What I've Been Up To (music edition)
[And what my excuses are for not posting here so often...]
Warning: Boring musical tech talk follows.
A lot of time in the last couple of years has gone into expanding my musical skills. That includes arranging and sharing music, as well as playing some new instruments. My first thought was to add more variety to the sound of our sometimes quartet, ThingamaJig, by learning the mandolin. I already have some background in violin/fiddle, and the mandolin is tuned and fingered in the same manner so I thought it would be an easy stretch. That turned out not to be entirely true. I'm still trying on and off, but rarely in public. As it turns out, the frets on the instrument are very close together and even though my hands are not much more than medium sized, I find it difficult to play rapid licks. Also, the string tension is much higher than that of a guitar or fiddle, so even with an instrument that was expertly set up at Elderly Instruments, my old hands get sore and poop out quickly. I intend to try some lighter strings, but the mandolin is on hold now.
Husband pointed out that he had a tenor banjo stuck in a closet. Someone had given it to him, and he just put it away and forgot about it. For those unfamiliar with it, the tenor banjo has only four strings instead of five, and is tuned GDAE like a fiddle or mandolin. After replacing the strings and a cracked bridge, I found the open-back tenor banjo to be much more hospitable to my playing style and had at it. That made it into ThingamaJig's act before very long, and soon I found myself buying a second tenor banjo with a closed back resonator to increase the volume and ring time.
At about the same time, I took interest in the Irish bouzouki, a long necked instrument adapted by Irish musicians in the 1960s and later from the Greek bouzouki. Irish luthiers dropped the heavy ornamentation favored by Greek makers, giving the instrument a teardrop shape and sleeker feel. They usually tune GDAD which favors the common keys of G and D used in Irish dance music and makes chording easier. I obtained a bouzouki from Europe, and when it arrived it was strung and tuned in the Greek style even though the form of the instrument was Irish. So I replaced the strings because Greek tuning of the eight strings arranged in four pairs uses octave tuning like a 12-string guitar where the Irish tune the pairs in unison. It wasn't long before I switched the first course from D to E, to give me octave mandolin tuning GDAE, an octave below the mandolin. I and my bandmates enjoy the slightly buzzy sound and lower range of the instrument, as well as the fact that all the repertoire I have developed is applicable to all four instruments: fiddle, mandolin, tenor banjo, and bouzouki.
That may sound like enough to use up at least a couple of years, and it certainly has been. I am now comfortable with both the tenor banjo and the Irish bouzouki in performance, as well as my concert and alto flutes which we have used extensively since forming our group.
I bought a 5-string banjo (the one you hear and see in bluegrass music all the time) because I was particularly intrigued with the clawhammer style of playing. I even attended a six week banjo class at the local community college in hopes of developing the skill, but most of the focus was on Earl Scruggs style three finger playing. Our final session was cut off by the school shutting down in the pandemic last winter. I'm still working on it, but not playing 5-string in public.
Never satisfied, and in the vacuum caused by the pandemic, I bought a ukulele too. Our friends Alvin and Chris were promoting the instrument and encouraged me to try it, and reasonably good ones are not terribly expensive now. The next thing I knew, I had acquired three more. This may sound absurd, but they are small, light, inexpensive, and interesting. The tenor uke is commonly played in two different tunings that require different physical strings as the fourth string is dropped a full octave. Normal ukulele tuning is gCEA (where C is middle C on the piano, but the g fourth string is the higher pitch a fifth above middle C) and this is called re-entrant tuning, similar to what a 5-string banjo uses with the fifth string a high drone. The result is that the tenor ukulele tuned this way (and the soprano as well) can be played in clawhammer style like a banjo. However, the tenor with a different, heavier fourth string can also be tuned GCEA where the G is a fourth below the middle C third string. These four strings are now in the same relative intervals as the four highest strings on a standard guitar, and consequently the same chord shapes or fingerings can be used, though the pitch is higher by a fourth. I wanted both those worlds, and changing strings in the middle of a performance is impractical, so I now have two tenor ukes.
Then I got the urge to accompany myself singing, which I do easily enough on my regular old classical guitar. The tenor ukulele pitch doesn't complement my bass baritone voice nearly as well as the guitar does. BUT... there is a baritone ukulele as well. Sometimes called a "tenor guitar," the baritone uke is still only four strings and tuned in the same intervals as the high four strings of the guitar, but the pitches are the same as a guitar as well: DGBE. This opened up a large repertoire of songs and tunes that I have played for years on the guitar, but using the smaller, lighter baritone uke. I'm furiously flipping through pages of a whole shelf full of guitar music and having nostalgic thoughts of Peter, Paul & Mary or Gordon Lightfoot or maybe Bok, Muir and Trickett songs that we could explore.
At least this has kept me busy during the last year of isolation and limited social contacts. Fortunately, we both remain as healthy as can be expected for our age, and nothing bad has developed. This week we received the second vaccination dose of Moderna, and other than a sore arm for two days, no major side effects. The Woodstock Farmers Market is returning to its regular schedule this summer, and we have several gigs on the calendar, so all this musical experimentation should bear some kind of fruit. Or maybe it's all just fruitcake, who knows?
[Next time: the writing edition of this update, some of which has been touched upon already.]
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Warning: Boring musical tech talk follows.
A lot of time in the last couple of years has gone into expanding my musical skills. That includes arranging and sharing music, as well as playing some new instruments. My first thought was to add more variety to the sound of our sometimes quartet, ThingamaJig, by learning the mandolin. I already have some background in violin/fiddle, and the mandolin is tuned and fingered in the same manner so I thought it would be an easy stretch. That turned out not to be entirely true. I'm still trying on and off, but rarely in public. As it turns out, the frets on the instrument are very close together and even though my hands are not much more than medium sized, I find it difficult to play rapid licks. Also, the string tension is much higher than that of a guitar or fiddle, so even with an instrument that was expertly set up at Elderly Instruments, my old hands get sore and poop out quickly. I intend to try some lighter strings, but the mandolin is on hold now.
Husband pointed out that he had a tenor banjo stuck in a closet. Someone had given it to him, and he just put it away and forgot about it. For those unfamiliar with it, the tenor banjo has only four strings instead of five, and is tuned GDAE like a fiddle or mandolin. After replacing the strings and a cracked bridge, I found the open-back tenor banjo to be much more hospitable to my playing style and had at it. That made it into ThingamaJig's act before very long, and soon I found myself buying a second tenor banjo with a closed back resonator to increase the volume and ring time.
At about the same time, I took interest in the Irish bouzouki, a long necked instrument adapted by Irish musicians in the 1960s and later from the Greek bouzouki. Irish luthiers dropped the heavy ornamentation favored by Greek makers, giving the instrument a teardrop shape and sleeker feel. They usually tune GDAD which favors the common keys of G and D used in Irish dance music and makes chording easier. I obtained a bouzouki from Europe, and when it arrived it was strung and tuned in the Greek style even though the form of the instrument was Irish. So I replaced the strings because Greek tuning of the eight strings arranged in four pairs uses octave tuning like a 12-string guitar where the Irish tune the pairs in unison. It wasn't long before I switched the first course from D to E, to give me octave mandolin tuning GDAE, an octave below the mandolin. I and my bandmates enjoy the slightly buzzy sound and lower range of the instrument, as well as the fact that all the repertoire I have developed is applicable to all four instruments: fiddle, mandolin, tenor banjo, and bouzouki.
That may sound like enough to use up at least a couple of years, and it certainly has been. I am now comfortable with both the tenor banjo and the Irish bouzouki in performance, as well as my concert and alto flutes which we have used extensively since forming our group.
I bought a 5-string banjo (the one you hear and see in bluegrass music all the time) because I was particularly intrigued with the clawhammer style of playing. I even attended a six week banjo class at the local community college in hopes of developing the skill, but most of the focus was on Earl Scruggs style three finger playing. Our final session was cut off by the school shutting down in the pandemic last winter. I'm still working on it, but not playing 5-string in public.
Never satisfied, and in the vacuum caused by the pandemic, I bought a ukulele too. Our friends Alvin and Chris were promoting the instrument and encouraged me to try it, and reasonably good ones are not terribly expensive now. The next thing I knew, I had acquired three more. This may sound absurd, but they are small, light, inexpensive, and interesting. The tenor uke is commonly played in two different tunings that require different physical strings as the fourth string is dropped a full octave. Normal ukulele tuning is gCEA (where C is middle C on the piano, but the g fourth string is the higher pitch a fifth above middle C) and this is called re-entrant tuning, similar to what a 5-string banjo uses with the fifth string a high drone. The result is that the tenor ukulele tuned this way (and the soprano as well) can be played in clawhammer style like a banjo. However, the tenor with a different, heavier fourth string can also be tuned GCEA where the G is a fourth below the middle C third string. These four strings are now in the same relative intervals as the four highest strings on a standard guitar, and consequently the same chord shapes or fingerings can be used, though the pitch is higher by a fourth. I wanted both those worlds, and changing strings in the middle of a performance is impractical, so I now have two tenor ukes.
Then I got the urge to accompany myself singing, which I do easily enough on my regular old classical guitar. The tenor ukulele pitch doesn't complement my bass baritone voice nearly as well as the guitar does. BUT... there is a baritone ukulele as well. Sometimes called a "tenor guitar," the baritone uke is still only four strings and tuned in the same intervals as the high four strings of the guitar, but the pitches are the same as a guitar as well: DGBE. This opened up a large repertoire of songs and tunes that I have played for years on the guitar, but using the smaller, lighter baritone uke. I'm furiously flipping through pages of a whole shelf full of guitar music and having nostalgic thoughts of Peter, Paul & Mary or Gordon Lightfoot or maybe Bok, Muir and Trickett songs that we could explore.
At least this has kept me busy during the last year of isolation and limited social contacts. Fortunately, we both remain as healthy as can be expected for our age, and nothing bad has developed. This week we received the second vaccination dose of Moderna, and other than a sore arm for two days, no major side effects. The Woodstock Farmers Market is returning to its regular schedule this summer, and we have several gigs on the calendar, so all this musical experimentation should bear some kind of fruit. Or maybe it's all just fruitcake, who knows?
[Next time: the writing edition of this update, some of which has been touched upon already.]
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