T.O.M 09/2022 Flop Ear Mule

This months Tune of the Month is a great one called Flop Ear Mule, and hopefully you'll be able to take a crack at it. I'm pulling this straight from Barons, Mandolessons.com. He has posted the tune with a lesson, tabs and play along tunes in different tempos.

The song's history begins interesting information that i found on it, at the Library of Congress website, https://www.loc.gov/item/afcreed000033/ . Some consider it derived from a tune called, Detroit Schottische. from around 1863.

Hope you enjoy.

Otto
Pain is only temporary, Success last forever

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Link to Barons lesson @ Mandolessons.com
https://www.mandolessons.com/lessons...op-eared-mule/

One of my all time favorites. I am going to enjoy hearing what everybody does with this tune.

Here is some of what I wrote about the tune when it was our tune of the month back in 2019 (and I am happy to see it come around again!):

Flop Eared Mule was one of my 'go to' tunes when I played banjo back in the 1960's. I wasted a lot of time this month trying to come up with something that sounded like what I used to play. Finally I came to my senses. I mean why would I want to sound like a banjo? Why not sound like a mandolin? So I did a bunch of mix and match stuff from various versions and this how it ended up.

As I did my research on mules, I discovered that what everybody (well at least me) thinks of as the sound a mule makes is really the sound of a donkey. Mules sound more like a horse than a donkey. So all that effort to make the sound of a mule braying is kinda dumb because donkeys bray, not mules. Oh well.

I play it ABAB instead of AABB. For some reason I think it gets boring if played AABB.

https://youtu.be/3a2s8n92P7k

My blog post about this tune is at http://honketyhank.com/2019/07/30/20...op-eared-mule/

Good choice! This is a song I have worked on before in the past, so I'll likely have a go at it.

Here's my version, originally done as a three-song medley (thus the abrupt ending) in the same July 2019 group post as Henry's. It's sloooow!

Here we go, I wanted to try and throw some licks in, double stops to but that didn't work out. Here's recording #2349

Pretty darn good there, Otto. And that is an interesting variant of the B part.

FYI, there is no embedded video in your post as seen in Safari on my new Mac. But it is certainly there in Chrome on my Chromebook and in Chrome on my Windows laptop. And it is not there on my iPhone 12, in neither Chrome nor Safari. Must be an Apple "feature". or, shhhhhh ... perhaps a mandolincafe "feature". Don't quote me on that last speculation.

Using the Advanced Reply button

Test using the Vimeo button:


Test using the generic video button:

End of test

Now a test using the Quick Reply editor. There is only the generic video button:

So it looks like the problem is in Mandolin Cafe's code, specifically in the generic video button. Both attempts to use it in the previous two replies are ignored in the final result.

The one that worked was done by using the "Go Advanced" button, putting the cursor where you want the video to be embedded, hit the Vimeo button (sky blue with a V in it) then entering the clip ID in the dialog box that asks you to enter the "option" for your vimeo tag. I don't know what all that means either but the clip ID is the number in the URL to your video. In this case, your video can be found at https://vimeo.com/755844620 so your "option" to be entered is 755844620 .

Easy Peasy. Got it?

Hey, I didn't write the code for this website.

p.p.s. My guess is that Apple refuses to display the video because the generic button calls up shockwave flash software viewer for the specified video. Flash is known to have security vulnerablilties and is no longer supported by Adobe. My mac is new so I probably don't have it installed as a third party app, so it just gets ignored when a call for it is made.

Thanks Hank. I'm not a YT fan but like using Vimeo. I was trying to be creative with the tune

I only see the one entered with the Vimeo button fwiw

Alrightly, then. It's not perfect, it's kind of slow, and I've got a flying pinky issue going on. But here it is on my 1999 Mid Missouri M-15 mandola, a very fun instrument to play and a great finger stretcher

Nice Sue! That mandola does look like a stretcher but you managed to hit them all cleanly!

Not terrible, indeed! In deed and fact, pretty darn good, Sue. I like it that you used every string, every finger, and just about the whole dang fretboard. Well done! I like the tone coming out of that midmoman, too.

Thanks guys. It's really cool to be able to play the A part in two different octaves, and it was fun figuring where the notes would fall. Whenever I spend much time playing the mandola, it gets me thinking how much fun a 5-course instrument might be.

Five courses? Crazy talk. Might as well go for 6 and get a guitar then

Henry, I just realized you caught me in a hot microphone moment, talking to myself .... er.... to my cats. Yeah, my cats

Good job, Sue! I heard the "not terrible" too. I though it was cute (and you were right!).

RE: Don

Too bad I don't have deep pockets

https://www.mandolincafe.com/ads/196358#196358

That’s awesome Sue. I’m pretty sure you need one
I’m pretty sure I DON’T need one