Sunday - 31 March Off to a good start this morning, despite being slightly worse for the wear from a rare night out.......
Met with two friends in the am to practice for our micro-gig, truly, more of a house party where the host wants those of us who normally are too shy to play anything to step up to the plate..... so we are trying.
I'm going to play Amongst Friends and Miss Johnson's solo - the second followed by George White's with my two friends, flute and fiddle playing too. The flute friend will play Salute to Baltimore which then fiddle and me on c'tina will follow with Devanney's Goat and then we will all three play Trip to Athlone/Garrett Barry's. And that will be our whole set! Our fiddle friend refuses to play anything solo, wise maid that she is!
Monday - 1 April I did play the concertina quite a bit yesterday, meeting up with my friend Beth. We take a class with Benedict Kohler and Hilari Farrington at The Summit School in Montpelier - been doing that now for several years - and we were reviewing last year's tunes...... I'm always amazed when I can remember a tune at all. Then at home I played through the 3 tunes for the micro gig on the harp one last time because......
Tuesday - 2 April ..... today I am en route to Sarasota Florida - now wait, before you groan and moan , I am going to be working most of the time. But I do have my old harp, Andee, the Dusty is down there, so I will get to play some and I have my concertina with me. They always unpack it totally at the airport and have to hem and haw over it - I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Burlington now - I always call it a 'little accordion' never a concertina which makes them all panic. It's possible I'll play a little something tonight, but equally likely that I won't!
Wednesday - 3 April - The Dusty took a couple of tunings, but might be settling down now. Mostly ran through the usual tunes I've been working on lately.
Thursday - 4 April - Inspired by Andee I've returned to that marvelous hornpipe - The Tailor's Twist, otherwise I'm still at work on the same five tunes...... Amongst Friends may be shifting into that long term place, which feels great!
Friday - 5 April - Put in some time in the evening- maybe a half hour - mostly on The Tailor's Twist......
Saturday - 6 April
Have a good trip! Remind me--how small is your little Dusty? I don't remember you having a little one.
ReplyDeleteLittle being a relative term! I somehow have over 11 years acquired FOUR harps...... Martha Gallagher sang an extremely funny song at Somerset last year about harp acquisition..... Anyhow both the Camac and the Fisher, while much smaller physically have more strings. So YES my Dusty is a 32. Someone rented it from Kathy for awhile and I stupidly didn't have it gone over before sending it down to Florida - it has a broken lever and and some other small problems. One of these days I will drive it up to Tampa when I am in Florida and not working!
ReplyDeleteThe fourth harp is one of those little Dusty's - it is out on loan to a friend.
ReplyDeleteOh my Dusty is a 32, and I have a 26 so the 26 is my little one. I don't think of the 32 as little at all, but I often wish it had 2 more strings!!
ReplyDeleteI don't know quite how I ended up with so many, but here is Martha Gallagher's wonderful tune - the Harpaholic Blues......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpz0yMsBPv8
ReplyDeleteYou probably already know this, but if you tune the low E on your Dusty 32 down to a D you'll get more bang for your buck so to speak. It'll come in hand on Tailor's Twist and all of those tunes in D.
ReplyDeleteI've never found that it sounds quite right..... but it is useful and I do shift it when I just can't stand it and have to have that low D. What's annoying then are tunes that climb or descend and want the E too!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh I know exactly what you mean about the tunes climbing and descending and needing the E as well. I have a couple slow airs that I tune the harp back up to an E for.
ReplyDelete