Week #130 ~ The Lass of Patti's Mill (The Lass of Pati's Mill)

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  1. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    indeed, I noticed after printing. I was too fast with printing and did not look before. No problem. I have so many versions now. But if you have an own arrangement I would be grateful if you could post it here. Meanwhile I have been working on Eddies, it is different again from Palladian's. I am always to fast and don't look closely. Thanks anyway, all of ye
  2. richardoxley2
    richardoxley2
    Hi everyone I love this tune. here is my version with the tef file my playing is still a bit rough around the edges but here it is

    http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/at...4&d=1319218555

  3. Mike O'Connell
    Mike O'Connell
    Sounds great, Richard. The drone and slide are especially nice. Top notch all around.
  4. richardoxley2
    richardoxley2
    Thanks Mike I have only been playing mando for a couple of months, my first instrument is 5 string Banjo and I have been playing that for many years but this Octave mandolin is remarkable and I love it.
  5. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    Richard, that is one killer instrument. What is it?
  6. richardoxley2
    richardoxley2
    Hi its a reso Octave Mandolin I had it made by a local Luthier
  7. weirtk
    weirtk
    Ok, here's my attempt, I probably should have spent a bit more time actually learning and practising the tune - but what the hey!

  8. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    For not having practised (allegedly) this was perfectly fluent, weirtk.
    One hint: if you pick further away from the bridge, the instrument will yield a fuller tone, especially on the E strings.
  9. weirtk
    weirtk
    Thanks Bertram, and I'll definitely give that little tip a go.
  10. Mike O'Connell
    Mike O'Connell
    Thanks for all your good examples. This past Saturday I had the pleasure of attending a mandolin workshop given by Marla Fibish. It was a very enlightening and entertaining afternoon. I have much to relearn. I can now join in with Jill and say that if you ever have the opportunity to be instructed by Ms. Fibish, do it, you will not be disappointed.

  11. Manfred Hacker
    Manfred Hacker
    Very nice and lyrical, Mike.
  12. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    This week's tune was too beautiful not to catch up on. There were such incredible videos from everyone.

  13. GKWilson
    GKWilson
    Marcelyn? Is that your brand NEWell mandolin. Sweet. Nice pickin' too.
    Nice job by Richard, Weirtk, and Mike O' also.
  14. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    You are correct, Gary. This is my one-day -old carved top from Keith Newell. I'm loving it.
  15. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    Mike - I couldn't see anything that needs re-learning there. Well, I could not hold a pick between fingertips like you do, but there's many good players who get along perfectly with that.

    Marcelyn - that's one sweet-sounding mandolin, but it would be nothing without a master player to match it
  16. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    John Kelly
    I have a question to John, hi

    Until I joined with mando cafe I played mostly irish. But after discovering my new love for scottish recently, I would like to do it right. What makes scottish so distinctiv ? I can easily tell if a tune is irish or scottish in origin. Why?

    And another thing. Will you be adding more lovely tunes to your youtube channel ? I have gone through them several times, for learning. And I wouldn't mind a few more.
  17. John Kelly
    John Kelly
    Mike and Marcelyn, 2 very fine versions from you. Like your backing guitar, Mike, and that new mando sounds just great, Marcelyn.
    Ja'He, you have posed a question here which should bring in a lot of responses and one which has exercised many great minds over the years: What give Scottish music (or Irish or whatever) its distinctive flavour? For me, the Scottish element is got from my trying to interpret the many pipe tunes we have and to attempt to get some of the ornamentation into my playing which you hear from piping. My 2 daughters are both pipers and I play along with other pipers at times, so their influence must perhaps rub off. Fiddle players are another source of inspiration and again the ornaments are whta give the music the flavour. It is always going to be a compromise playing tunes written for fiddle or pipes on the mandolin and in fact I prefer the octave or even bouzouki for many of the tunes as I can get better sustain from them.
    I will be posting further videos, I hope, and thanks for your interest - it is always good to find that someone else wants to listen to your efforts. Remember too that many of us post over on Soundcloud which is a site for posting audio files. I can be found there under the name Mandosounds and Mike, Tosh, Michael, Barbara and Jill and David all have stuff there too, as have others.
    Good luck with your playing.
  18. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    yes, exactly. The ornamentation. I posted a thread somewhere else inquiring about this. Apart from recommendations for literature I didn't get far.

    Do you find a certain recurring pattern in these ornaments ?
    And would they be different in irish or scottish, respectively ?

    http://youtu.be/dS7NxJDp4zQ

    not mando, but this is what I want my mando to sound like, re ornaments
    they are so fast, is I saw them in writing I would probably surprised how complicated they really are

    Just learned from another thread of mine: http://www.mandolincafe.com/news/pub...s_001204.shtml
  19. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    I have encountered different genres within Scottish music that have very different scenarios of performance, different typical instruments and different historical background:

    1 - classic pipe music (ceol mor), played with (you guessed it) pipes (highland pipes, border pipes, small pipes and whatnot); there is a typical repertoire of sets containing March, Strathspey and Reel.

    2 - strathspey and reel societies (SRS) - small orchestras consisting mainly of fiddles and often employing a piano. Their repertoire seems to borrow a lot from pipe music, but they also have a lot of Scott Skinner compositions (there is a thread here about "Hector the Hero", for instance).

    3 - session dance tunes - this is the big overlap area with Irish music; in fact many of the tunes have Irish versions to them, it's kind of coast-to-coast music (across the Irish sea, and in fact across the Atlantic).

    The most conspicuous differences with Irish music are found in #1 and #2, of course (I inadvertently stumbled into a SRS rehearsal once, never felt so out of place and warmly received at the same time). I agree with John re choice of OM/zouk for sustain, because both #1 and 2 employ much of that and the character is easier to reproduce if you got some.

    This list is probably incomplete and faulty. John, feel free to correct me and/or add information.
  20. Marcelyn
    Marcelyn
    Thanks very much, Bertram. You're too kind.

    And so not to turn the discussion away from Scottish ornamentation, Ja He, I'll just say that one thing I'm doing in the style I've chosen to focus on is to look around for recordings of players who embody that particular style to me. I think many times hearing what they do over and over again can be more productive than attempting to disect a style or learn ornamentation out of context. You'll be surprised how things come out naturally once you soak it up for a long time. It's probably best to learn ornamentation along with this, but without emersing yourself in a style it's so hard to make those ornaments sound natural. Case in point, I've been working on triplets, but I have know idea where to put them. I do what I think sounds good, but then hear Jill or someone else around here play the same song with triplets in spots I never would have thought to try and it just works so much better. You're already doing this in much the same way I did, by finding players on You Tube who strike you as embodying a Scottish sound. You could also ask the players here who exhibit that for suggestions on their influences and favorite recording artists.
  21. Brent Hutto
    Brent Hutto
    I have a couple CD's of the Banchory Strathspey and Reel Society and tend to feel vaguely silly listening as often as I do. The tunes are mostly written for much smaller groupings with just a couple of fiddlers and by all rights out to sound overdone or even treacly with such a large group of players all with the same instrument. But it's just beautifully done and still has the lilt I love in those great Skinner tunes and what have you. The standard of ability in a group like that must be quite high for what seems to be a local, amateur orchestra.
  22. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    Lilting
    http://youtu.be/Rm_oaqW_qRM
    We have come a long way off the track. And I started this. Sorry. Or is it ok ? I have been posting too much lately. I have too many questions. I will shut up for a while now and read only, and practise. I am grateful for any information received.
    Bertrams explanation is very good. I have never seen it explained in this way. But what makes a melody distinctively scottish ? Are they not both within the same mode, lydian, mixolodian or dorian ?
  23. Barbara Shultz
    Barbara Shultz
    Ja'he, there's no such thing as too many questions! How's a person to learn, anyway? We here in the group, we like chatting things up, we like to be witty, as well as musical!
  24. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    hi Barbara, each forum has some kind of order and I tend to ignore this by posting questions which should go into another thread. I started one on ornamentation and suddenly I was back here. Actually, I thought John would be the person to ask in the first place. You see, I have another very time consuming job with long hours, working even through the nights. There is inevitably an exhibition coming up next year and I should be working on my paintings. I cannot spend as much time with my mando as I would like to. So sometimes I am looking for a short cut, like with the arpeggios in music o spey.

    Marcelyn and Brent, thanks. On session.org, or was it somewhere else , someone asked if it would be better to start with the crude version of a tune and to incorporate ornamentation later or to learn a tune with the whole thing complete. I believe if one plays a song often enough subconscious and motor activity, ie the fingers memorize the tune and if one starts to change around later one has to start all over again. That is why I want the ornaments ready in place when I start to learn a melody, not to impair the flow later
  25. Bertram Henze
    Bertram Henze
    About "shortcuts":

    An Irish saying goes "to know beauty one must live with it", suggesting that bypassing the natural process is only cheating yourself. It is like those tourist roundtrips of "see Ireland in a week" where, in the end, you've seen nothing.

    Learning the rough outline of a tune first, finding ornaments and re-learning the tune later is a slow process, but it is slow only the first time. For every new tune, the ornaments come easier, more automatically and truly felt. After 20 or so tunes, you'll ask yourself "why did I do that hammer-on there? It sounds good" and you'll have no answer for that. Then you're a Scot (well, almost)

    About analysis:

    If analysis could reveal the secrets of Scottish music, then a machine could compose it. Marcelyn ingeniously called it "dissection" - something you do with dead, not living people; so all you'd find out is about dysfuntional music, not about the real thing. Like Dr. Frankenstein, you'd be assembling dead body parts and wonder why the result is not alive.
  26. Werner Jaekel
    Werner Jaekel
    hello, me again.., guess I needed this, and I am grateful , (and I always took me for half a german, but there you are, life is full with surprises)

    thanks alot Bertram, so far I always downloaded and printed tunes and played them straight from the sheet. It was ok but all the time but I felt something missing. Until I was reading this complaint on session. I knew then that the abc were not complete. That brought me to the topic " ornamentation". I have an old tinwhistle book, in there the author shows some examples of usual patterns. There would be two ways now to proceed. Either I find out if such a thing like "usual pattern" exists or to find out in what way irish musicians usually apply them. Ornaments do have a distinctive character, they could be classical baroque, breton, scottish, irish ....Trying to make them up in my room in the middle of Germany is a futile venture. Every "pure drop" learner ( comhaltas.ie) is also learning the basics of irish music. This is not dissection like a dead corpse but fundamentals. This is not jazz. There are countless threads and comments on session about this, and nearly everybody disagrees with the other.

    I agree with you that it is absolutely necessary to develop a feeling for this kind of music, to listen to this kind of music as much as possible, and to practise every kind of ornamentation of twiddly bits, phrasing, melody variations or rhythmic variation. But I want irish or scottish to sound distinctively irish or scottish. And not someting else.

    In my case I must decide. Do I want to really improve my mando playing and resort to outside information, forum, cd's, books, internet using this short cut, or concentrate on my other job, where I totally rely on my own resources .

    Thank you, theese kind of discussions are important and I regard critsizm as helpful.
  27. Mike O'Connell
    Mike O'Connell
    Manfred, Gary, Bertram, John - Thanks for your good words. One day I’m going to work on double stops like Manfred and Marcelyn. Both of you do these so well.

    John - I’m taking your lead by adding the guitar. It’s like a two man band. The only problem with this is that sometimes the guitar player gets lazy. It’s an uphill battle but I think he’s coming around.

    Bertram - It’s interesting that you mention my pick grip. That was the first (and not the last) thing Ms. Fibish pointed out. Her instruction to me was to tuck my index finger behind my thumb up to the first knuckle. Kind of a modified death grip. When I practice that way I’ve found that my volume has increased. The down side, at lease for now, is that, as Martin says, I’m playing a lot more “air mandolin” (missing the stings completely). I’m working on this a little each day but I’m not obsessed - yet.
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