Neighbourhood Folk - Sunday Afternoon - 2024 10 20

 

Michel and Al came over yesterday afternoon to play folk music with me. It was so much fun. 

We started with a suggestion from Al, "Stewball", as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. It is a beautiful melody and strangely evocative lyrics, completely out of time and place with my life today, but still evoked deep emotion as we sang through the verses. There is great potential for many layers of harmony and the chords are simple enough to pickup first time playing through.

I love the folk tradition of taking what has gone before and using it to articulate something that is happening now. Putting into song the experiences, words and feelings, that can be overwhelming when we face them alone, but make us stronger when sung and played together.

I finally have a chord chart working for "Hush Now Little Baby". I was thinking of Baby Anders, working hard to figure out how to get started with his new life. He has been facing some physical challenges to sort out some of the basics. I hope he could hear us on some invisible wavelength to gather strength and resilience to master these early skills.

We played through Michel's fun two-step, "If You Want to Dance". There are verses in our two official languages, and, just for fun, Michel and Al tried adding a verse in German. My challenge in this song and all our country-inspired songs, is to learn to pick a lead on the guitar. When I pick a lead on the ukulele, it isn't too hard because I am using a pick and only playing one note at a time. On the guitar, I using a plucking style where my thumb is playing the lower strings and my fingers are plucking the top three strings. When I pick a lead, my fingers stumble and panic because they aren't sure which string they are supposed to play. On top of that, as the fingers on my right hand panic for position, the fingers on my left hand pick up on the anxiety also start madly stumbling from fret to fret and string to string. 

What I can easily master on one instrument turns into an episode of Keystone Cops when I try it on another instrument.

The other thing that happens when I shift from bass / ukulele to guitar is reading the clef. I have my soprano ukulele tuned to the notes of a four string bass. When I play either my bass or soprano ukulele, I am reading the bass clef and picking leads reading bass notes. I am most familiar reading the bass clef.

When I play guitar, I am most familiar plucking chords. The upper B and E strings don't throw me off because I am only playing chords, not individual notes and scales. When I pick a lead on the guitar, the notes are in the treble clef and I have to contend with the B and E strings. I have to learn the fingerings anew. I can't just transfer what I know on the bass. 

In all these instances, I am also singing lead, which is it's own set of challenges, especially remembering the arrangement : )

I do best when I have my charts well organized and I can read as I play. That way, no matter how flustered I get, I can always find my way back on the chart and pick up where everybody else is.

In addition to learning a new song and adding the verse in German, we tried some new instrumentation that was really fun.

On the lullaby I wrote, "Hush Now Little Baby", Michel tried the bow on the upright bass. It sounded amazing. On another song, "Mayday" by Kempton Dexter, Al tried playing our stripped down folk drum kit (brushes only, no bass). It sounded great. We were all helping each other to maintain our rhythm and tempo.

The next Neighbourhood Folk gathering will be the first Sunday of November, here at Adele's house. I'm looking forward to learning new songs and hearing new stories and poems. It really does my heart good.