I found the Sacred Harp shape note hymn book on-line and have been reading through it. This tune sounded really good on the mandolin. The headless video was made some time ago, pre song a week.
Nice melody. Please post a PDF or ABC, if you have. Are the drones and tremo as written or are you adding? I like muchly. More and more it occurs to me it's all about the right hand, and that playing in a certain style (a la Monroe) is a nice way to interpret tunes for the mandolin, though different than if one would play them on, say, the fiddle.
Hey Don, that is a great tune! If you have access to a scanner, and if you still have the book with the notation in it, you can scan it, save it on your computer, and then use the 'insert image' icon in the reply pane, to put the notation up here! Please! Oh, I see you said you found it on-line... you mean the actual images are online? If so, can you link to it? Ok, I read a little bit more about it (I'd never heard of Sacred Harp shape notes), so I'd be really interested in what it looks like!
There's a small but devoted shape note-singing group in Iowa, Barbara. They do occasional workshops, if you're interested. Contact person is Annie Grieshop, annie@allthingspiano.com.
I'm trying to attach a pdf file. It took me a long time to figure out that the melody is the middle line. Basically I took the melody and did what mromkey suggested--added drones and unison slides a la Compton (Monroe)--to make it work on the mandolin. Lots of interesting tunes in the book, but I can't find the link now. There's lots of videos of shape note singing on youtube too.
Sorry, I can't seem to post the pdf, but you can download it here: http://www.dongrieser.net/files/childofgrace.pdf Enjoy! Remember, the melody is the middle line.
Here is the wikipedia article on shaped note. My mom has some old hymnals with shaped notes.
Don, thanks! The whole shape note thing is interesting! I wonder if there's anywhere you can go to (online) that explains what the shapes mean?
The shapes correspond to the do re mi thing. If you watch a youtube video of them singing, they sing the do re mi fa so la ti of the shapes all the way through the song before they start on the words. I couldn't figure out what they were doing at first. Google sacred harp and you'll find all kinds of resources for it.
Found the link to the book on line: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collectio...610&Format=jpg Enjoy.
