walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on May 20, 2021 21:46:45 GMT
Calm down Dave. You're alright, you. I like you and want you to stick around.
In spite of your perverse liking for Eurovision.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on May 20, 2021 21:36:22 GMT
I'm glad you have found something you really love. Here's a non-Eurovision song that I'm sure you'll appreciate, too. I'm actually quite fond of this now in a funny sort of way but at the time I was into rock/prog rock et. and still am to a certain extent. I guess it's a nostalgia thing for the 70's where I passed through my teenage years. I don't think I have watched Eurovison since then and I think the turning point was Waterloo which I hated and still do. ABBA of course went on to write much, much better things than Waterloo........... The 70's decade was the best and certainly music wise in my opinion For some background - which you probably know Phil, but I'm in one of my 'that's fascinating!' moods - rather good bass player Herbie Flowers read a book on writing hit songs and while he was ruminating on what he could use as a hook his doorbell rang... Music-wise my heart is is in the sixties, but for sheer quality the thirties have it for me. Ellington, Berlin, the Gershwins, Porter and all those great musical minds like Fletcher Henderson and the Dorseys to name only a few.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on May 19, 2021 8:38:34 GMT
1) He acknowledges that Pentangle was playing trad arrangements in a modern style, and yet he asserts that Fairport were breaking new ground in Folk Rock. I think Pentangle were the groundbreakers here, and not Fairport, although Fairport's use of the rock idiom was more "Rocky". Thoughts? 2) Why does RT sing like that if he's a Londoner? He sings like a Geordie to my ears. I honestly thought he was one. 1. English and American folk songs were already being rocked-up in the skiffle era and folk rock as such already had a long - in rock 'n' roll terms - history in America, such that Dylan was already playing catch-up when he went electric, so were any of them really breaking new ground? The jazzy spin put on folk chestnuts by Davey Graham and Pentangle was decades late, as folk songs, madrigals, chanson and so on were common fodder for experimental musicians across the world. 2. He was trying to sing like a 'folk singer,' I suspect. To sing folk you had to sound Scottish, Irish, West Country (see also Rambling Sid Rumpo) or have lungs groaning with the burden of northern soot. He was probably going for the latter. One of the many things I like about Ashley Hutchings, incidentally, is that he's eschewed that assumed 'folkiness' in favour of sounding like what he is, like a middle class bloke from Muswell Hill.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Apr 28, 2021 8:27:03 GMT
After much experimentation I settled on Martin SPs, which have the sort of balanced, clean sound I like.
I could never get on with Newtones. So slack-feeling and dull that I thought I might as well string my boxes with the elastic bands the postman drops. (If our dogs belonged to breed which can be bothered to make a noise I'd train them to bark at the postman. And people in green wellies.)
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Apr 27, 2021 9:25:20 GMT
That's a good video. Wish something like that had been around when I picked up my first Tele.
I've been thinking about Big Jim Sullivan a bit lately. Jim was a pioneer of country guitar and rockabilly in the UK, going on to master multiple styles and play with everyone from Marty Wilde to George Harrison. I always wish he'd written an autobiography, because he had so many stories to tell.
It was the death of a Bay City Roller that brought him to mind this week. He worked on the Rollers' show and was given a spot during which was supposed to teach them guitar. He liked to say that they were the only ones who didn't get the joke.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Apr 27, 2021 7:41:30 GMT
Can a banjo be recycled, repurposed, unmade? As a devotee of banjos this might have upset me, but in the end it's only a Deering.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Apr 19, 2021 8:52:54 GMT
I know this may sound like a contradiction in terms, Larry, but your mentions of pain and seeking the notes of the chord may be indicators that you're pressing down too hard. Unless you're fighting a cheese cutter action the pressure you need to apply is more equivalent to that of holding a pen than trying to crush something hard. Realising that and adjusting to it made my playing more fluid back in whatever "the day" is supposed to be.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Apr 12, 2021 13:27:53 GMT
I've found Lekato tuners to be better in every way: veracity, durability, chromatic tuning for all sorts of things, clearer display than Snarks. I even found that mine was sensitive enough to tune the head on a banjo (they're best at F#) that lacks a tone ring, while the dedicated violin setting proved equally good for mando.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Mar 30, 2021 8:24:52 GMT
Shubb. Adaptable to most necks and you just buy a new rubber sleeve when that wears out.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Mar 22, 2021 9:28:35 GMT
Hmmm. When does rubato become interpretation and when does it become covering up playing flaws? How easy is it to tell the difference? Do we absolutely have to always play a piece of music the way it has previously been played? If we do, I feel like we are in hell! Most music is composed according to the constraints, fashions, and prejudices of the time - it doesn't seem wrong to me, if that means anything, that those rules can be broken in times to come. But please take all the above with a pinch of salt - I'm basically a philistine! Mark Long live philistines. Vikingur Olafsson would agree with you.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Mar 11, 2021 17:10:52 GMT
Then at the end you feel a drip on your foot, which just kind of sums it up. William Rees Mogg of the foot: a terrible affliction.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Mar 10, 2021 14:23:25 GMT
An eloquent explanation of the physiological and psychological reasons for there being days when we can't play well, aside from brewer's droop of the finger.
The always worthwhile Dr Josh Turknett doesn't explain why I never played well, sadly.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Jan 12, 2021 14:20:39 GMT
I was given a box of Debussy works for piano by a mate, which forced me to me to admit to him (and now to you folks) that I'm a bit scared to play any instrument at present. Covid left me with weak arms and a numbness in my right hand's fingertips which have gradually eased off over the months, but are still there to a degree. It's memories of literally missing the black keys and flailing hits on multiple rather than single strings that make me reluctant to try again as much as anything. I still can't taste beer properly either. I'm not scared of it though. Have you looked at any physical exercises you can do for your arms? Irrespective of long-Covid thing, I'd have thought that there are general circulation and blood flow physiotherapy exercises that might help? I had a fairly random assortment of ailments from October to December 2020 which included pins and needles in my fingers and toes; and some distinct RSI symptoms in my left wrist. I think the RSI stuff was just too much time in a cramped position at a cheap desk. That seems to be fixing itself with an ergonomic keyboard and 'active sitting' chair. But the pins and needles and headaches and tiredness were, it seems, to do with an underactive thyroid, for which I'm now on daily medication (just one pill a day). That seems to have fixed them. The doctors also suggested I might have had, coincidentally, viral labyrinthitis shortly before, as I had a lot of vertigo and nausea. Part of me wonders if I might at some point have had asymptomatic Covid, as both hypothyroidism and labyrinthitis often occur after a virus - and I haven't had a virus to my knowledge. But neither my wife nor son have had any symptoms of Covid though, so it's not likely I suppose. I'm now trying to take better care of myself generally - taking frequent breaks, trying to go out every day, jog a bit, do the youtube PE... It's been a funny time for illnesses; I suspect there'll turn out to have been a lot of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed ailments for a lot of people by the time all this is over. All good ideas, Matt. As it goes I do two sessions each of Tai Chi and walking our dogs a day, and suspect they are what has helped me to progress so far. You may well be right about your having Covid. My wife and son had very mild symptoms that barely showed themselves, where it came at me like waves of brick walls.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Jan 2, 2021 13:49:51 GMT
Yeah. It always seemed an odd approach, both for someone from a bluegrass background and one with an avowed Django influence. Full on chop and roll bluegrass bands can be a challenge to be heard in, while la pompe drew cues from Django's own choice of really loud acoustics. which he then thrashed outright. Maybe Tony decided to rely on the natural volume of dreadnoughts with big soundholes (he had and was inspired by Clarence White's guitar, which was given a big soundhole, whether through accidental damage to its top or design is questionable, for those who don't know) and amplification. Whatever, he was heard, however delicate or complex his rhythm and leads were.
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walkingdecay
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Post by walkingdecay on Dec 30, 2020 15:33:09 GMT
I remember my first encounter with Tony's music really well. It was at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1976, when he appeared as part of a group billed as "David Grisman and Friends." I was looking forward to seeing and hearing Grisman, who I knew mainly from the Grateful Dead's bootleg tape network, seeing him as someone who was somehow reconciling Stephane Grapelli's and Bill Monroe's sounds. Well, Grisman had already moved a lot further on by then, but it was the skinny guitarist who seemed to be playing everything with eyes at least half closed who galvanised my attention.
Tony wasn't just playing Django to Grisman's Stephane: he had a way of navigating the chords that showed familiarity with later and arguably more sophisticated jazzers, had his own spin on blues and bluegrass that went to places my hero Clarence White had been and beyond, all of it combined with solid grounding in the traditional repertoire. Some of Tony breaks were like controlled explosions, spreading out uninterrupted from a suggestion of melody until he'd hit the five with, say, a single note that hung in the air to break the tension, before resolving with a slippery blues lick.
That performance led to long familiarity with Tony's music, which had still more to offer, from lyrical crosspicking which sounded like fingerpicking with a fluidity and crystal delicacy that thumb and fingers couldn't quite achieve to that warm voice, which could have made the country and crossover charts if properly exploited. All seemed for me to culminate in The Pizza Tapes, back with Grisman and with my personal demigod Jerry Garcia, three master musicians exploring their repertoires, with Garcia taking the vocal honours and manifesting the "I'm a thousand years old" feel that arrived in his latter days.
I'll admit that I could never get my pick to move like Tony's, that later on I'd prefer Norman Blake's more robust and timeless styling, but I could still appreciate Tony's work, kept buying the albums until his body betrayed him. The illness robbed the world of his music, his death of a great spirit.
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