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Nov. 11th, 2003 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI think my back is slooowly getting better.
I actually managed to go to my mandolin lesson yesterday (yay!).I couldn't sit down and play, and ended up kneeling on the floor in order not to tower over my teacher (I'm not generally uncomfortable about being tall, but looooming over people makes me self-conscious). We went through Little Rabbit, which I didn't play as well as I'd hoped, but went well enough, I guess. It has a tricky part in the B section that I have to hit just right--if I miss the first measure I can't climb back on again until the C section (this piece has 5 sections, which is part of what made it so hard to learn). Unfortunately this was precisely the part I missed. I can play it at home, most of the time, really!
Now I have a new piece to work on. I think I'm getting better at picking them up during the lesson--I managed approximations of pretty much all the parts of it. At different times, and not in order, but still. It's called Cherokee Shuffle--Roy (my teacher) says it's used as a theme song by an all-night bluegrass radio show here in the area (why do they call it a radio "show"? Shouldn't it be a radio "tell"?)
I even hang out at the shop for most of an hour after my lesson (much of it spent lying on the carpet) talking to Lloyd (the owner) and looking over a beautiful new mandolin he just got in. While trying to tune and play it I discovered that the bridge was in the wrong place--this can happen to mandolins; the bridge isn't glued to the instrument, but just held in place by the tension of the strings running over it. Real mando players can move their bridges anytime they want but I'm scared to try it. I might never get it back to the right place.
Anyway, once Lloyd has moved the bridge back into place, he tunes the new mando to my mando, and noodles around on it a bit. He says to him it's a guitar turned upside down. I need to sit down and work this out at some point, but maybe he's right. On the other hand, I have no problem looking at what his fingers are doing and working out what chord that must be from first principles--which seems to impress him no end. "D, B and F#--that's a B-minor" I don't even remember when I learned to do this--certainly as an adult, probably as part of Echo's Children, but I don't remember ever actually thinking about it. Modes, now--modes I have to think about.
Lloyd gets so involved in noodling on the new mandolin that I never actually get to play it much. Oh well, I wasn't serious about it. It's nearly a thousand dollars and I have a perfectly good mandolin. Besides, it's an F-hole (two long skinny holes that frame the strings) with a scroll (this odd little curl that some mandos have where the neck joins the body--some people fasten their shoulder strap to it) and I like the A-style mandolins (central soundhole like most guitars, sort of teardrop outline for the body). I just wanted to pet it a little.
That's pretty much the first time since I hurt my back that I've been out of the house (aside from retrieving my canoe on Friday). Eventually I limp on home and spend most of the rest of the day lying down. But I did get in a pretty good walk before my lesson--including a friendly dog I made the mistake of patting; he followed me all the way home. I hope he made it back to his house okay. And I did my back exercises and a load of laundry. So it wasn't a wasted (or even an all-music) day.
I actually managed to go to my mandolin lesson yesterday (yay!).I couldn't sit down and play, and ended up kneeling on the floor in order not to tower over my teacher (I'm not generally uncomfortable about being tall, but looooming over people makes me self-conscious). We went through Little Rabbit, which I didn't play as well as I'd hoped, but went well enough, I guess. It has a tricky part in the B section that I have to hit just right--if I miss the first measure I can't climb back on again until the C section (this piece has 5 sections, which is part of what made it so hard to learn). Unfortunately this was precisely the part I missed. I can play it at home, most of the time, really!
Now I have a new piece to work on. I think I'm getting better at picking them up during the lesson--I managed approximations of pretty much all the parts of it. At different times, and not in order, but still. It's called Cherokee Shuffle--Roy (my teacher) says it's used as a theme song by an all-night bluegrass radio show here in the area (why do they call it a radio "show"? Shouldn't it be a radio "tell"?)
I even hang out at the shop for most of an hour after my lesson (much of it spent lying on the carpet) talking to Lloyd (the owner) and looking over a beautiful new mandolin he just got in. While trying to tune and play it I discovered that the bridge was in the wrong place--this can happen to mandolins; the bridge isn't glued to the instrument, but just held in place by the tension of the strings running over it. Real mando players can move their bridges anytime they want but I'm scared to try it. I might never get it back to the right place.
Anyway, once Lloyd has moved the bridge back into place, he tunes the new mando to my mando, and noodles around on it a bit. He says to him it's a guitar turned upside down. I need to sit down and work this out at some point, but maybe he's right. On the other hand, I have no problem looking at what his fingers are doing and working out what chord that must be from first principles--which seems to impress him no end. "D, B and F#--that's a B-minor" I don't even remember when I learned to do this--certainly as an adult, probably as part of Echo's Children, but I don't remember ever actually thinking about it. Modes, now--modes I have to think about.
Lloyd gets so involved in noodling on the new mandolin that I never actually get to play it much. Oh well, I wasn't serious about it. It's nearly a thousand dollars and I have a perfectly good mandolin. Besides, it's an F-hole (two long skinny holes that frame the strings) with a scroll (this odd little curl that some mandos have where the neck joins the body--some people fasten their shoulder strap to it) and I like the A-style mandolins (central soundhole like most guitars, sort of teardrop outline for the body). I just wanted to pet it a little.
That's pretty much the first time since I hurt my back that I've been out of the house (aside from retrieving my canoe on Friday). Eventually I limp on home and spend most of the rest of the day lying down. But I did get in a pretty good walk before my lesson--including a friendly dog I made the mistake of patting; he followed me all the way home. I hope he made it back to his house okay. And I did my back exercises and a load of laundry. So it wasn't a wasted (or even an all-music) day.
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Date: 2003-11-11 11:08 am (UTC)Bridge positioning: Measure the distance from the nut to the 12th fret. That distance is halfway to the bridge. When I change all of the strings, I put a little piece of Scotch tape or Post-it note around all of the corners so I don't have to measure again. I don't make any permanent marks because over time the bridge position can move a little bit, and besides permanent marks are so icky.
(By the way, I'm Pat Connors, the filk mandolin player from Phoenix, AZ. Just found your journal in the last week or two.)
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Date: 2003-11-11 12:43 pm (UTC)Thanks for the tip on bridge positioning. When I change the strings I generally change one at a time so the remaining seven will hold the bridge more or less in place. I'd heard that you can position the bridge by comparing the pitch of the string fretted at the twelfth nut versus the first overtone--the overtone's always a perfect octave, so if it's high, the bridge is too close... but then you get into the issue of stretching the string when you force it to the fret, so the pitch is a little higher than it would be if you could stop it without stretching it...and I get confused and throw up my hands. I never thought of measuring it before.
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Date: 2003-11-11 11:09 am (UTC)The word "spiel" in "The Awful German Language" means play an instrument, gamble, and speak.
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Date: 2003-11-11 12:45 pm (UTC)"spiel"--from which we get "schpiel"? a (semi-prepared) speech to convince us to buy or do something which we will probably regret?
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Date: 2003-11-11 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 11:12 am (UTC)Tom Tuerff - local guy - is left handed but plays regular guitars upside down. He says watching me play the mandolin is sort of like looking at himself in the mirror.
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Date: 2003-11-11 12:52 pm (UTC)I mostly play melodies on the mandolin, and chords on the guitar, which makes the differences much more noticeable than the similarities. :-).
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Date: 2003-11-11 02:11 pm (UTC)sometime just to see what happens.
F C G D A E
Weirder than my cittern even...
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Date: 2003-11-11 11:17 am (UTC)Pretty new mando sounded nice too, maybe you'll get to pet it some more next time? I like the look of the kind with the curl at the top, have never played one though, mine is the hole in the centre kind.
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Date: 2003-11-11 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 04:10 pm (UTC)Cherokee Shuffle is in the fiddler's fakebook, but I've never actually learned it. Good on you for starting to learn by ear early!
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Date: 2003-11-13 07:35 am (UTC)