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Peter Hackman
Nov-01-2007, 7:10am
My second installment in the nostalgia series is included here mainly for philosophical reasons. I recall that we felt compelled to include a couple of fast standards. One such tune would be Shucking the Corn, on which I usually played five or six improvised choruses, and one I didn't really like. There were others like it. Key of G; fast, no time to think or shape my ideas.

However I CANNOT recall ever doing Foggy Mt. Breakdown - we deserve credit for that !!!!!!

And, as a mandolin player I had to play this one. It's one of 5 or 6 Monroe numbers that I play and I do like it, and it's probably the only 160 bpm tune I would attempt today for reasons of age (63) and maturity (let's call it that).
What would my mythical band, the Amazing Slowdowners, do with it?
What do YOU do with it (good question, that's the point of my post). Do we need it at all?

This is March 1969. Monroe's version was issued on LP in 1965
and I heard it in 1966 before I really got started on mandolin (I'm not sure when I began but I got serious about it in late 67 or early 68).

Records were the only source we had in those days, at least in Europe.
My attitude then as now was by all means do your own thing on a tune but know it first. I wonder how many mando players in those days
who, like me, slowed down their turntables to half speed to capture every single note (and a few more) and perhaps a few (very few in my case) of the nuances.

The mandolin is my twopoint blonde Levin Aristokrat, set up low, which accounts for at least some of the differences in sound and feeling
from the original.
Apparently my idea was to play the first A part straight both times, and improvise my variations on the second part, both times. I would probably do it that way today (but wilder on the ad lib A sections) but I would never, given my expanded knowledge in harmony play the B part the same way twice. I would inevitably spice the reprise with jazzier notes and figures.
This is a "rhythm bridge" mind you!

http://www.huthyfs.com/music/rawhide.mp3

JeffD
Nov-01-2007, 11:48am
I wonder how many mando players in those days
who, like me, #slowed down their turntables to half speed to capture every single note (and a few more) and perhaps a few (very few in my case) #of the nuances.
I don't have as many years, perhaps, behind the 8 string, but I do have a few, and I did that. I was new to the mandolin, and I though I loved playing it, I really did not know what kind of music I wanted to play. So took records from my Dad's collection of LPs and slowed them down.

My Dad was not really into a specific genre of music, so his collection was really the popular music of the time.

I would put quarters and dimes on the record. I found that about $1.50 slowed it down enough to play, and then with dimes I would fine tune to get it the pitch accurately a fifth down.

I learned a bunch of tunes that way. An eclectic mix of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Roger Miller (King of the Road), Greek music (Never on Sunday, Zorba), Hank Williams, Ernest Tubbs, Dixieland (Pete Fountain), what ever I could find. I had no shame and hardly any taste.

I would learn the tune exactly as played on the LP - i.e. I had no idea what was a standard part of the tune and what was individual style or improv.

What I miss most from those days is the total lack of performance anxiety - I was a beginner (a good one, but a beginner nonetheless), and nobody expected me to get it right. So it was a big deal when I did.

Nowadays as soon as I take out my Gibson A2, the expectation is that I know a thing or to.

Keep posting this stuff, its great, and I love the reminiscences.

Peter Hackman
Nov-04-2007, 3:51pm
I really like the story; it gives a new, very concrete, perspective on intervals.

When I posted this I hoped for some kind of response about the tune and its possibilities - it's been available on LP and CD for 42 years, been packaged
and repackaged, played by many people and possibly played to death. What is left there to do with it? How does everybody else approach that tune and other BG standards?

In the jazz world Miles Davis was noted for his way with standards he'd been playing for years - the greatest example would be My Funny Valentine. To me it seems he takes for granted that people know it because he only hints at the melody in the first chorus. If I play some simple jazz standard like Honeysuckle Rose I don't play the melody at all. If I play Georgia on My Mind I state the verse because nobody knows it, and only blow on the chorus, because everybody knows it.

On Mandozine you can read and play Jethro's Rawhide and Thile's Rawhide. They don't play the notes that I thought were essential! By the time I had it together I heard a live version of Monroe's. All the detail that I strove to copy was missing; there was no high reprise either. It was a more percussive,
sketchy
and rhythmic thing. I decided to stick with what I had, and possibly add some more detail, as a reaction.

As I said before , I'm curious how other people approach it - if at all. #But #purely musical questions rarely give rise to very long threads.