Report on DADGAD weekend with Ben Walker
Apr 29, 2015 8:55:46 GMT
Martin, Phil Taylor, and 6 more like this
Post by ocarolan on Apr 29, 2015 8:55:46 GMT
WARNING - this is a long report. If you prefer to give it a miss in favour of a shorter version, then perhaps it’s best if I begin with a short summary -
SHORT SUMMARY: It was good, very good indeed.
Those wishing for a bit more detail might care to read on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you -
“Whole weekend course, PLUS concert with Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker - a fabulous chance to escape from it all and immerse yourself in a full board break, learn from one of the UK's finest acoustic guitar players in stunning surroundings. Call us for more details or to book - 01984 618274. Places are strictly limited to ensure everyone gets time with the tutor. Book early.”
It was the blurb that got me hooked - Halsway Manor is only a few miles away on the other side of the Quantocks from where I live. Their website gives loads of info about their activities.
I’ve played there on several past occasions as part of a ceilidh band, as half of a fiddle/guitar duo, and at one of their Sunday sessions, though I haven’t been there recently, and I’ve never stayed there. They put on a lot of folky type events, though the majority seem to be dancing related in some way or other. However, since Gavin Davenport (gavdav) went to work for them, there have been a few more less-dancey things.
Many of you are aware of my avoidance of DADGAD, though I have dabbled in it, mostly thanks to encouragement from Dave White (davewhite) and his glorious guitars which sing out especially wonderfully in this tuning. I have written half a dozen tunes in it, but don't feel comfortable there, and have forgotten how to play those tunes I have written - perhaps I should check out my book! I thought maybe a whole weekend being stuck in the Devil’s Tuning might help me get over my reluctance to use it, and encourage me to persevere.
Initially the main reason I wanted to go on the weekend was to see Ben and Josienne perform on the Saturday evening, and being forced to play in DADGAD for a whole weekend seemed to be a small price to pay for that! I could have bought just a concert ticket, but the lure of a weekend with other players was too much and so I booked, firstly as a day visitor, but later decided to change my booking to residential. Yes I do live near, but the prospect of cooked breakfast and evenings in the bar without having to drive home proved too strong.
And so it was on Friday afternoon that I drove the 5 or 6 miles over to Halsway Manor,
and found myself arriving as Ben and Josienne were unloading their stuff. Great to meet them at last! Booking in was simple and smooth -
No problem, thanks very much! You can just see my window on the right, top floor beneath the pointy bit of roof.
And so I went up to my large and comfortable room, fully equipped with double and single beds, three sets of towels, and three sets of those toiletries they make especially for very small people. Lovely view out of the window over the valley to the Brendon Hills - sorry there’s no picture of this - the one I tried to take was spoiled by attempting to take it through the window glass at an angle.
Began meeting other guitar players in the bar, which opened half an hour before tea (or dinner if you’re being posh). The course was deliberately limited in number of places and we were sharing the Manor with an Arts and Crafts weekend event. The guitarists were pretty identifiable and we had mostly said at least hello to each other by the time the gong went and we filed into the dining room. Lovely meal, served to us - leek and potato soup, chicken and veg, fruity meringuey thingy. Not a trace of garlic or glurk anywhere - bliss!
Our guitar activities were to take place in the dining hall, but the tables only occupied about one half of this and we were able to use the other end of the room just by moving one of the tables and it’s chairs in order to begin the Friday evening introductory session.
Ben welcomed us all and let us introduce ourselves and give him a rough idea of our previous experience in using DADGAD and some idea of what we hoped to gain from the course.
He outlined his approach and distributed materials with assurances that he hoped everyone would take things at their own pace, and that he would not be expecting anyone to “perform” at any stage. He would, however, hope to spend time with each of us individually during each session to talk about particular problems, ideas etc. Good!
He began by briefly outlining the distinctive nature of the tuning and its particular character. It then became apparent that we were to begin with some technique exercises - in standard tuning - yay!
Joy was short-lived when we were presented with a fiendishly finger mangling pattern of octaves ascending and descending chromatically - “The Spider”. It could be easy enough to play in a “cheating” fashion but the fingering and positional requirements of the exercise called for the use of a different pair of left hand fingers for each octave pair of notes. Serious concentration was needed to make the intended fingers do their thing in the right places!
Fortunately the next exercises were considerably simpler, and involved various hammer-on and pull-off patterns. It was still not easy to keep all the notes consistent in volume though.
Chord arpeggios followed with the intention of emphasising a different note each time through to develop the right hand ability to pluck slightly more strongly with each individual digit, ie pima, pima, pima, pima ... etc - obviously an important factor in enabling a melody to stand out wherever it falls in a spread of other accompanying notes.
As far as I can remember, we than adjourned to the bar! No beer on tap, but some good local brews in bottle. No single malt whisky, though there was Jamesons whiskey on offer. (I had a cunning plan to improve the latter situation, more of which later.)
I think everyone was rather tired as most folk had been at work all week, and the evening had been quite brain-bending. We did have a few tunes before retiring though -I passed my mandolin around, and Kai (guitar maker on the course - details later) passed one of his guitars around, but it didn’t develop into a full-blown session due to the aforementioned general tiredness. The result being that by 11 o’clock everyone except me had gone to bed! Lightweights. Was it something I said?
Unnaturally early bedtime for me then! Comfy bed, excellent night’s sleep - my specialist subject is sleeping. I got up in plenty of time on Saturday morning and had a bit of a wander around the grounds before breakfast.
Breakfast itself was a self service job, and very nice too - full range of cooked stuff as well as cereals and juice etc. The toasters were incredibly slow though - note to self - put toast on before eating bacon, egg, hash browns, mushrooms tomorrow morning then it’ll be ready when I want it.
The first workshop of the day began shortly after breakfast with a very quick recap and feedback from all on yesterday’s content. And so, to DADGAD, and a brief run through some first position chord shapes before moving on to scales to demonstrate how a two or sometimes three-fingered pattern could allow for consecutive scale tones to be played up and down the neck and across the strings.
A Martin Simpson tune with which I was unfamiliar, Shepherd’s Delight, followed. It was a relatively straightforward single note at a time melody but did have tricky moments in some of the timing in relation to pull-offs going from a weak beat to a strong one.Ben played the thing at lightning speed, then much more slowly - the latter being our goal! We spread out all around the large room to work individually as Ben progressed around each of us in turn offering help, suggestions and encouragement tailored to each individual.
Coffee break and workshop two followed. Again, we began with a very quick recap on how things were going before moving on to Ben’s arrangement of the Carolan tune Princess Royal. I’ve never played this, but was glad to be familiar with the melody. After Ben playing it through at his chosen speed, and then more slowly it seemed that the key he had chosen, Gm certainly allowed for some lovely campanella passages, and his arrangement didn’t look too difficult to grasp. Well, apart from one particular short passage (there’s always one isn’t there?!) which is still giving me difficulties with the fingering.
After a little discussion we were encouraged to spread out again and have a bash at it, or to continue with the previous workshop material as we wished. With a dozen or so people in the room it did get a little cacophonous at times. A couple of people did go off to quieter corners elsewhere, but most of us stayed in the same room. I found that turning around to face the wall or window helped a lot in enabling me to play more quietly but still hear myself against the background sounds of others playing. And there was of course the inevitable guitar admiring - here's Gav checking out his old Washburn parlour guitar extensively restored by Kai, who is looking on. This was a lovely guitar with an instant response and a much richer tone than might be imagined.
I spent a fair bit of the time looking out at the lovely view whilst playing. My discovery of the year was that my otherwise seldom used Snark tuner made an excellent clip to attach my music/tab sheet to the curtain. I felt very smug. It was also quite relaxing to stand to play (clipping the sheet higher up the curtain) as I was getting a bit tense and hunched over whilst sitting concentrating on something new.
Lunch was a self-service ham/cheese/salads/bread sort of thing. Obviously some glurk to be expected here, but easily avoidable - full marks to the catering team!
Workshop three began with recaps and debriefs, problem sharing as before, after which we continued to work on the material so far, interspersing this with bits of socialising and how-are-you-getting-on-with-it moments. In view of the number of Fylde guitars present we set up a Feast of Fyldes photo opportunity -
l to r - Peter's Alexander; Ben's multi-scale Falstaff and his Alchemist; Gav's custom Leonardo and his Oberon; my custom Alexander.
I really enjoyed playing Gavin’s old Oberon, and Ben’s new custom multiscale Falstaff. One chap, Richard, fell for Fyldes in a big way, and spent any spare moments playing my custom Alexander or Peter’s standard Alexander. He’s hooked. There’s no hope for him now - he even put the picture on his Facebook page there and then with the words “...almost everyone here seems to play a Fylde guitar. I don’t currently have a Fylde guitar...”. Love the use of “currently”. Anyway, I kept a close eye on him at packing up time just in case.... ;-)
Tea break and chat soon came and went. Workshop four was down to be used as we wished, so although during the previous workshops we’d done a fair bit of talking in twos and threes, this time we did very little serious practice but spent more time on guitar chat, trying other guitars and generally being geeky about string gauges, woods and nailcare.
One participant, luthier Kai Toenjes, had brought several of his instruments along and had set them up on display for anyone to try whenever they wished. There were three guitars, an arch-top f-hole mandolin and an arch-top bouzouki - all beautifully made and good sounding, and I did rather fall particularly for a fat-bottomed girl. (on the left, below)
Kai is German, and is married to a French lady who makes hurdy gurdys. Their website is well worth a look.
claire-dugue.com/stringed-instruments/
Discussion continued in the bar before tea, oh alright then, dinner. Can’t remember what the starter was, but it was braised steak and veg next, with cheesecake and bilberries for pud. Nice.
The eagerly awaited concert from Josie and Ben was the next event. I’ve been a huge fan of their music for a while now, but to be watching and listening from only a few feet away was a delight. The concert was open to non residents too, and enough tickets had been sold to comfortably fill the hall.
Josienne began by placing their Radio 2 Best folk duo award on the small stage by her mug of tea,
and warned us that all their songs are sad, miserable and rarely anything approaching up-tempo, and off they went.
Most of the time Josie just stood and sang (just - hah!) but occasionally she sat and played too, which showed that she was far more competent at playing than she lets on.
Ben’s arrangements on nylon-strung guitar and each of his steel-strung Fyldes were a delight. Always musical, elegant, subtle and sophisticated. Always supportive of, and complementary to Josie’s sublime singing. He made excellent use of tonal differences and dynamic range throughout, but especially in his intros, in between vocal lines and in instrumental verses present in some of the songs. Technically very accomplished, but always sensitive to the needs of the song. True musicianship in action.
They commanded the stage, and held the audience just where they wanted by sheer musicianship rather than any unnecessary histrionics. Josie’s between song banter was always quietly self-deprecating in a wryly amusing way, with some well-appreciated digs at “guitar nerds” here and there.
Neither of them is especially comfortable as yet with applause (which was profuse), as Josie mentioned a time or two, and the whole “encore” routine they do find embarrassing. They handled it with good humour though, and were kind enough to return twice to give us a couple more songs. It still left us wanting more... but that is a good thing really!
Back to the bar for more chat etc. Any further playing seemed rather superfluous, so as soon as the room started to thin out and the bar lady began packing up, the four guitarists at my table with whom I’d shared my “cunning plan” EACH bought a small Jamesons (to get a decent glass) and I fetched my bottle of The Glenlivet from my bedroom.
Richard, one of the four, was kind enough to get a huge box of his home made flapjack from his car - it was delicious, and provided a perfect sweet and oaty accompaniment to the whisky.
Ben’s table also benefitted from the whisky and munchies, though they had to drink out of their pint glasses, which, thankfully, they didn’t fill... One by one people disappeared until only Kai and I remained. The bar lady had closed up the bar, but was keeping an eye on us I think - so I asked her to join us for a drink, which she seemed happy to do. So it was a slightly later night this time, but still only one o’clock (early by Halifax standards!) when the whisky ran out and we decided to call it a night after helping the barlady clear away the remaining glasses into the dishwasher ready for the morning staff to deal with.
And so, to bed.
Good night’s sleep though briefly interrupted by cramp in my leg - haven’t had that for ages - hope my hopping and stumbling around to relieve it didn’t disturb the person in the room below.
Down just in time for another excellent breakfast and then the first morning workshop, when Ben allowed me a few minutes to publicise Acoustic Soundboard Forum and then he introduced another Carolan tune - Planxty Lady Athenry. Altogether more sophisticated was this, with some fiendish stretches and a bassline that often had notes slightly later than expected - lovely arrangement. I find it hard to work on anything until I can sing the tune in my head so I got Ben to play just the melody, which helped a lot.
But on splitting up to practise again, I’d forgotten it! Plenty still to catch up on though, so I returned to working on Princess Royal for most of this session. It was good to have the motivation to keep on at something for a fair period of time - at home I tend to move on to something else far too quickly if what I’m trying doesn’t seem to be working out. I also had a bash a DADGAD version of a couple of the Carolan tunes I normally play in standard tuning - interesting, and with some helpful advice from Ben I could envisage the possibilities more clearly.
I carried on with exactly that after coffee and although didn’t actually complete anything to my satisfaction I did get various bits scribbled down that I’ll return to at some point.
Sunday lunch - again, I’ve forgotten what the starter was, but the roast pork etc, followed by apple crumble and cream was spiffing. The roasties were especially excellent!
The one afternoon session was a brief summing up, with Ben answering any final questions and, almost reluctantly, playing us a couple of things.
We filled in a questionnaire for Halsway Manor and had a general chat with Ben about whether we felt we’d achieved our aims for the weekend. “Yes” was the general feeling!
We did think that the word “Masterclass” in the advertising blurb might have been a little misleading - tends to imply that we would be granted an audience with Ben, who would proceed to dazzle us with his playing, leaving us little time to play much ourselves. Ben is far too modest to take that approach, so fortunately the course was very practical and possibly “Workshop” might have been a more appropriate title. I mentioned earlier that this weekend was my first experience of this kind of thing. As it turned out it was Ben’s first experience of leading such a weekend! It certainly didn’t show, and I thought he handled the whole thing extremely well. His unassuming and gentle manner was encouraging and inspiring. Tick v.g.
When the debrief was over, we were given free rein to do whatever we thought best. Inevitably we mostly tried each other’s instruments for quite some time! Here's my "workstation", temporarily abandoned -
I’m not very fond of, or good at, goodbyes, but did try to get round everyone for a chat before leaving. Tired but happy, as they say! And with lots to think about as well as some very happy memories.
In conclusion I must say that it was a grand weekend, extremely good value for money (£210); lovely location; great venue with comfortable accommodation and lovely food. I really enjoyed meeting and spending playing and social time with the other participants. The guitar related content was excellent and more than lived up to my expectations and the evening concert just sublime.
Not having videoed any of the concert I thought that if you've ploughed through all of this report then you well deserve to hear Josienne and Ben in the video of their stunning performance after having received their Radio 2 Best Duo Award last week.
Must add huge thanks to Gav for organising the weekend, to Halsway Manor and staff for hosting it, to the other course participants (Sarah, Beverly, Debbie, Jocelyn, Kai, Dave, Jon, Richard, Peter and Gav) for being great company, to Ben for being such a helpful teacher, superb player and great bloke, and to Josie for being such a sublime singer and lovely lady.
When's the next one?!
Keith
P.S. My Alex is still in DADGAD...
SHORT SUMMARY: It was good, very good indeed.
Those wishing for a bit more detail might care to read on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you -
Halsway Manor
Guitar retreat and DADGAD Masterclass with Ben Walker
Guitar retreat and DADGAD Masterclass with Ben Walker
“Whole weekend course, PLUS concert with Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker - a fabulous chance to escape from it all and immerse yourself in a full board break, learn from one of the UK's finest acoustic guitar players in stunning surroundings. Call us for more details or to book - 01984 618274. Places are strictly limited to ensure everyone gets time with the tutor. Book early.”
It was the blurb that got me hooked - Halsway Manor is only a few miles away on the other side of the Quantocks from where I live. Their website gives loads of info about their activities.
I’ve played there on several past occasions as part of a ceilidh band, as half of a fiddle/guitar duo, and at one of their Sunday sessions, though I haven’t been there recently, and I’ve never stayed there. They put on a lot of folky type events, though the majority seem to be dancing related in some way or other. However, since Gavin Davenport (gavdav) went to work for them, there have been a few more less-dancey things.
Many of you are aware of my avoidance of DADGAD, though I have dabbled in it, mostly thanks to encouragement from Dave White (davewhite) and his glorious guitars which sing out especially wonderfully in this tuning. I have written half a dozen tunes in it, but don't feel comfortable there, and have forgotten how to play those tunes I have written - perhaps I should check out my book! I thought maybe a whole weekend being stuck in the Devil’s Tuning might help me get over my reluctance to use it, and encourage me to persevere.
Initially the main reason I wanted to go on the weekend was to see Ben and Josienne perform on the Saturday evening, and being forced to play in DADGAD for a whole weekend seemed to be a small price to pay for that! I could have bought just a concert ticket, but the lure of a weekend with other players was too much and so I booked, firstly as a day visitor, but later decided to change my booking to residential. Yes I do live near, but the prospect of cooked breakfast and evenings in the bar without having to drive home proved too strong.
And so it was on Friday afternoon that I drove the 5 or 6 miles over to Halsway Manor,
and found myself arriving as Ben and Josienne were unloading their stuff. Great to meet them at last! Booking in was simple and smooth -
“..is it alright if we give you single occupancy of a room for 3 people - it’s up two flights of stairs? The single room we had you in is more accessible for another guest.”
No problem, thanks very much! You can just see my window on the right, top floor beneath the pointy bit of roof.
And so I went up to my large and comfortable room, fully equipped with double and single beds, three sets of towels, and three sets of those toiletries they make especially for very small people. Lovely view out of the window over the valley to the Brendon Hills - sorry there’s no picture of this - the one I tried to take was spoiled by attempting to take it through the window glass at an angle.
Began meeting other guitar players in the bar, which opened half an hour before tea (or dinner if you’re being posh). The course was deliberately limited in number of places and we were sharing the Manor with an Arts and Crafts weekend event. The guitarists were pretty identifiable and we had mostly said at least hello to each other by the time the gong went and we filed into the dining room. Lovely meal, served to us - leek and potato soup, chicken and veg, fruity meringuey thingy. Not a trace of garlic or glurk anywhere - bliss!
Our guitar activities were to take place in the dining hall, but the tables only occupied about one half of this and we were able to use the other end of the room just by moving one of the tables and it’s chairs in order to begin the Friday evening introductory session.
Ben welcomed us all and let us introduce ourselves and give him a rough idea of our previous experience in using DADGAD and some idea of what we hoped to gain from the course.
He outlined his approach and distributed materials with assurances that he hoped everyone would take things at their own pace, and that he would not be expecting anyone to “perform” at any stage. He would, however, hope to spend time with each of us individually during each session to talk about particular problems, ideas etc. Good!
He began by briefly outlining the distinctive nature of the tuning and its particular character. It then became apparent that we were to begin with some technique exercises - in standard tuning - yay!
Joy was short-lived when we were presented with a fiendishly finger mangling pattern of octaves ascending and descending chromatically - “The Spider”. It could be easy enough to play in a “cheating” fashion but the fingering and positional requirements of the exercise called for the use of a different pair of left hand fingers for each octave pair of notes. Serious concentration was needed to make the intended fingers do their thing in the right places!
Fortunately the next exercises were considerably simpler, and involved various hammer-on and pull-off patterns. It was still not easy to keep all the notes consistent in volume though.
Chord arpeggios followed with the intention of emphasising a different note each time through to develop the right hand ability to pluck slightly more strongly with each individual digit, ie pima, pima, pima, pima ... etc - obviously an important factor in enabling a melody to stand out wherever it falls in a spread of other accompanying notes.
As far as I can remember, we than adjourned to the bar! No beer on tap, but some good local brews in bottle. No single malt whisky, though there was Jamesons whiskey on offer. (I had a cunning plan to improve the latter situation, more of which later.)
I think everyone was rather tired as most folk had been at work all week, and the evening had been quite brain-bending. We did have a few tunes before retiring though -I passed my mandolin around, and Kai (guitar maker on the course - details later) passed one of his guitars around, but it didn’t develop into a full-blown session due to the aforementioned general tiredness. The result being that by 11 o’clock everyone except me had gone to bed! Lightweights. Was it something I said?
Unnaturally early bedtime for me then! Comfy bed, excellent night’s sleep - my specialist subject is sleeping. I got up in plenty of time on Saturday morning and had a bit of a wander around the grounds before breakfast.
Breakfast itself was a self service job, and very nice too - full range of cooked stuff as well as cereals and juice etc. The toasters were incredibly slow though - note to self - put toast on before eating bacon, egg, hash browns, mushrooms tomorrow morning then it’ll be ready when I want it.
The first workshop of the day began shortly after breakfast with a very quick recap and feedback from all on yesterday’s content. And so, to DADGAD, and a brief run through some first position chord shapes before moving on to scales to demonstrate how a two or sometimes three-fingered pattern could allow for consecutive scale tones to be played up and down the neck and across the strings.
A Martin Simpson tune with which I was unfamiliar, Shepherd’s Delight, followed. It was a relatively straightforward single note at a time melody but did have tricky moments in some of the timing in relation to pull-offs going from a weak beat to a strong one.Ben played the thing at lightning speed, then much more slowly - the latter being our goal! We spread out all around the large room to work individually as Ben progressed around each of us in turn offering help, suggestions and encouragement tailored to each individual.
Coffee break and workshop two followed. Again, we began with a very quick recap on how things were going before moving on to Ben’s arrangement of the Carolan tune Princess Royal. I’ve never played this, but was glad to be familiar with the melody. After Ben playing it through at his chosen speed, and then more slowly it seemed that the key he had chosen, Gm certainly allowed for some lovely campanella passages, and his arrangement didn’t look too difficult to grasp. Well, apart from one particular short passage (there’s always one isn’t there?!) which is still giving me difficulties with the fingering.
After a little discussion we were encouraged to spread out again and have a bash at it, or to continue with the previous workshop material as we wished. With a dozen or so people in the room it did get a little cacophonous at times. A couple of people did go off to quieter corners elsewhere, but most of us stayed in the same room. I found that turning around to face the wall or window helped a lot in enabling me to play more quietly but still hear myself against the background sounds of others playing. And there was of course the inevitable guitar admiring - here's Gav checking out his old Washburn parlour guitar extensively restored by Kai, who is looking on. This was a lovely guitar with an instant response and a much richer tone than might be imagined.
I spent a fair bit of the time looking out at the lovely view whilst playing. My discovery of the year was that my otherwise seldom used Snark tuner made an excellent clip to attach my music/tab sheet to the curtain. I felt very smug. It was also quite relaxing to stand to play (clipping the sheet higher up the curtain) as I was getting a bit tense and hunched over whilst sitting concentrating on something new.
Lunch was a self-service ham/cheese/salads/bread sort of thing. Obviously some glurk to be expected here, but easily avoidable - full marks to the catering team!
Workshop three began with recaps and debriefs, problem sharing as before, after which we continued to work on the material so far, interspersing this with bits of socialising and how-are-you-getting-on-with-it moments. In view of the number of Fylde guitars present we set up a Feast of Fyldes photo opportunity -
l to r - Peter's Alexander; Ben's multi-scale Falstaff and his Alchemist; Gav's custom Leonardo and his Oberon; my custom Alexander.
I really enjoyed playing Gavin’s old Oberon, and Ben’s new custom multiscale Falstaff. One chap, Richard, fell for Fyldes in a big way, and spent any spare moments playing my custom Alexander or Peter’s standard Alexander. He’s hooked. There’s no hope for him now - he even put the picture on his Facebook page there and then with the words “...almost everyone here seems to play a Fylde guitar. I don’t currently have a Fylde guitar...”. Love the use of “currently”. Anyway, I kept a close eye on him at packing up time just in case.... ;-)
Tea break and chat soon came and went. Workshop four was down to be used as we wished, so although during the previous workshops we’d done a fair bit of talking in twos and threes, this time we did very little serious practice but spent more time on guitar chat, trying other guitars and generally being geeky about string gauges, woods and nailcare.
One participant, luthier Kai Toenjes, had brought several of his instruments along and had set them up on display for anyone to try whenever they wished. There were three guitars, an arch-top f-hole mandolin and an arch-top bouzouki - all beautifully made and good sounding, and I did rather fall particularly for a fat-bottomed girl. (on the left, below)
Kai is German, and is married to a French lady who makes hurdy gurdys. Their website is well worth a look.
claire-dugue.com/stringed-instruments/
Discussion continued in the bar before tea, oh alright then, dinner. Can’t remember what the starter was, but it was braised steak and veg next, with cheesecake and bilberries for pud. Nice.
The eagerly awaited concert from Josie and Ben was the next event. I’ve been a huge fan of their music for a while now, but to be watching and listening from only a few feet away was a delight. The concert was open to non residents too, and enough tickets had been sold to comfortably fill the hall.
Josienne began by placing their Radio 2 Best folk duo award on the small stage by her mug of tea,
and warned us that all their songs are sad, miserable and rarely anything approaching up-tempo, and off they went.
Most of the time Josie just stood and sang (just - hah!) but occasionally she sat and played too, which showed that she was far more competent at playing than she lets on.
Ben’s arrangements on nylon-strung guitar and each of his steel-strung Fyldes were a delight. Always musical, elegant, subtle and sophisticated. Always supportive of, and complementary to Josie’s sublime singing. He made excellent use of tonal differences and dynamic range throughout, but especially in his intros, in between vocal lines and in instrumental verses present in some of the songs. Technically very accomplished, but always sensitive to the needs of the song. True musicianship in action.
They commanded the stage, and held the audience just where they wanted by sheer musicianship rather than any unnecessary histrionics. Josie’s between song banter was always quietly self-deprecating in a wryly amusing way, with some well-appreciated digs at “guitar nerds” here and there.
Neither of them is especially comfortable as yet with applause (which was profuse), as Josie mentioned a time or two, and the whole “encore” routine they do find embarrassing. They handled it with good humour though, and were kind enough to return twice to give us a couple more songs. It still left us wanting more... but that is a good thing really!
Back to the bar for more chat etc. Any further playing seemed rather superfluous, so as soon as the room started to thin out and the bar lady began packing up, the four guitarists at my table with whom I’d shared my “cunning plan” EACH bought a small Jamesons (to get a decent glass) and I fetched my bottle of The Glenlivet from my bedroom.
Richard, one of the four, was kind enough to get a huge box of his home made flapjack from his car - it was delicious, and provided a perfect sweet and oaty accompaniment to the whisky.
Ben’s table also benefitted from the whisky and munchies, though they had to drink out of their pint glasses, which, thankfully, they didn’t fill... One by one people disappeared until only Kai and I remained. The bar lady had closed up the bar, but was keeping an eye on us I think - so I asked her to join us for a drink, which she seemed happy to do. So it was a slightly later night this time, but still only one o’clock (early by Halifax standards!) when the whisky ran out and we decided to call it a night after helping the barlady clear away the remaining glasses into the dishwasher ready for the morning staff to deal with.
And so, to bed.
Good night’s sleep though briefly interrupted by cramp in my leg - haven’t had that for ages - hope my hopping and stumbling around to relieve it didn’t disturb the person in the room below.
Down just in time for another excellent breakfast and then the first morning workshop, when Ben allowed me a few minutes to publicise Acoustic Soundboard Forum and then he introduced another Carolan tune - Planxty Lady Athenry. Altogether more sophisticated was this, with some fiendish stretches and a bassline that often had notes slightly later than expected - lovely arrangement. I find it hard to work on anything until I can sing the tune in my head so I got Ben to play just the melody, which helped a lot.
But on splitting up to practise again, I’d forgotten it! Plenty still to catch up on though, so I returned to working on Princess Royal for most of this session. It was good to have the motivation to keep on at something for a fair period of time - at home I tend to move on to something else far too quickly if what I’m trying doesn’t seem to be working out. I also had a bash a DADGAD version of a couple of the Carolan tunes I normally play in standard tuning - interesting, and with some helpful advice from Ben I could envisage the possibilities more clearly.
I carried on with exactly that after coffee and although didn’t actually complete anything to my satisfaction I did get various bits scribbled down that I’ll return to at some point.
Sunday lunch - again, I’ve forgotten what the starter was, but the roast pork etc, followed by apple crumble and cream was spiffing. The roasties were especially excellent!
The one afternoon session was a brief summing up, with Ben answering any final questions and, almost reluctantly, playing us a couple of things.
We filled in a questionnaire for Halsway Manor and had a general chat with Ben about whether we felt we’d achieved our aims for the weekend. “Yes” was the general feeling!
We did think that the word “Masterclass” in the advertising blurb might have been a little misleading - tends to imply that we would be granted an audience with Ben, who would proceed to dazzle us with his playing, leaving us little time to play much ourselves. Ben is far too modest to take that approach, so fortunately the course was very practical and possibly “Workshop” might have been a more appropriate title. I mentioned earlier that this weekend was my first experience of this kind of thing. As it turned out it was Ben’s first experience of leading such a weekend! It certainly didn’t show, and I thought he handled the whole thing extremely well. His unassuming and gentle manner was encouraging and inspiring. Tick v.g.
When the debrief was over, we were given free rein to do whatever we thought best. Inevitably we mostly tried each other’s instruments for quite some time! Here's my "workstation", temporarily abandoned -
I’m not very fond of, or good at, goodbyes, but did try to get round everyone for a chat before leaving. Tired but happy, as they say! And with lots to think about as well as some very happy memories.
In conclusion I must say that it was a grand weekend, extremely good value for money (£210); lovely location; great venue with comfortable accommodation and lovely food. I really enjoyed meeting and spending playing and social time with the other participants. The guitar related content was excellent and more than lived up to my expectations and the evening concert just sublime.
Not having videoed any of the concert I thought that if you've ploughed through all of this report then you well deserve to hear Josienne and Ben in the video of their stunning performance after having received their Radio 2 Best Duo Award last week.
Must add huge thanks to Gav for organising the weekend, to Halsway Manor and staff for hosting it, to the other course participants (Sarah, Beverly, Debbie, Jocelyn, Kai, Dave, Jon, Richard, Peter and Gav) for being great company, to Ben for being such a helpful teacher, superb player and great bloke, and to Josie for being such a sublime singer and lovely lady.
When's the next one?!
Keith
P.S. My Alex is still in DADGAD...
).
Jo whoever he is.
