John Kavanagh
Nov-30-2005, 1:43pm
I've been threatening, and here's the beginning - I finally got back in the studio and recorded one of Beethoven's mandolin pieces on the uke.
You guys probably are sick to death of the Beethoven pieces, but they were certainly a pleasant discovery for me, and I've had fun with all four. I've already recorded the uke part to 44a; I was hoping to avoid having to work up the guitar part myself, but it looks like I'm going to have to, and that'll take a couple weeks anyway - it's hard.
Most mandolin performances of this I've heard are slower, with continuous tremolo, and I tried it that way (using a pick), but my tremolo just isn't smooth enough, so I decided to go with fingers after all. And that made me want to quicken it up a little. I left out all the repeats, which hurt, but my thinking was 1] people who buy ukulele albums have short attention spans #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif #2]I like to do it as a pairing with 44a (live and on the eventual CD), and it doesn't seem to balance right if the slow one is longer than the fast. # #
It's not hard to play on the uke (playing the piano part on the guitar gave me more trouble), but it's a sweet and classy little tune, and I'm fairly happy with the uke sound.
Here's the link: http://ezfolk.com/audio/John_Kavanagh
if you'd like to hear it.
Of course I'm not 100% satisfied with my performance, but musically it works for me. Does it work for you?
You guys probably are sick to death of the Beethoven pieces, but they were certainly a pleasant discovery for me, and I've had fun with all four. I've already recorded the uke part to 44a; I was hoping to avoid having to work up the guitar part myself, but it looks like I'm going to have to, and that'll take a couple weeks anyway - it's hard.
Most mandolin performances of this I've heard are slower, with continuous tremolo, and I tried it that way (using a pick), but my tremolo just isn't smooth enough, so I decided to go with fingers after all. And that made me want to quicken it up a little. I left out all the repeats, which hurt, but my thinking was 1] people who buy ukulele albums have short attention spans #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif #2]I like to do it as a pairing with 44a (live and on the eventual CD), and it doesn't seem to balance right if the slow one is longer than the fast. # #
It's not hard to play on the uke (playing the piano part on the guitar gave me more trouble), but it's a sweet and classy little tune, and I'm fairly happy with the uke sound.
Here's the link: http://ezfolk.com/audio/John_Kavanagh
if you'd like to hear it.
Of course I'm not 100% satisfied with my performance, but musically it works for me. Does it work for you?