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Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Here is how to play the key of E on the lower strings of a viola or, mutatis mutandis, the key of B on the lower strings of a violin:
| Note | Finger | String |
| E | 3rd | C |
| F♯ | 4th | C |
| G♯ | 1st | G |
| A | 2nd | G |
| B | 3rd | G |
| C♯ | 4th | G |
| D♯ | 1st | D |
| E | 2nd | D |
Notice no open strings, which oh well.* The first and second fingers are only a half step apart and the first finger is only a half step above the open string, meaning your second finger lands where your first usually does. Other keys this works for: B or F♯ on the upper strings of a viola, F♯ or C♯ on the upper strings of a violin. Ooh! and I just figured out you can start the scale on the fourth finger held in this position (i.e. where the high 3 would usually fall) and that opens up a bunch more keys.  *(Actually the open G string is the minor third, and open D is the minor 7th, so there is some room for using both of them -- last night we were playing "Cocaine Habit", which is in B, and I was getting a lot of use out of slurring D-D♯.)
posted evening of January 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, January 26th, 2008
Awesome! Steve Lahrhoff is playing tonight at Here's to the Arts. My fave local guitarist. Speaking of guitar music: Ed Russell is playing a jazz brunch tomorrow at Cocina, 217 W. 85th. Be the first time I've seen him in a couple of years.
posted evening of January 26th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Guitar
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Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Going to an open jam tonight at Mo Fiddles -- the second one this year, the first I am going to. Really nice -- my last regular jam was the one Citizen Kafka organized in Chinatown, many years back now and before I had even picked up my violin. I'm so happy there is one going on around here.
Such a great evening. Met lots of people I could hit it off with, including Dan of Dan's Bands who knows of a bunch of other bluegrass and old-time jams in the area. So much fun.
posted evening of February 7th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, February 10th, 2008
This afternoon we all three went over to Menzel Violins to hear Kathy Chiavola play music from her recent and forthcoming records. What a voice she has! I bought her record The Harvest, looking forward to listening to that; also looking forward to her next record which will include her "Ghost of the Wild Mississippi", one of the loveliest evironmentalist songs I can think of. On her second set, she asked for musicians to back her up. I volunteered (with some urging from Sylvia) and ended up playing one of Mo's violas (a $500 instrument which served to reinforce my happiness with my cheap model -- not that it was difficult to play or anything but the sound was not noticeably better) with Carl Croce (a distant relative of Jim) on guitar and Dan O'Dea on fiddle. We played on the last three songs -- I was sorry to miss much of the set, backstage. I'm definitely going to start taking lessons with Dan, I got a good sense of what he would be like as a teacher. Another fun fiddle experience this weekend: yesterday we went to a Chinese New Year celebration, where a man was playing èrhú. There were a couple of violinists hovering round asking him to explain the instrument, and he invited us to give it a try. I did and was able to produce a pretty convincing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". | 
二胡 |
posted evening of February 10th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, February 11th, 2008
Further to the point below about my cheap viola being as satisfying to play as the more expensive ones I have tried out -- It seems to be easier to get volume out of it than out of the expensive ones. I reckon the trade-off is that the sound is a little coarser, though my ear is not well-enough trained to distinguish that yet. For the music I play, which is by and large not classical, this is totally acceptable. (Also it could be that if I went one step more expensive, tried playing the $1000 instruments, I would find them to have all the volume of my fiddle plus the smoother sound that I'm postulating the $500 instruments have. This is just guesswork though.)
posted afternoon of February 11th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, February 16th, 2008
So I've been writing these short fiddle tunes over the past couple of months with "Sally" in the title. (You can listen to some of them here.) The new one tonight is called "Sally's Reel", though I'm not totally sure what conditions a song has to meet for a reel to be danced to it; I just sounds kind of reelish. ABC Format or PDF.  Update: renamed to "Sally's Dance" -- Gabe let me know that reels generally have a more even rhythm than this tune. And suggested chords for it!
posted evening of February 16th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, March 7th, 2008
This morning I was thinking about how to do a fiddle accompaniment to "Mama Tried", and I came up with a melody that was pretty distinct from that song. Neat! Thought it over for a while and then hummed it into my cell phone's recorder; so I would have it later on to write down. By the evening I had forgotten it, and listening to my humming wasn't a lot of help. But I tried repeating the process -- thinking about how I might accompany "Mama Tried" -- and came up with two other distinct melodies! This song is like a gold mine. Hoping I will be able eventually to come up with the tune from this morning, I liked it; the two from this evening are Laughing in the Back Yard and Biscuits on the Table.
posted evening of March 7th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, March 8th, 2008
So the first melody I came up with whilst riffing on "Mama Tried", was apparently this one -- not sure how exactly, it doesn't sound much like "Mama Tried" at all.
posted evening of March 8th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Jerry and I practiced this evening for the first time in about a month, and it was productive. We're going to play the open mic at Tierney's next week; our set will be chosen from this list: - Weary Day
- The Louisville Burglar
- Bed on Your Floor
- K.C. Moan
- John Hardy was a Desperate Man
There are other songs we can play pretty well but those five are solid. If you're around Montclair next Thursday evening, come by and check us out. (The fiddle lessons that I have just, in the same past month as we have not practiced, started taking, seemed to really be paying off -- along with the increased amount of practicing I am doing on my own to support them: I was feeling much more confident with rhythms and starting to see some new ornamentations I could apply to vary the melodies and harmonies I play. Also, double stops! Few and hesitant to be sure, but palpable double stops.)
posted evening of March 13th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, March 15th, 2008
For a while my A string has been fraying and in need of replacement -- tonight I put a new string on. Well a couple of things about this: it took a frustratingly long time to get it on and wound properly, a job that should take less than a minute. So I'm frustrated about not being skillful at it. But more, I don't like how long it took me to get around to doing it -- I get intimidated by stuff like this in a really not useful way. Both of these things are also true of sharpening knives, and it drives me crazy that all the knives in my kitchen and most of the blades in my wood shop are not sharp the way they ought to be, and how intimidated I get at the thought of making them sharp. I'm not sure how to approach this.
posted evening of March 15th, 2008: Respond
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