations.)
Update: I found a more authoritative version of the lyrics at the African-American Registry. "Rats" is correct. (The verse starting "I woke up this morning" is not present in the recording I've been listening to, from Hello Central.)
Update: Aha! Just figured it out! Thanks, unknown browser who came to this site by searching for "are wigs made of rat hair?" -- This is obviously what Hopkins meant by "rats": "wigs (putatively) made from rat hair."
Update III: Another idea comes by way of Martha M. -- "rats" are the structures used to support outlandish early-20th-C hairdos. The OED says,
5. Something resembling a rat in shape.
a. U.S. A hair-pad with tapering ends.
1869 Mrs. WhitneyWe Girls v. (1874) 98 She can't buy coils and braids and two-dollar rats. 1888Century Mag. 769 The crescent shaped pillows on which it [hair] was put up, the startling names of which were 'rats' and 'mice'.
I don't want no woman
If her hair ain't longer'n mine
I don't want no woman
If her hair ain't no longer'n mine
Yes you know she ain't good for nothing but trouble
She'll keep you buying wigs all the time
Yes, you know I carried my woman to the hair dresser
And this is what the hair dresser said
I stuck that straightener in, and
Wig fell off her head
I told her no!
Boy, if her hair ain't no longer'n mine
Yes, you know she ain't good for nothing but trouble
She'll keep you buying rats all the time
(Wigs and rats 'll get you killed)
Yes, you know I woke up this morning, peoples, poor Sam
'Bout the break of day
You know I even found a rat
On the pillow where she used to lay
You know I don't want no woman
If her hair ain't no longer'n mine
Yes, you know she ain't good for nothing but trouble
She'll keep you buying rats all the time
You know I went to get on the good side of my woman
Said Come and let's go and have some fun
You know I went to make a swing out when a rat fell from her head
Like one from a burning barn
But I just told her, I don't want no woman
if her hair ain't no longer'n mine
yes, you know she ain't good for nothing but trouble
she'll keep you buying rats all the time.....
Cut the rats out, rat, caught you buyin' wigs now, play it a long time.
↻...done
posted afternoon of September 9th, 2008: 2 responses ➳ More posts about The Blues
I worked up a fiddle part for "Rollin' in my Sweet Baby's Arms" to play at the jam tonight, and I must say it was pretty successful. I kept it fairly simple, everybody stayed with the beat and it sounded nice -- and my singing was as good as it ever gets. A couple of people complimented me on it later on.
The jam leader tonight was Barbara Lamb -- it was really great to get a chance to hear her music. She did some far out stuff like setting up rhythm tracks by overdubbing lots of different clapping patterns and rattles just before she started playing, and playing duets with herself through a delay box. She's playing a house concert in Rockaway on Saturday, I hope we can make it out there.
Take 2! This one is, I dare say, up to tempo and generally in time. I figured out a neat riff to start it out with; but got a little bit lost at the end. Still, I manage to keep straight when I'm playing the A or the B part, and have the correct number of repeats. Not bad!
Note: to hear a real fiddler performing this (with fretless banjo!), check out Twelvefret's recording of it at fiddlehangout.com.
So I've had this song on my mind for a couple of days. I wish I knew its title so that I could find the B part (and get the second half of the A part a little better in mind as well). I believe it is Irish or possibly and American Civil War-era tune. If you have any idea what song I'm thinking of, let me know. It goes a little like this:
Aha! OTJunky at the Fiddle Hangout supplies the name of the tune: it is (a poorly remembered) "Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine." Here are some folks playing it for reals on YouTube:
Janis lent me a CD of Jelly Roll Morton's music, which I'm loving. Today after listening to it for a while, I played this on my violin, which I think is supposed to be kind of a take on the music I was listening to:
So what do you think? I was really enjoying playing that piece and I think if I had some kind of accompaniment (and -- of course -- spent more time on polishing the performance and the arrangement) it could be really worthwhile music. But I'm not sure how I would find someone that was interested in playing like that. Or for that matter what the instrumentation should be.
Let me know what you think about the sound.
Update: Two songs that I think I could play and that would go really well with this, are "Gimme Pigfoot" by Bessie Smith and "They're Red Hot" by Robert Johnson. (Thinking about it, these two songs are very similar to one another -- but not exactly the same.)
Listening this evening to MS John Hurt playing "Stagger Lee", and it hit me that his guitar part would translate really well to violin. Going to try it out when I go downstairs later on.
