After doing the Niel Gow recording using local scenery I got the idea to put together a tune of my own with the place which I named it after - Glen Massan, a beautiful glen (valley to the non-Scots out there) very near my home here in Argyll. The piano accordion is the lead instrument and the mandolin provides backing and some lead in the second part; a melody line and a few synth chords added to the mix too. The accordion is played by my fellow band member and very good friend Derek Macdonald. Thanks for looking.
John, that was just beautiful. Care to share the ABC;s with us? would love to learn this one! Michael.
Beautiful!
On second thought, John, why not suggest this one for song-of-the-week??? it would get my vote, for sure Michael
Michael and Manfred, thanks for feedback. I am not a user of abc at present, Michael, but have just downloaded ABCEdit and had a play with it and so far have got the tune down in a basic form and it seems to play back a midi version, but I am struggling as to how to get this from the program to prospective users! I click on the "Export" button then "pdf show and print", but nothing seems to happen fromthere on. I can copy the staff notation which is there and the abc notation and paste them to a Word file, but this is not how to do it, I am sure. Any help/pointers very welcome. I usually work with standard notation as it suits guitar, mandos and keyboards and when I am teaching younger pupils I tab out the tunes for them as mando tab. Look forward to any advice from any more experienced members here
lovely stuff John - well done!
Thanks, Jill. Always good to get positive responses from good players like yourself and the many others in this group. Gives us all a reason to keep plodding on.
John, sorry i can't help out w/ that program. I cannot read standard notation or ABC but i shucked out 60 bucks for the Tabledit app and it converts ABC to TAB,which i CAN read LOL. took me forever to figure that app out as the "help" file wasn't helpful at all!!! Finally getting some output out of it but it's as painful as pulling teeth. Michael
Michael, and anyone else interested, here is a link to the abc of my tune Glen Massan, which Michael was kind enough to ask for. http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/at...7&d=1265737775 Abc is new to me as I have said, but I have managed, using abcExplorer, to get this file composed which you might be able to use. I have the music as straight staff notation and could add this in a *.doc file and post like this, if this works. Many thanks to Barbara for once again pointing me in the direction of being able to attach files here. Trying an mp3 too, but having trouble uploading it so far; any hints?
John. FanTasTic. It plays a little slow on my Midi but the tune is beautiful and it's next on my to-learn list. (at my current stage, slower is better thx again Michael
WOW John, that's what I call living tradition. All fits together. Is that your house at the end? I have noticed that your ABC seems to play the B part only once, while your video is repeating it (and rightfully so). Here is a version of the ABC with that repetition: X:1 T: Glen Massan % title C: John Kelly % composer O: Scottish Waltz % origin. M: 3/4 % meter L:1/8 % length of shortest note Q:100 % tempo K: D % key V:1 % voice 1 F3#ED2|A3F#A2|B3cd2|AF4#A| B3AB2|d3BB2|A2F2#D2|E6| F3#ED2|A3F#A2|B3cd2|AF4#A B3AA2|d4F#F#E3DC2|D6| F3#ED2|A3F#A2|B3cd2|AF4#A| B3AB2|d3BB2|A2F2#D2|E6| F3#ED2|A3F#A2|B3cd2|AF4#A B3AA2|d4F#F#E3DC2|D4A2||: B3cd2|A3F#A2|B2c2d2|A3F#A2| B3cd2|d2e2f2#|f3#ed2|e4z2| F3#ED2|A3F#A2|B3cd2|AF4#A| B3AB2|d3AF2#|E3F#E2|D6:||
Thanks very much, Bertram. The idea of the living tradition is very interesting! The house in fact belongs to a friend of mine and is very near the start of the glen. This abc format is fascinating - I have never worked with it before and am beginning to get the idea of how it works; previously I had not realised that it could be converted from the abc format to staff, etc. Thanks for the additional input to the file. I kept it short as I was unsure if it would even "travel" properly from me to the wider world! There's so much to learn about the whole format such as adding chords, etc. Enjoy playing it and maybe post a version here?
John and Bertram, thx for the ABC, both versions. I am also new to this format and never learned standard notation, however, i bought the Tabledit app and it does many amazing things. it will convert the ABC to TAB, (which i CAN read LOL) and also standard notation. i haven't experimented with all of the other things it can do but i can add notes/chords and then export in several different formats. BTW, John, in the Video..... where were the sheep?? Slante' Michael
Michael, good question about the sheep. I have observed that in Scotland, going from east to west, the number of sheep decreases, while the number of midges increases - and Argyll is in the very west. Btw it's spelled "Slainte" Oh my, now you have made me thirsty, thank you very much, 3 hours to go in the office...
Bertram, are you serious about the sheep? hmm I noticed the same t'ing in Ireland. The midges out in County Kerry nearly carried us away. maybe a universal kinda ovine karma?? Oh, thanks for the correct spelling, (i sould have just said it was a typo!!! lol) Michael
That is really beautiful...it sounds like it was yanked out og the 1600's and dropped into my ears.
John, here's my video of your lovely tune! No multi-tracking (boy, that makes it a lot quicker to make!), played on my Collings MT2O mandolin. That's actually sunshine on my face, woo hoo! You can tell I've been practicing chords on my cittern, as my picking is from the elbow, and I've gotten much better (usually) when playing the mandolin, in having my picking come from my wrist more!
Barbara, what can I say! Someone wants to play a tune I wrote; reminder to self - get doorways widened to allow passage of head which will grow considerably Lovely rendition and a great tone on that mandolin. By the way, the title seems somehow to have become Glen Hassen on your video, rather than Glen Massan! The midges of the glen will be after you along with the sheep. Incidentally, the sheep were away that day, Bertram and others, and the west is full of sheep, mainly the very hardy Blackface in our area of Argyll. They need to be tough to survive the winters here - and the spring, summer and autumn too. It's tough being a sheep.
Ooops...sorry about the mis-title! I'll change it on the YouTube itself, but it'll just have to stay mis-titled on the video!
Oh, the Blackface, yeah. I remember seeing them on Skye, too. But just a few at a time, scattered over the hills. On the other hand, the one time I saw huge clouds of them moved by dogs was in Perthshire. Maybe that's how I got that impression. But I insist about the midges thing... None at all in Fife, but clouds of them along the Crinan Canal - in the rain! How they avoid getting hit by raindrops is a mystery to me. The other mystery is how you get such large bumps from so tiny animals. I once wandered over the Quiraing mountains on Skye, hoping to sit quietly on a cliff top and gaze over at Lewis and Harris. I sat there alright, but my hands kept waving round my face all the time
Here goes. This tune is so dreamily self-fluent that sometimes I suddenly wake up with a start, like "where am I?" Btw I have provided a sheep for this video. It's a rather flat one, right behind my back
Very nice, Bertram!
Bertram, that is a really good version of my tune! It is interesting comparing it with the one by Barbara and great to hear it from the perspective of players who are coming to it as simply another tune to be learned and interpreted by them. Should I give up the day job yet? Wait, I am retired already! By the way, this whole sheep thing is obviously getting to EWE people We'll have folk flocking to this thread soon. Sorry!
By the way, many thanks for credit in your YouTube title!
Great tune, John. My Grandmother was born across the firth in Greenock, so I've got some Scots blood in me. Here's my version on my Weber octar with some concertina, guitar and bass. I stole some photos of Glen Massan from the internet for the movie part.
Thanks Barb! John, I consider it an honor to cooperate with a composer while he is still alive, seeing as how so many of our tunes are by dead people It is all tradition, in the sense of Latin tradere = to pass on, which has worked so well all these centuries - why should it stop now? Your tune once more shows it has not stopped. Music is not for museums. Without contemporary composers, we'd just be accumulating stale versions of same old same old. No reason to widen doors for a bigger head, though - like the player, the composer is doing a conversion job - he receives spiritual beauty and turns it into music, while the player turns music into sound waves; we are all working at one production line and may share the beauty and enjoy the results together, making others hear what we feel. Ok, I'll stop pontificating for now David, that tiny concertina does it megabig again. Like a child's voice, making an old man weep.
David, this is a great interpretation of the tune, well arranged and very well played. You acknowledge ancestry in Greenock and around 52 secs and 1 minute 52 secs the stills you use show the view across the Holy Loch onto the Firth of Clyde and into Greenock! Nostalgia rules. Bertram's comments about living tradition are interesting and the whole idea of keeping music alive is the root of all our efforts, I am sure. Many thanks to Barbara, Bertram and David for taking the trouble to learn the tune and then interpret it in their own ways, and let's hope we can continue to work together through this Social Group. Derek, who plays accordion on our version, was commenting the other day, while listening to B's and B's versions, on just how small our world has become via the internet and the great amount of cross-fertilisation that goes on now because of this. Isn't life just great!
Life IS great!
Ha! At last I find out what B&B means!
Bertram and Barbara, gee, I always thought it meant Bed & Breakfast!
This tune is now on thesession.org, at http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/10276
Hi Bertram, Just noticed your latest posting here. Thanks for spreading the word, or rather the tune. Never anticipated it getting into the annals of something like thesession.org! Makes me feel all grown-up!
Beautiful tune, John. I'm hoping Michael will post the tab so I can give it a go. hint-hint- Just think, someday we'll be able to say we knew you when you were an undiscovered songwriter on Mandolin Cafe.
Here are the TABs for John's song, sorry it took so long. http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/at...7&d=1266444244
John, sorry it took so long to get this posted. My Sweetheart wanted a new kitchen sink for Valentines day (go figure!) and the fingers on my fretin' hand lost lost an uneven match with a 1/2 inch drill. sorry, i also truncated the second B part. but i love this piece and hope to hear more. Michael http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvEjmMJj56E
Michael, Nicely played and thank you for the tab.
Interesting, intricate chording there, Michael. Shame on me that I didn't do more of that in my version.
Michael, thanks for producing the tabs for Glen Massan. I have had a look at and a listen to your offering on YouTube and want to compliment you on your version. I did not attach the chords to the melody when I uploaded the abc file - did not know how to do that as it was my first try at abc notation - so here are the chords I used in the original. Feel free to re-arrange as you see fit and as your ears tell you; our kind of music is all about how we interpret it. There is often discussion over whether to play the V7 or the straight V chord, and a playing colleague here says that minors belong down coal mines! Glen Massan chords: Key D major: PartA D//:D//:G//:D//:G//:Bmin//:D/D7:A7//:D//:D//:G//:D//:Bmin//:D//:A7//:D//:: PartB G//:D//:G//:D//:G//:Bmin//:E7//:A7//:D//:D//:G//:D//:G//:D//:A7//:D//: Repeat as you wish. Hope this helps, though I am sure everyone has already worked out their own chords. Lets hear some more versions, folks.
BlueMt, Bertram, & JK, thanx for the kind words. John, i don't know how to add the chords to the abc's or tef files either, i just kinda worked them out from the notes. i'll play around some more with it and try to figure it out. AND I'll try to post the TABs faster in the threads Michael
Just been experimenting with the new toy - a Sanyo Xacti camcorder - and have made a video of a song written by a couple of friends. It is a song, bay of Storms, which ahs a particular attraction for me as it is written in praise of the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll, my place of birth and the county in which I have spent almost my entire life (though not yet, I hope!). It features still and video shots filmed in Kintyre and on the Island of Islay which is another of Argyll's beauty spots and had many songs dedicated to it. There is my mandolin towards the end of the song and again my bandmate Derek on accordion and synth keyboard. Audio done once again in Reaper and video clip edited and published using Sony Vegas Moviestudio HD. It has a very simple YouTube upload facility and this time I hope I have got the link right, having had to re-do this post as I messed up the linking an hour ago! By the way, Eddie Maguire, the co-writer of the song, has a brilliant website at machrihanishbirds.org.uk as he works as a nature warden in that area. He supplied some of the still pictures for the video, and many thanks to him for this. Enjoy
Very nice! For some reason (I think YouTube is having some issues!) this says embedding disabled by request, watch on YouTube, but, when I clicked the Watch on YouTube, it did at least take me to where I could see/hear it!
Beautiful song, JK. great Vid also!
Sorry, Barbara, the embedding was disabled by mistake by the clown who made the video - ME! Have sorted it out now. I was thinking about the syndicating filter rather than the embedding filter. Good of you to make the extra effort to see it. Thanks to both you and Michael for kind comments.
John, thanx for the lovely tune. here is my fast and lose take on it. [youtube]HjCuk5K66To[youtube] mc
Michael, you have certainly got a hold of this one quickly and I like your instrumental-only interpretation; hadn't thought of doing that with it, but I might add it to The Old Bores repertoire now as a Scottish waltz. I'll let the composers know there is another version on offer on YouTube now! Thanks again.
Thanks, John. hope you didn't get too hard by that storm. Speaking of storms I just couldn't wait to figure out your latest tune. I hit i few bad notes there but, as you may have noticed, there is a half empty bottle of wine on the bookcase to my left the youtube embedding didn't work last night (or it was the wine) so i'll link it again thx again mc
Been playing about with a tune today which is a favourite of my two daughters, who both play it on their bagpipes. It is Banjo Breakdown, and in spite of its name I first heard it as a bagpipe tune. Here I am playing my octave mando and tenor banjo. http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/at...0&d=1270159201 I have music and mando tab for it done on Sibelius software, so it may be adaptable to other programs or .tef files if there is any interest. I'll have a look at this. Can anyone remind me (I think it was Barbara who first pointed me to the way to upload mp3 files) of how to load the player so that I do not need to download the file then open it in my software porgram to hear it?
John, just realized i forgot to credit the Good Ol' Bores for the tune on Youtube. corrected it just now. mc
Sorry, don't know how to do the mp3 thingy.
Bump
