Jerry Garcia Video on Improvisation

I had heard about about a BBC documentary on improvisation from the 1980's that featured an interview with Jerry Garcia.  It took a bit of searching to track the video down, so I am linking it to it here for future reference.

The documentary is called Derek Bailey: On the Edge and Garcia is featured in part 4 of 5.  I watched a little bit of some of the other segments and it looks like an interesting film as a whole.

The part with Garcia starts at about a minute and 45 seconds into the clip and runs for about 10 minutes.

Derek Bailey: On the Edge (Part 4) from Andy Wilson on Vimeo.

In related content, here's a link to a well researched New Yorker article by Nick Paumgarten on the recorded legacy of the Grateful Dead.  Breaking from the norm a bit on this Sunday morning.

Some More Recordings with the Olympus LS-14

Most evenings Laura and I will spend at least an hour playing some tunes and practicing together.  On 4/30/13 and 5/1/13 I recorded those practice sessions using my Olympus LS-14 digital recorder.  I placed the recorder on the coffee table in front of us, in between our two instruments, and recorded live with no overdubs or editing of any kind.  Here are some excerpts from those recordings.

Shoes and Stockings - an oldtime tune in G that I heard on some Alan Jabbour and Bertram Levy recordings.  It's also played at the Cary St. Cafe Oldtime jam. Currently one of my favorite tunes. I play tenor banjo and Laura plays baritone uke.


I Buried My Wife and Danced on Her Grave - a great Irish jig in D (as if there aren't enough of those).  Mick Moloney plays tenor banjo on it on the CD Live at Mona's.  I'm playing tenor banjo and Laura is playing bodhran.


Saturday Night Breakdown - a ragtimey oldtime tune in C (aren't all fiddle tunes in C sorta ragtimey?) that I got out of the All-In-One-Jam book from Celestial Mountain Music.  I play tenor guitar and Laura is playing her concert scale uke since this is in the key of C.


Paddy Has Gone to France - a short Irish reel from Brian Connolly's book "Play Tunes on the Irish Tenor Banjo".  I managed to get in a few triplets!  Speed this one up to 140% and it almost sounds like we know what we're doing. Laura on bodhran, and me on tenor banjo.


Grasshopper Sitting on a Sweet Potato Vine - a hypnotic oldtime tune in the key of D, with a subtle change in the B-part as it switches from D to A.  This take is sort of a merger of the Portland Play Along Selection version and Steve Kaufman's arrangement.  More people need to play this one. I'm on tenor guitar and Laura plays baritone ukulele.


The Eavesdropper - Irish jig in G. This also comes from that Brian Connolly tutor. I like to pair this jig with I Buried My Wife.  This recording was actually made on 4/16/13. I'm playing tenor banjo and Laura is playing bodhran.


Home with the Girls in the Morning - dark oldtime tune in Dminor.  Recorded 5/1/13.  I heard this tune being played at the Cary St. Cafe oldtime jam and then looked it up and learned it.  Laura is playing concert scale ukulele since this is in Dminor, and I'm playing tenor guitar.


Humours of Tullycrine - Irish hornpipe/march in Aminor from County Clare. Heard this tune on a Cillian and Nial Vallely CD and had to learn it. Found a slightly different arrangement on Mel Bay's Mandolin Sessions by Michael Gregory. I play tenor banjo and Laura plays baritone uke.  Recorded 4/30/13.

An Traidisiun Beo and Southern Summits - My Go-To Irish and Oldtime Albums

If I could only listen to one album of Irish traditional music and one album of Southern Appalachian oldtime music, to use as sources for learning to play in each style, the choices would have to be Angelina Carberry's An Traidisiun Beo and Alan Jabbour's and Ken Perlman's Southern Summits.

For me, nothing better defines trad music than the sweet sounds of An Traidisiun Beo, the 2005 album of Irish tenor banjo music by Angelina Carberry.  Not too technical, not too fast; just straightforward interpretations of jigs, reels and hornpipes.  On about half the tracks Angelina's banjo melodies are matched with accordion - either played by her husband Martin Quinn or her father Peter Carberry.  On the remaining tunes her lead playing is backed by the subtle guitar or piano of John Blake or the equally subtle bodhran playing of Martin Quinn.  It's on these arrangements - with her easy-going, bouncy plucking front and center - that Angelina really shines.  Many of the unwritten, informal rules of Irish tenor banjo are contained within this album's 27 tunes; a lifetime of learning within its 51 minute playing time.

Alternatively, for Southern Appalachian music the best thing I've heard so far is Southern Summits by fiddler Alan Jabbour and clawhammer banjoist Ken Perlman.  It too was recorded in 2005.  Instead of fiddle leading and banjo seconding, on this album the two instruments are working as equals - in sync and intertwined.  Perlman's melodic clawhammer style may be innovative, but when played alongside Jabbour's stately fiddling it sounds like it was that way all along.  As usual, Jabbour draws heavily on tunes learned from his mentor Henry Reed, but also brings in some from fiddlers Taylor Kimble, Edden Hammons, Vaughn Marley and more.  Since I don't play fiddle or clawhammer banjo, or tune my tenor banjo to anything other than GDAE, it's not as easy to directly hone in on the lead melody as it's played here, but because the two instruments fit so well together, an outline can begin to be drawn by listening to both.

I like how each of these recordings stay true to their respective genres without trying to modernize the music in any way.  In Angelina's case she's more concerned with well-paced, tasteful playing than an inundation of flashy notes.  For Jabbour and Perlman, they sound like a couple friends playing music in a parlor rather than the driving, string band music you hear reverberating around festival campgrounds.  There's something to be said for old school nuance and integrity.

Converting YouTube Videos to MP3 Files

As a traditional musician, it's helpful to record the jams and sessions you attend in the hopes of capturing tunes you might want to learn. These are the folks you're going to be ultimately playing the tunes with, so you might as well learn their versions.

However, you don't really have to do that because chances are you can find multiple videos on YouTube of a similar enough arrangement.  Problem is, these recordings might be too fast, too slow, or have unnecessary fluff before or after the recording you want to listen to.  So what I do is use a site like listentoyoutube.com/ or youtube-mp3.org/‎
to convert the video to an MP3 file.

AudioStretch

Then I use an easy to use free software called mp3DirectCut to trim the selection to just the audio that I need to hear.  Finally, I put the recording on my tablet or smart phone, or send it to my email, so that I can open it in the Amazing Slow Downer or in AudioStretch - both of which are apps that allow you to slow down or speed up a track without changing the pitch.

Now that YouTube video with a bunch of talking before the audio, or a medley of tunes with the one you want to hear in the middle, or a setting that was too slow or too fast, can be trimmed to the part you need and either sped up or slowed down.  You lose the visual component, but it opens up a whole world of Clifftop Festival video field recordings, Irish session videos, how-to videos and more for a headphones jam.

Origins of the Six Water Grog Symbol and Name

Icelandic Road Sign - Lagarfljót worm

The symbol you see being used on this blog is taken from a road sign I came across during a trip to Iceland in May 2008.  The signs were placed around Lagarfljót lake  to indicate good viewing points for the Lagarfljótsormur, a 300 foot long worm monster that lives at the bottom of the lake.  Sightings date back to the 1300's and people are still claiming to catch glimpses of the elusive cryptid to this day.  It's kind of like Iceland's Loch Ness Monster.  

I didn't happen to see the Lagarfljót worm on the day were were there, but I did make note of the cool design on the road sign.  (If you like hiking, there's a challenging and scary path leading from the lake to a lovely waterfall).  I have adopted that design as my personal logo - if that's OK with Iceland - and even had it inlayed onto the headstock of my new Romero tenor banjo!  I'm also considering getting this symbol as a tattoo!

Inlay on Romero banjo

The term Six Water Grog means rum (grog) that has been heavily diluted with water (one part rum, six parts water).  Back in the day, six-water-grog was given to people who were pretty low down the totem pole, as punishment.  I'm using it as a reference to my fairly diluted approach to traditional music.  I come to these traditions as an ignorant outsider or "adult learner" with no formal schooling in music, molding Irish and Appalachian tunes into a blended repertory as it suits my interests.  But, it is fun to experiment like that.

I guess there's no real tie-in between the symbol and the phrase.  Still, they do seem to go well together.  

What is a Barndance?

Beyond the jigs and reels, there are lots of other types of Irish traditional tunes worth discovering, including the hornpipe, slip jig, slide, polka, march, fling, mazurka and air.  One type of dotted rhythm that has been catching my ear is the barndance, but besides just knowing it when I hear it, I couldn't quite figure out what makes a barndance a barndance so I went looking for more information.  The details below come from the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

The barndance is in origin both a musical form and an accompanying social ballroom dance which became popular in England and north America in the late nineteenth century.  Early barndance music was composed by professionals or consisted of existing melodies adapted to suit the new fashion.  It's usually in 2/4 or 4/4 time and strongly marked in rhythm, with an emphatic ending to each section.  Barndances are likely to have come into Ireland through commercial sheet music and the activities of professional dance teachers.  In time they were danced and played traditionally, mixed in during a night’s dancing with older forms.  

Lucy Farr - composer of Lucy Farr's Barndance

While barndance melodies begin to appear in collections of Irish traditional music in the late 1920s, they had earlier and more influentially begun to be issued from the early 1920's on 78rpm commercial discs recorded by Irish immigrant musicians in New York and other American centers of Irish settlement.  The recordings influenced local repertory in Ireland as they began to be heard widely there from the 1920's.  

I'll also add that barn dances are almost always in major keys.  To really get a handle on the distinctive, turn of the century character of a barndance tune, you need to listen to some.  Thankfully, the Irish Traditional Music Archive has created a playlist of 18 sound recordings of barn dances, taken from 78's of the 1920's  to 1940's.  Turn it up!  Or take a look at this video of Gerdie Commane playing Kilnamona Barndance.

Do Fiddlers Have It Easy?

I was wondering if it was easier or harder to play one of the quintessential instruments in a traditional music genre, such as fiddle or clawhammer banjo in oldtime Appalachian mountain music, and fiddle or flute in Irish traditional music?

It’s gotta be easier, right?  I mean, you’re always going to be around other people playing the same instrument as you, using the same tuning and/or playing in a similar style.  Plus there are lots of source recordings featuring your instrument that you can listen to.  You learn by osmosis as part of the tradition.

Or is it harder in some ways?  Because of the high benchmark set by the legendary players of that instrument, can the search for “authenticity” become overwhelming?  Are you constantly reminded that you are playing it wrong or that you’ll never be as good as the masters?

I encounter a bit of both with tenor banjo.  Since the glory days of 'Banjo' Barney McKenna, all the way up to the Howley brothers in We Banjo 3, the tenor banjo has become one of the standard instruments in Irish traditional music; Angelina Carberry being my favorite.  If I was to pursue playing my tenor banjo in this style, there’s already an informal blueprint laid out for me by simply listening to and emulating others that use the same instrument to play that style of music.

Barney McKenna

On the other hand, when I play tenor banjo at an oldtime jam I’m always the only one there doing so.  There is no precedent.  There are no recordings of people playing Indian Ate the Woodchuck, Little Billy Wilson or Possum On A Rail with a GDAE tuned tenor banjo, that I know of.  To make that connection with the tradition requires a bit more stretch on my part.  Although this can be kind of liberating – the way you do it is the “correct” way by default because there is nothing to compare yourself to.

The whole reason I chose tenor banjo in the first place was to have a unique instrument that was “right for me”.  I didn’t want to be just another mandolin or guitar player, knowing that I could never be as good as my heroes on those instruments.  With tenor banjo I had no pre-conceived notions other than I figured it would be more fun because I would be the only one doing it.  What I’ve learned though is that it helps to have someone else to learn off of who plays the same instrument.  If I’m at an Irish session and there’s another tenor banjo player there it makes it much easier to find the notes.

Oddly, oldtime music is no more foreign to me as a tenor banjo player than Irish traditional music is.  As an outsider and relative newcomer to both genres, each is a mysterious world that I have yet to fully learn.  Because I started playing both styles simultaneously – literally learning the jig Lilting Banshee right alongside the hoedown June Apple – I don’t see it as two distinct styles but as one complete "whole" that gets funneled or channeled through my instrument of choice, which just so happens to be the 4-string tenor banjo.