"The Coaling" Adopted for Mandolin Students in Abilene

  1. Mark Gunter
    Mark Gunter
    I wrote a tune earlier this year titled "The Coaling", in memory of my great grandfather John Zachary Underwood and in honor of the 9th Louisiana Infantry who fought a bloody battle for The Coaling on June 9, 1862. Some of the newbies may remember when I shared the tune.

    It turns out that this tune has become a hit with students of Mellis Studio here in Abilene. Instructor Danny Ellison liked my tune (we play together sometimes, and I showed him the tune last month.) He told me today that he felt it was a great tune for his intermediate mandolin students - those who were just beginning to play up the neck a bit - and that he's been teaching the tune to his students and they really like it!

    This made my day today. I'm happy that it's being used and appreciated. It's a very simple tune, with an easy transition to second position for the B part and contains one minor chord. I suppose a simple mind can make a simple tune that can be useful, if for nothing else, at least for young mandolin students to use it to practice with.

    I have hesitated to record it again until I can play it at a pretty fast clip and make a multitrack with it and add more instrument parts, but I did whip out a quick video (with slow playing) a few weeks ago so that some of my relatives could hear the basic tune:



    If anyone would like a copy of this tune, I'm making it available here in PDF and Tabledit formats. I think it could be a good tune played a bit faster with some backup, some day I'll do a better version of it on YouTube.

    http://www.markgunter.net/lyrics/The_Coaling.pdf

    http://www.markgunter.net/lyrics/The_Coaling.tef

    MMC Lesson five has been mostly prepared. I ran into technical difficulty this weekend making the third video for it, had to fix it and finish Monday morning, and there is one more video to make before I post the lesson, so ... coming soon.
  2. HonketyHank
    HonketyHank
    I remember and I still like it.
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