Jim
My Stream on Soundcloud
19th Century Tunes
Playing lately:
1924 Gibson A4 - 2018 Campanella A-5 - 2007 Brentrup A4C - 1915 Frank Merwin Ashley violin - Huss & Dalton DS - 1923 Gibson A2 black snakehead - '83 Flatiron A5-2 - 1939 Gibson L-00 - 1936 Epiphone Deluxe - 1928 Gibson L-5 - ca. 1890s Fairbanks Senator Banjo - ca. 1923 Vega Style M tenor banjo - ca. 1920 Weymann Style 25 Mandolin-Banjo - National RM-1
I appreciate everyone's input. I'm very much like Mark in trying to wrap my head around this stuff, especially the chords. I'm really enjoying this thread.
Kevin
Well, here goes nothin'
After speaking with Pete today, I decided to go ahead and try my hand at this improv. One of the beauties of being new to something is that there's no great shame if you suck at it!
I decided to do it in one take, and just stick with the first take. I could mess around with it, and 'fix' it up a little, but no, here it is, clams and all. I couldn't get through the first head without a couple of pretty bad clams. The choruses are straight improv, I practiced a few times since the tune was published by noodling around with scales. Then - when the final head rolls around, I am the most embarrassed. I could not remember the melody! I finally got it back on track somewhat after the B part.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
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"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
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HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
----------------------------------
"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
----------------------------------
HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
..... said to indicate that one is about to start something difficult or exciting - Here goes!
That's cool, des! Congrats for jumping into new waters. I'm thinking you probably had a lot of fun doing this.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
----------------------------------
"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
----------------------------------
HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
Nice Mark and Des! Welcome to the Jazz improv world. It is huge fun
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Pete Martin
www.PeteMartin.info
Jazz and Bluegrass instruction books, videos, articles, transcriptions, improvisation, ergonomics, free recordings, private lessons
www.WoodAndStringsBand.com
Jazz trio
www.AppleValleyWranglers.net
Western Swing music
Here is Marmaduke, a contrafact of Honeysuckle Rose by Charlie Parker. A contrafact is a new melody written to the chord changes of a previous tune.
Here is the music notation for Marmaduke. There is no melody for the B part, but what is written is Parkers improv on the B part changes (changes is jazz slang for chord changes).
There are 3 very common Bebop things I see right away in Birds A part:
Measure 3) the Bb, D, F, A, G lick, basically a Gm9 arpeggio starting on the b3 (Bb) and dropping to the 5th (D) then ascending by diatonic thirds (D, F, A).
Measure 4) the rhythmic figure of 2 sixteenth notes falling on the "and beat of one" in a measure.
Measure 5) the Db note against a C7 chord. This is the flatted ninth and is used as color on a dominant seventh chord.
I hear ALL of these used very often in improvised solos in mid 40s on Jazz.
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Pete Martin
www.PeteMartin.info
Jazz and Bluegrass instruction books, videos, articles, transcriptions, improvisation, ergonomics, free recordings, private lessons
www.WoodAndStringsBand.com
Jazz trio
www.AppleValleyWranglers.net
Western Swing music
https://soundcloud.com/david-martin-...uckle-rose-ddm
Wow, really nice playing in previous posts. My humble offering. Slightly slower, only 3 times through.
<><><>><<><><>
Start slow, fade early
Embedding David's file here
BTW, if anyone uses soundcloud and would prefer to embed their file here instead of sending us to the soundcloud site, Jim Garber has noted in post #26 above how to do that by using the Advanced post feature.
There is another method that I use directly from the Quick Reply screen, and that is to type the soundcloud tags, pasting the soundcloud links between the tags. The soundcloud tags are typed like this:
Last edited by Mark Gunter; Dec-10-2017 at 3:20pm.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
----------------------------------
"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
----------------------------------
HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
Thanks for the early submissions. Any tricks to getting a decent recording with the backing tracks playing? Are you loading the backing track to garageband or just recording the sound from the computer speakers?
That was very pretty, Martin, a nice, relaxed feel to it and I love your tremolo work.
@Mark - I'm sure people do it differently. I loaded the mp3 track into Ableton Live 9 Lite which is what I've been learning to use for recording, and just went with the first take clams and all. I used a wee bit of compression and possibly a wee bit of reverb on the mandolin, don't remember.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
----------------------------------
"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
----------------------------------
HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
What does compression do? Is it necessary? I haven't used it yet. Should I?
It's not strictly necessary, but a bit of properly used compression will make your recordings sound much more professional.
https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials...ion--audio-953
"Compression is the process of lessening the dynamic range between the loudest and quietest parts of an audio signal. This is done by boosting the quieter signals and attenuating the louder signals."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniq...sion-made-easy
Thanks David. I didn't know that was possible.
I just assumed that it was up to the player to play at a consistent volume.
I know I've thrown out many of my own (and others') amateur recordings over the years, because of areas that were too loud vs other areas that were not loud enough. I assumed they were not salvageable.
But, I think I like the preemptive approach better, isn't that part of playing well, to strive for a more uniform volume while playing? I resist the idea of tinkering with selective parts of the music *after* it's recorded, it doesn't seem 'right' somehow. I will go as far as multi-tracking and turning down the treble knob (on the entire track) to cut some of the harshness from cheap condenser mics or shrill piezo pickups, and (sometimes) adding my beloved reverb (well actually the reverb is live through the amp, it's not added later) but that's where I draw the line, so far, anyway. I'm probably just ridiculously old-fashioned...
Maybe I can get used to the idea if I can convince myself that compression is not a correction of the person who's playing, but rather a correction of the recording *equipment*...
Anyway, thank you for the reply and the links, I will read up on that, I clearly have much to learn.
Crutches: I had to use a crutch to get through the song, what I did was make a scratch vocal that called out changes like this:
"Chorus, A ... A ... B ... A ... A1 ..." and at the end of chorus 3, simply "Head."
I had to do this in order to keep track without counting all the changes so I could be free to improvise. I know that this would not work for a live situation, you'd have to keep track of where you are and listen closely for the changes, but this crutch made it possible for me to contribute something. This is just a tip for other newbies who may feel the need to "cheat" a little.
WWW.THEAMATEURMANDOLINIST.COM
----------------------------------
"Life is short. Play hard." - AlanN
----------------------------------
HEY! The Cafe has Social Groups, check 'em out. I'm in these groups:
Newbies Social Group | The Song-A-Week Social
The Woodshed Study Group | Blues Mando
- Advice For Mandolin Beginners
- YouTube Stuff
IMHO, stay away from audio compression...it requires a big learning curve. In acoustic home recordings reverb, eq, mix will be enough. David's recordings sound awesome to me, but maybe he has years of experience. Audio compression has great debate in professional recordings...but that's another story...
Jairo, it's not that hard to learn to use a bit of judicious compression. Plus, like you, I'd rather hear the original uncompressed performance than some of the butchered things I've heard where compressors are used as an audio weapon.
Yes, I do have a history of recording and engineering...but this is something that can be learned. To use compression at the level we want for acoustic mandolin is a far cry from the " big learning curve" stuff used for dance and pop production. It's not that hard to get a good mandolin sound with a little experimentation.
All we need is a simple compressor such as all DAWS have and to set it - and try to find a preset! - that gently makes the mandolin sound better. A bit of EQ that cuts out low frequencies is another common thing to add to the mix.
You are correct in that the big issue is getting a clean recording of a good performance. That is the most important part of recording. All the other stuff means nothing without the same things that people have dealt with since the earliest days of recording in any medium.
A good performance, recorded cleanly.
Of course today, we have more gear in our basic DAWS than most of the folks we love recorded with in decades past.
Thank you for your comment on my recordings, too. I'm still learning how to be my own engineer and producer!
I had bad experiences with compression, maybe due to a very basic audio equipment. But I really think that compression makes acoustic music(Unplugged) sounds flat and dull, if you don´t master it. In home recordings some reverb, eq, good tracks mixing will do the job for amateur musicians...as you said, a good performance, recorded cleanly...
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