Jane’s found her string stash, the tuner still works, and I’m taking up the 12 a few times a day to get my fingers to re-form their calluses. It’s amazing: if you’ve had good calluses in the past, you just need to insult your fingers a little to get the callus to start re-forming. And boy, are my fingers soft.
It’s been so long I’ve forgotten all my fingerings, though am-em still comes back. I almost remember g. But this time I am going to try to learn to pick: I’m not too bad in waltz time, could almost manage in 2/4, but 4/4 is asking a bit. You can at least fudge 4/4 with 2/4; but not well, I suspect. But it will be interesting. Right now my fingering-fingers are reacting by getting sensitive after just a few minutes’ use, which indicates they recognize potential abuse and are already getting ready to lay down callus. Which will NOT come soon enough for an upcoming filk event, but then, neither will my recovery of my chords.
For those of you unfamiliar with filk, it’s a music genre of folk-ish science fiction and fantasy ballads—usually ballads. I used to do a lot of it; had a tape out, and was actually, though briefly, a member of BMI. I don’t have a particularly good voice, can’t carry a tune in a bucket unless I’m playing guitar, and I never can remember all the words—or remember where I am in a piece, a particularly nuisanceful thing since my need for contact lenses increased so that I can’t read sheet music at typical range any longer. I’m constrained to at least remember the words and basic chords. But we’ll see. I’ll at least give it a good try.
Filk.com runs an internet filk radio station, for those of you interested in filk, http://www.filk.com/radio.html It will give you a good idea of the breadth and depth of filk music. And it’s free! (if you don’t mind ads… you can pay to get rid of them.)
I like filk… not sure why. I think it’s partly the lyrics, and partly just that these are songs written by people because they wanted to write them, and not with an eye to what is going to be commercially viable. And there are some amazingly good singers out there.
Also, while a lot of filk is folk-ish, there is a fair smattering of rap, rock, blues, and other genres which I can’t pinpoint. Of course, some of those songs are only filk because they are sung by people who generally do filk. If a mainstream artist sang it, you probably wouldn’t think of it as “filk”.
*steps off her soapbox*
A twelve! I’m seriously impressed,they make such a great
depth of sound. I tried guitar for about a week,made the
excuse that soaking my fingers for two hours a day in the
school pool for swimming team made them too soft. It did
sound better than “Oh my God,that HURTS!!”.
Lol…like getting into hot water, best to start slowly. I started out this round playing for 5 minutes a day. Now I’m up to 10 and my fingers feel sandpapered. Another week and I should start having callus enough to stand an hour. Then, well, you may go through a slightly painful few days. But it gets better. Ice helps.
The first time I callused-up, I just grinned and bore it. Playing when your fingers are at the ‘seeping’ stage defies description. Ugh.
Dancing about with delight!
I still remember my first experience with filk. 1979, NorthAmericon. We were on the Belle of Louisville (paddlewheel) riverboat cruise, which has a horrible sound system. Sounded like a bunch of noise to me. It was later that I met a filker who gave me a better introduction (BJ Willinger). Don’t worry if you don’t like what you hear the first time. The problem is the in jokes that are parodies of parodies and the songs that will live forever and get a reply from the original musician. (Banned from Argo will live on as long as the original Star Trek series is alive. Leslie Fish created a response to her own song. The question is how many verses of the original song I can still remember.)
It would be interesting to read an article on the mutations filk has taken away from the original folk roots to rap, etc. What I heard in the early 80’s was all folk with a bit of country. I still remember some of the comments when Julia Ecklar came out with DIVINE INTERVENTION, beacuse she had a full orchastra behind her.
I had no idea you had a filk tape out. A friend influenced me back in the early 1990s so I had my share of tapes. Good luck with getting it all back. I was starting to learn to play bass earlier this year, but I haven’t touched it in a few months. It seems I can only persist at a few hobbies at a time.
Well, not a tape of my singing, but music I wrote. I don’t write lyric, oddly enough: I’ve done a little, but most I don’t like that much. But I’ve set a lot to music, and I do pretty good tunes.
It’s always nice to see people return to something they love.
I played first chair flute in several successive junior high and high school marching and concert bands, plus an orchestra. Curiously I can’t name notes any more, but if I have my flute in hand, I can look at the music and sight read in three octaves—the third one a little iffier in these days, my embouchure not being what it used to be. I just can’t tell you what note I’m playing. I always loved playing music—but never like listening to it without participating. I skate to music—I’ve got a little MP3 player I wear on the ice when I remember to plug it in and charge it. But listen to music while driving? I don’t like it. I think I drive Jane crazy, because she likes her ‘tunes’, and it really doesn’t bother me if she plays them in her room, but you will never catch me turning music on to listen to it. Go figure. And I really detest being someplace where you’re expected to talk over the music of live performers. It just always seems rude to me. I think in my head music is for paying attention to, not ignoring, or doing something else while it plays. I get along fine with scores in movies—even enough to buy them (I skate to Pirates and Madagascar.) But that’s kind of like a performance. Hard to quantify what goes on in my head with music going: I enjoy it, but in a kind of ‘I’ve got to be doing that’ sort of way.
Update: while noodling around, and building calluses, I’ve hind-brain remembered two chords I can’t identify, but one may be gMaj, and one may be AMaj. They’re definitely major chords. That would, with AMin and EMin, give me four. That’s almost, as they say, enough for filk. (Filk in its beginnings used notoriously limited chording.)
Its pretty interesting how close pop music is to folk music because of simple chord progressions. Funny to note though that there are very few songs in 3/4 that ever made it on the pop charts I believe a Beatles song and a song by Cake are the only 2. 6/8 has a close enough feel that a lot of those make it. I agree with you about listening to music and not having it as background. I frequent a brewery where they have live performers while you taste beer and eat. I feel awkward about it.
I guess I always feel a performer deserves respect and attention while they’re offering you their best effort, something like the old Irish respect for bards.
Pop is drifting closer to folk these days, but Lord! I wish some of the singers would study their scales and try to hit the basic note somewhere in their ‘styling’ (NOT my favorite mode of singing.) Back in the day, we used to call it ‘noodling’, when you were wandering all over the map. Or if it was really painful, we used to call it ‘off-key.’ I watch Dancing with the Stars, in which they have a lot of pop guests who apparently depend heavily on a studio to ‘correct’ their voices. Ouch!
The other part of my feeling about music is that singers should be in the same key as the instrumentals, and if they don’t know they aren’t, that’s a problem. 😉 I’m always embarrassed about my inability to hold a pitch. It seems to be fashionable lately.
You mean there’s a word for what those pop singers do? I just figured they were whining and tuned them out… (shudder)
You and me both. Women who sing only loud enough for the mike, throat-breathing heavily and usually warbling off pitch 3 notes out of four, are a misery to my ears. I’m showing my age, but where’s Ethyl Merman or Carol Channing when you need ’em? Gone are the days of the diva who, without being heavikly amped, could belt out an only-occasionally ‘out’ song to the rafters of the live theater balcony. I keep telling myself, well, but maybe the acoustics are off in the studio and these novices can’t tell, but I fear the real answer is the voices we hear on a lot of recording artists are heavily doctored by the recording studios. The bucks dropped on the American Idol set are huge: I can’t believe they wouldn’t have paid attention to acoustics.
And OMG, the people who have only listened to themselves while singing to an MP3 that’s cranked to the edge of microwave. They can’t have any idea what they sound like before they go in front of the judges. Daughtry is thus far our favorite of all the AI crowd, and he was voted off.
I actually dabble in singing… I take lessons (group, can’t justify private), and singing style gets discussed a lot. Thankfully my teacher is more into singing as a means of expression in this class, as opposed to polishing people for commercial singing (although she will give advice on that if that’s what the student wants). I am terribly unfashionable… I can do light, airy folk, and am working on deep chest voice (I am apparently a contralto, which makes finding suitable music difficult), and I am planning on working on middle this next session, since I can NOT get a smooth bridge between the lows and highs right now.
But, back to the point, musical theater, commercial music, and traditional music, all have different styles that are appropriate for them, and to make a living at it, you need to be able to figure out which way you should be singing. The current commercial style is an edge sound, sung at speech level (which is a lot easier on the throat). One of my class mates was a classically trained singer, with a gorgeous voice, who was trying to get back into the business. She struggled for weeks to get that “pop” sound, so that she would have more options in the marketplace. The style has changed since the days of Ethyl and Carol… if Bing Crosby was in the studio today, they’d be on him to not scoop his notes, while that was one of the signature sounds of the crooners. All of which is why I sing for fun, and don’t worry too much about what is popular and what isn’t.
Me, I just have to be louder than my guitar. And probably people are real glad it’s no louder than that. 😉
I took up my old songbook, and tried that, and the chords started coming back to me. Yesterday I could only remember Am and Em and had an inkling about Gmaj. In half an hour with the songbook, I’d remembered Gmaj definitely, plus Fmaj, Emaj, E7, A, maybe A7, Cmaj, Dmaj and Dm, and am beginning to think I remember Bmaj. I think I’ll take my guitar tonight after all, even if I can’t find the capo.