…with a clipon pickup, to make it more accurate. Korg brand, FYI. I had a real nice Boss tuner that was going ‘off’ gradually. A 12-string shares some characteristics with a sitar—the harmonics of some guitars can get real tricksy: not all 12s, but some, have a secondary resonance on some pitches that just drives you nuts trying to tune them. My old birdseye maple Martin had a raft of hidden resonances. This far more modest Ibanez’s B and E are particularly a pita.
For those of you who haven’t seen a 12 string close up, every note has 2 strings, a high and a low, except the highest, which has 2 of the same.
The Ibanez is a ‘knockoff’ guitar, ie, patterned on a more expensive one, is far quieter than the maple one; and I rejoice to say this plugin sensor that clips to the headpiece is a joy and will tune it perfectly in less than five minutes. Do me credit, after the last time Mike Briggs worked it over, I was able to keep it *almost* in tune for months of not playing it. But—almost in tune is the most painful of all.
So I’ve resolved I want to play again. It’s been 10 years. My eyesight is such I have to memorize the lyrics—because I can’t read them at the range your music sits at most filks. But—I want to try. So I clipped the nails on the left hand and plan to spend a bit each day, getting my calluses back—they return fast, if you’ve ever had a really good set of them. Nothing like the pain of the first time. The first time—you just plan to bleed and play on… Now—my fingers will get a little zingy for a few hours, but that will go by the next day; etc. And after a couple of weeks they’ll have a nice callus.
Why a 12? Dunno. I decided I wanted to learn guitar back in the 80’s, so I went down to the store and tried some. I tried the 6 and it hurt like hell. The 12 double strings spread out the contact so to me it doesn’t go straight to the bone the way the 6 string does. And I like the sound.
I’m not much for listening to music of any kind unless I’m equally armed. I can’t sing worth a damn unless I have a guitar in hand. Then I can stay on pitch, mostly. 😉 Be warned, world.
I’ve always thought that this beautiful Victorian song might be suitable for fantasy fans. I think it would be easy enough to play on a guitar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SN0GLx5Vmo
The Faery Song
How beautiful they are,
The lordly ones
Who dwell in the hills,
In the hollow hills.
They have faces like flowers
And their breath is a wind
That blows over summer meadows
Filled with dewy clover.
Their limbs are more white
Than shafts of moonshine:
They are more fleet
Than the March wind.
They laugh and are glad
And are terrible:
When their lances shake and glitter
Every green reed quivers.
How beautiful they are,
How beautiful,
The lordly ones
In the hollow hills.
The words are by Fiona Macleod (a pen-name for William Sharp), and the music by Rutland Boughton from an operetta called The Immortal Hour.
And here’s another you might like:
John Barleycorn
(traditional)
There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They’ve ploughed, they’ve sown, they’ve harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead
They’ve let him lie for a very long time, ’til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They’ve let him stand ’til Midsummer’s Day ’til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John’s grown a long long beard and so become a man
They’ve hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They’ve rolled him and tied him by the waist serving him most barbarously
They’ve hired men with their sharp pitchforks who’ve pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he’s bound him to the cart
They’ve wheeled him around and around a field ’til they came unto a barn
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They’ve hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he’s ground him between two stones
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can’t hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can’t mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn
http://www.stevewinwood.com/news/6126
(the chords)
thank you!!!!
I’m familiar with the version of John Barleycorn recorded by Traffic back when I was but a wee Blue bairn lad, or mayhaps nae born yet. But it’s a very fine song indeed. Medieval folk being all ironical and the like, aye.
An’ if’n I kenned half as aught I thought I kenned, I’d have recalled Steve Winwood was in (or was) Traffic. Yer pardons, all. (Listening now to the song. Very fine.)
he was, and he was also in the Spencer Davis Group. You can hear him singing, “Gimme Some Lovin'”
The Faery Song is a lovely song for a tenor audition. I shall have to find some sheet music; good thing it’s not ’til June… It will be nice to have something new to present.
Followed your nice link, back to an era where people who sang in public had lessons first, saw something else, wandered off the path and ended up in a video piece about Stephen Fry, for which I thank you. (He and Hugh Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster are brilliant.)
Not hard at all…all chords I actually know. 😉
The c major chord, however, will be the death of me.
I was chiseling mortar beside a window once. It was really strong mortar. I fetched it a really good whack with a regular hammer, and got my index finger instead.
Ironically, I was taking a break from writing Wave without a Shore. The scene where the guy’s fingers get broken. I wrote the rest of that scene with, yes, my hand packed in ice. It didn’t heal quite straight—might have, if I’d gone to the doc, but hey, that meant money, and a cast, or the like, and I needed to write. It’s gotten a little crookeder as time passes, but guitar is real good for dealing with the sort of arthritis I have: you have to stretch and push.
My speed is also not what it was: a 3-chord transition on as many syllables, not there yet.
But hey, it’s been years. It’ll come back.
I discovered that for more than 40 years, I’d been holding the guitar with a death grip on the strings. That’s because my first guitar had the strings so far above the frets I had to literally choke the neck in order to play anything. That led to a terrible habit which I’m still trying to break, even with my 6-string which has a beautiful action. I suspect that might be part of the cause of your finger woes with a 6-string. I just had the action overhauled by a certified luthier at Guitar Center in Dayton. My 12-string Ibanez, just like CJ’s, already has a great feel to it, but I don’t play it as much as the 6-string. It’s just a little hard to finger-pick a 12-string.
It’s all muscle memory, like riding a bike.
Pick through that transition, and let on to folks that it’s a stylistic thing?
I say if the vocals and guitar both slow down at the same time through that transition, and you look like you meant to do it, then we’ll just not investigate any further 🙂
Personally, I switched over to the little Snark tuners. Actually managed to tune my u-bass (uke with really thick strings tuned E-A-D-G at the same pitch as a double bass, but still fits in my compact car)
Oh, I can do it. Just not on the 2nd day back. 😉
Another favorite is Fairport Convention’s version of Tam Lin. Not too many chords, and the vocal range is narrow, so just pick a key.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fairport+convention+tam+lin&mid=62B7AB7203DB00A10BBF62B7AB7203DB00A10BBF&view=detail&FORM=VIRE6
Suffering with you on the callus situation: After five years of playing mostly electric bass, my old band wants to do a reunion show, which means back to guitar, specifically acoustic during the initial practices. My fingertips are already hardening back up. And I agree with Sandor, a piece can be adapted to the situation, and more folks would probably like the variation performed than those who would notice the variance from the original. Are you planning on taking a guitar to the OKC con if you are progressing well at that point? Lastly, off-topic, how large comparatively is one of the shipping cans that are referenced in the A/U or Chanur series? Thanks!
I’d be interessted in that too. But I recall Goldtooth smuggled Tully to The Pride in a life-support container inside a can of, here it is–Chanur Saga pg 273, “a cascade of warm shishu fruit”. So that makes the “can” something around 10′ long, and 4-5′ in diameter. Something like?
Ah! The canisters. Forgot the cannisters. For a canhauler like Hammer, which takes them externally in a clamp, the canisters are cylinders the size of a two-story house, up to a hundred meters in length, and there may be several depending on mass of contents. The typical cylinder of the sort delivered dockside via machinery, is about 10′ long by about 6′ diameter. These fit neatly into the racking mechanisms. Other containers for the controlled temperature area can be as small as people-sized, or big enough for two stout people, depending on contents. A ship prefers not to take odd-sized or odd-shaped cans or containers unless for a serious surcharge. If you’re not using all of a canister, you can combine with somebody, but that’s your problem to arrange: extra stuff MUST be on the manifest. Smuggling is frequent, but chickens can come home to roost—especially if you really annoy a merchanter.
So for the hani ships Hammer’s “canisters” would be like their own “holds”? The Pride blew off her holds to run for Urtur. Sounds like something Hammer could do…
Further for relative sizes, Tully shared breeches with Haral, the largest of The Pride’s crew, themselves tall for hani as lowland Chanur. So if we presume something near 6′ for Tully, I gather the average hani would be 5′ to maybe 5’6″? Fala Anify, of the small and graceful mountain Anify sept, more like the 5′ size?
Relative sizes, yes. But the Pride’s mechanics are somewhat different than the Alliance ships. They both use cans: if you don’t ‘contain’ things in freefall, you end up with an electrostatic mess all over. But the Pride does have the ability to open the holds and the clamps and dump cans out. If the machinery releases them, and the Pride is moving…remember, unlike the movies, the Pride can move straight ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘forward’ or ‘backward’…they will part company.
Aha! Kroyd, Paul, and CJ, thank you! I’d wondered what sizes there were to cans / cylinders / barrels / crates / etc. And I’d got the impression there were several sizes, but it’s nice to have a better idea what’s what.
About the sizes for hani women versus Tully versus hani males, that helps too. — I’m around the height, but likely not mass or muscle, as na Tully; more like Bren-paidhi, I’d think. My closest women relatives were between 5’2″ and 5’6″, with a few (aunts and cousins) taller or shorter, several weights, so this gives me a very apt gut-level comparison. I’d estimate na Khym and na Kohan are both taller (somewhere over 6′ tall) and na Hallan, perhaps Tully’s height or a bit taller, not as tall or broad as na Khym or na Kohan, just an impression.
I don’t recall how tall Soje Kesurinan is, but as I recall, both Goldtooth and Jik are taller than ker Pyanfar, with those three mane all tending towards fit and fairly thin…though the men probably have to fight against a barrel chest and pot belly as they approach what might be politely termed the silverback stage of life. 😉 (One is becoming familiar with this problem oneself.)
Heh, and any Chanur or hank, or other species and stories in the Compact, always of interest! 😀
Is this tuner kind of rectangular, white, with a small red button for power? Has a 1/4″ input jack for the pickup and a 1/4″ output jack for the amp? I got one last year when my other tuner died on me. So, if yours is the same as mine, now we have matching guitars AND matching tuners…..I just wish I could pick up on the tunes in the songbook we have…….
Lol, no a black box with a squishy grey rubber on button.
squishy gray rubber button……eewwww!!!!! LOL.
A Pitchclip? That’s the only one I could find with the “squishy gray (sp?) rubber button”.
I have the CA40 in white. It’s a little unwieldy at times, I have a pickup that clips to the guitar, but I rarely use it, too much wire hanging in my way. If I used it inline with an amplifier, that would be different, but my guitars are not equipped with pickups.
I know we did a lot of the songs in the songbook when we were out there, but I have no idea what the music would be. Lyrics/chords are easy, but it’s figuring out what arrangement of notes you used for the song that is the hard part. Is there any means by which we could get the music, or at least, something to help figure out how the song sounds when played/sung?
Actually the pickup is a plug-in that I got from another company: you plug it into the sensor, clip the pickup to the top of the headpiece, and it gives you a more accurate reading.
Tell you what: if I can get my playing and voice up to any sort of quality, I’ll try to get a recording at least accurate enough to let you guess the melody. I can upload a sound file of some sort, I’m sure. It’s taken me 3 days to find a pitch I can handle, just because I haven’t sung in 10 years either. I don’t go high easily—I’m kind of bad contralto to alto; but these should work for crowd singing at capo 2, so guys can take the low road and gals can take the high one with neither range hitting an impossible.
Wow! Tip o’ the hat to you. All of you really. I tried so hard to learn guitar back in college. I wanted to learn – both my parents play acoustic folk music – but I just could NOT endure the pain and I never progressed beyond the simplest chords and strumming. Turns out I can’t walk and chew bubblegum either, so maybe that was a factor – too many things for my brain to handle at once. Of course, college courses being what they are, I might’ve been better off trying to learn on my own…but I didn’t try that.
I am glad to say I can sing though 😀 The song up there is really lovely. Makes me wonder if I should dig out my old compositions from “the old days” and share them around…
Hawke, try a 12. If your fingers are like mine, the single string just kills you. And if the action (distance from string to fretboard) is too high, again, it can kill your fingers. Try several guitars. A pawn shop is a good place. Beyond that, play only in 5 minute sessions several time a day and if you’re suffering ice after playing.
Old sailors used to advice novices to soak their rope-burned hands in seawater/saltwater. Dunno if it helps but it couldn’t hurt.
The salinity would be slightly antiseptic and would tend to draw out the swelling, and if it was cold seawater, the temperature would also help lessen the swelling.
I will certainly take a look at 12 string guitars, CJ. I’ve never heard the salt water advice; my mother used to suggest soaking my fingers in cold tea, or holding wet tea bags onto the pads.
WOL, I love harmony too. The college here in my town has an a cappella group, and I will go out of my way to make it to their concerts if I can! Being in choir for many years probably has something to do with that, too.
Tannin does toughen hide… salted tea bags?
I would love to learn guitar, but I was surprised at the price of a decent new one. Budget does not currently permit, but maybe in a few months, after a move, I’ll be able to. — I had about a year and a half to two years of piano in junior high. I didn’t practice enough. Oh, I wish I’d kept it up. (I liked it, but I got bored with practice, thought I knew things. Dummy.) Eyesight was then a problem, would be more so now, but I think I could find a way around it. Memorizing might be a problem. — But dang it, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder and Roy Orbison were all blind, and John Steppenwolf is nearly so, and they all are (were, in Ray’s case) masters. So there’s got to be a way.
Hmm, interesting about the sailors’ suggestion of saltwater. Will file that under seafaring lore.
One is, however, quite glad not to find a spacesuit containing a thawing uruus…. Heheheh!
Joe and I went the Ibanez route: because they’re a sort of knockoff, patterned on good guitars, some of them are good. You just have to sort out the ones that are—to you—because it’s also personal preference. Best guitar I ever had I shouldn’t have sold, but a guy offered me half again the money for it a few months after I’d bought it, so it went to a new life in Alaska, and I never had as nice since. It was Brazilian rosewood. Loved it. But the Ibanez I like right well, and it suits.
Had this vision of someone calling someone half a continent away to play and sing together over Skype. . . I like guitars and such, but what turns me on is people with great voices singing in harmony. Like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3E8lL6HqfA
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUnYx7BkVU
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2hTgmijoyQ
and this one just for grins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlX0aO9C7Gk
Or this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRupYJmAUz8
😉 Nice thing about filk and folk is ease of play. If you can play Am G Em, you’re good for a lot of songs; if you can add Dm E F and C, you’re good for a bunch more. And if you’ve got a reliable B and B7 you’re golden.
Here are some of the ones based on ‘known’ tunes: some are funny, some are just plain groaners, and some are pretty.http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/swil/FILKS/filkbook4.html
I started with chords and learned some pick patterns I did with my fingers so I rarely strummed after getting the basics. 12-strings don’t lend themselves to picking as well as 6-strings.
Alas, I sold my guitar and banjo (cheap ones) during the last purge. I wasn’t able to play anymore due to carpel tunnel so it was time to let them go. That ruined musical instruments for me in many ways. Still have my recorders (which are difficult to play) and the doumbek left, too. Still have my various tambourines and finger cymbals.
Still can’t read music even after a decade of singing a cappella music (madrigals and Victorian carols). I only look at it to remind me to go up and down and how long to hold the note. I actually learned the song by playing a tape with the notes emphasized a little more loudly and with another ‘voice’ than the other parts.
Re reading music, up and down is pretty well the whole game and I can give it to you in a nutshell. Best way to learn to read is to pick one single note you can sing pretty reliably on key. Learn to identify that particular note in music. Never mind sharps and flats. Then learn to identify its nearest neighbors, and as you read (ie, in church hymnal, singing group, etc) look for it and its two near neighbors. Expand your knowledge with their nearest neighbors and so on.
Note the treble clef (key) sign: that means it’s standard, regular stuff. The bass clef sign would *redefine* all the notes as the notes of a bass melody, literally giving them different names. Don’t even go there. Stick to treble, where most instruments and people live.
Sharps and flats are expressed beside the clef sign. For instance, if b was your ‘favorite note’ and there is a # beside the clef sign on ‘his’ line, then you know that your dear b is sharped (played with a different fingering, or sung half a step higher) throughout the piece. That’s all that means. There are also ‘accidental sharps’ such as a # written beside your b in the middle of the music. An accidental is valid only once in the piece, and all the other b’s are normal. The same holds true for the flat sign which looks like an italic b itself, and means the note is half a step lower, and is played with a different fingering.
That’s it. Re timing and rhythm—Notes fly a flag at their tops if they’re only 1/4 as long as regular. A trio of notes bound together by their flag are a triplet; a quartet of notes bound together are each 1/4 of a regular note. It’s all about rhythm. Don’t pay too much attention to the 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 signature: that’s a rhythm and tempo indicator, and common sense and the understanding that the more flags a note flies the shorter it gets—that’s all you really need to know.
I always thought that if I could really read music, I’d hear it in my head, like I do script. Do any of you capable folks do that?
I can do that – but I can’t guarantee that what I hear in my head is what it’s supposed to sound like. (Several years of clarinet in school, and self-taught on piano and guitar.)