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Well, gosh it was interesting to see those pictures, friend. Thanks for that. The experience wasn’t without mixed feelings of course, several very significant fashion errors. Ouch. And I will admit it was a little jarring to see me playing a guitar in standard tuning. If we’re right about the date then it would be around the time I changed to DADGAD tuning pretty much full time. So now when people ask me how long I’ve been playing guitar like that, I actually have a reasonably accurate answer. It’s been a little less than thirty years full time, first got serious with it a little before that. Not that the counting is important. But I do forget sometimes how long I’ve been playing that way.
I did find one thing caught my attention. In those pictures I’m accompanying someone. And it looks to me like I’m doing then something that I still do now. Yes, I’m listening closely to what they’re playing, no question, but I’m also watching them intently for any kind of clue about how they actually want to play this thing. I guess that’s where I began to learn that focus it takes, that to be able to have a fighting chance to hit that downbeat in that same quirky way as them I was going to have to take in how they moved. Figuring out a singer’s phrasing was pretty easy after that. Funny what you learn. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I guess I’ve been trying to supply useful groove to other people’s playing, often people who had a very personal relationship with time and phrasing, for a little over thirty years. Okay how did that happen?
I certainly don’t do a lot of accompanying any more, so I’m fairly certain I’m not as good at it as I was. All good. Although I guess that’s a bit of what I’m doing at the Tuesday night sessions. Only now I’m doing it on the bass instead of the guitar. Same verb, different noun. Folks are nice to let me play when it makes sense, so I figure if in return it helps them enjoy their night it’s the least I can do. Just another application of supplying groove, I guess.
Supplying useful groove for thirty years. No way I’d ever say that in real life, but yeah, that’s funny in all kinds of ways.
 One of those astonishing conversations I would have with folkies, back when I was working that side of the street, was when one of them would tell me that the casual bigotry that is behind some humour is essential for those jokes to work. Oh they would do backflips and handsprings in order to get that little piece of nonsense to be true. I specifically remember the banjo-god telling me that racially bigoted humour could only work without being offensive if you took out the specific people insulted and put in an imaginary race. I didn’t have the heart to suggest to him that the very idea of race is considered an imaginary concept in science, but such was my time wandering around the peoples of social significance.
One odd little backwater of humour is musician jokes. Which is only really funny to my ear when it’s a musician telling a joke about players of their own instrument. And of course, because viola players will have heard every viola joke there is, the one they remember will be scathingly funny. I’ve probably told you about being in a shuttle van full of musicians who each told their favourite joke about their own kind. Shortest bus ride I’ve ever taken, laughing hard the whole way.
But there’s a better, kinder class of musician joke. Somehow telling it at our own expense, and yet riffing off both our experience and our pre-conceived notions around that instrument. An example? Well, okay. So I walk into a session the other day, typical assortment of lots of guitars and one or two mando-things, I haul my upright bass around the corner to see what’s up, and there at the other end of the room is another upright bassist, already in progress. Most excellent, although it’s a little like showing up to a party wearing the same outfit. Only louder. The other player sees me, I see them, our eyes meet, and without thinking, surrounded as we are by umpteen guitars, I say, “Oh good, there’s two of us, now we have them outnumbered.”
No vulgar slams, no rehearsing bigotry in gentler guise. Just a touch of self-deprecation, and a slightly skewed world-view. And I am no expert on these things. So how hard can it be?
But first, the job is to believe it is possible.
 I don’t know why this confuses some people. It’s really quite simple.
Question: What is the plural of bass?
Answer: More bass.
What’s confusing in that?
Hey friend, how’s your day? Thanks for checking in. Sorry it’s been a while since I was able to sit down to write. I guess a few things have got in the way, that and I have to admit I haven’t felt like I have anything useful to contribute to the conversation. I’ve noticed that feeling can come hard on the heels of having a tough life challenge drop by to visit for a while. And yeah I guess there’ve been a few of those over the past few years. Enough to make the professionals wince, so I suppose I should admit it to myself, eh? And I got two solid knocks over the last little while, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised I’m feeling a bit lost. However, I’ve managed to find enough kindness in the world to keep going. And although my physical health hasn’t been perfect, I’ve got myself out once a week or so to do a bit of playing with people. And some nice folks have asked me to come and play at their coffeehouse next week, so I’ve been reminding myself how to play guitar. Even took my guitar to a session the other day instead of the bass, which felt quite strange actually. I think I’m finally managing to think like a guitar player again when I’m playing guitar. Took a while, at first everything sounded like a bass part.
But all of that’s just to say that I seem to be picking up my instruments again. And that’s a good sign. And I guess it doesn’t sound too bad, although it sure doesn’t feel that way on the inside. But as I’ve gently chided folks at a session who do a song that everyone enjoys them doing but they don’t feel good about themselves–when you’re playing a tune it always sounds better on the outside. I don’t remember the first time that fell out of my mouth, but it seems to make people smile and nod, so I guess it must make some kind of sense. And it’s funny, too, how those kinds of things are forever coming out of me, and folks seem to get some use out of them, and yet I don’t ever feel like I have anything useful to contribute to the conversation. Funny what years of conditioning will do, eh? But in an encouraging environment, like the sessions in Fergus for instance, after a while I feel comfortable enough to actually say those goofy things that occur to me. I was talking to one professional about this a while back and they pointed out that the ‘me’ who was in that place and that moment could actually be considered the real me, whereas the scared, lost, defeated, timid little mouse that grinds away the days is not. I’m still unpacking that concept.
Although I haven’t managed to sit here and write for a while I have scribbled a few things, even taken a few pictures. I’ll take some time to sort those out over the next little while and set them down here, maybe fill in a few gaps. We’ve almost finished the winding down of the family home here, moving day is the end of the month, so things will be a little upended. But I’ll make sure I find the time to write. In the meantime, thanks for your patience, friend. Sorry it took a while. Thanks for being there.
Be well.
Many years ago I worked in a duo with a harper. It was a good gig while it lasted, people seemed to enjoy it, certainly we had more than our share of decent nights. Of course, if you’re doing something like that long enough you’re going to collect a few interesting times.
They had decided to organize a first Canadian folk harp conference, and put together a big deal concert which they invited us to be part of, honoured guests actually. Was nice to feel supported, so of course we accepted. The concert was being held in a large church with ample room for a decent-sized audience, although the performance space was a bit tight. However, we made it work by taking my three guitars and placing them on their stands each one in front of the next, three in a row (I know, I know, one was an electric, one was my main acoustic guitar tuned in dadgad, the third was another acoustic in standard tuning used to avoid having to re-tune on stage). Sound check went well and by show time there were several hundred people in the audience. We were given a nice introduction, walked out to solid applause thinking ‘Hey, it sounds like they like us, we’re going to have a good time!’, and took a bow. Then my partner turned around and sat at the harp, while I took a half-step backwards so I could take up my position standing at the mic. All good, just like we’d rehearsed it. Except I’d misjudged where exactly I was standing. And there wasn’t a lot of room for error. None, in fact.
And that was when it happened. The most amazing sound. You see there were several hundred people there, they said five or six hundred, I don’t remember. And many of them were musicians. And when every one of them saw what was about to happen, I heard the sound of a significant number of people all catching their breath at the same time. Yup, I backed up and caught the edge of the first guitar behind me, just like people had hoped wouldn’t happen, which then fell backwards onto the guitar behind it, which fell in turn domino-like and knocked over the third. Either a strike or a full-house, I don’t know how you measure these things. But you couldn’t have staged it more perfectly if you tried. Happily there was no real damage and we picked up and gave a solid performance.
But the thing I remember about that night is not my goofy move. Do enough shows and something like that’s bound to happen no matter how careful you are, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. No, what I remember quite clearly is that sound. Wordless gasp, large number of people. Some folks carry colour, they have a memory for it. I guess I carry sound.
And it’s funny what’s in my sound memory.
Bu yeah, that was a moment.
Many years ago, we were performing at a festival, just about to begin our main stage set, we’d finished the cable-up, they gave the mc the thumbs up and they began their introduction while I took a moment to make sure my concentration was in place. The intro was pretty standard at first, they’d taken notes from some of our promotional material. I remember thinking that they were doing a pretty good job, which always helps the performance get off to a solid start. Then they started to do a little biographical sketch of me. And I lost my focus completely. You see they’d done some significant research. Yessiree, a whole whack of innernet must’ve gone into it. Except they’d got the wrong Ken Brown. I knew something was strange when they described me as coming from a musical family. Huh?? My folks would’ve been deeply amused to hear that. They spoke of both gigs and instruments I’d never played. I’m sure it was only a few seconds, but it seemed to go on forever, was like watching someone else’s life pass before my eyes. Just for a heartbeat I wondered whether we were at the right gig, or maybe I’d dropped into some kind of parallel universe. Then it was over and the set started. I will admit it took me a little while to get my mind fully back on the task at hand. I guess we did okay, I remember the audience seemed to enjoy the set we played. But yeah, of all the weird moments I’ve had on stage, that was definitely one of them.
No permanent damage, though. Although ever since then whenever I’ve worked as an mc I’ve had this irresistible urge to begin with accurate material and then just take a left turn and work my way into bizarre-land. Could be huge fun, no? “Not a lot of people know this but our next performer actually invented the internet. And then sold it to Al Gore…” Never had the nerve. Maybe one day.
Back in the stone age, before the internet, it was challenging to find the source of songs, even ones that were quite popular. Things have changed since then, and while the innernet is full of all kinds of misinformation it does make basic fact-checking a lot easier. Even so, it’s worth mentioning two songs which are still often referred to as ‘traditional’. So for the record;
- The Ballad of Glencoe was written by Jim McLean (Duart Music) around 1963
- Wild Mountain Thyme (Will Ye Go Lassie, Go) was written by Francis McPeake around 1957
Worth noting that Wild Mountain Thyme as we know it now is actually Irish if you really want to get down to it. No really. Although the words are pretty much pulled from a song called ‘The Braes of Balquidder’ by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774-1810), there’s been some significant re-working to come up with the simple lyrics we know today, and the melody is completely different from the original. So it’s really a new song in every meaningful sense of the word. And McPeake = Belfast = Irish (last I checked). (Although I did find one anecdotal reference to someone running a club in Belfast which McPeake played at back in the day. The person suggested the song was learned from Elizabeth Cronin of Cork, who also recorded it for Alan Lomax. The trail ends there as far as I can see. Let me know if you find out any more.)
So both of these songs are written in the tradition, absolutely. But ‘traditional’? Nope, not at all.
And while we’re here, if you’d like to have a look at some real historic material (as opposed to ‘traditional’, which is a term I’ve never really understood, does that mean it was written by a committee?), you might enjoy having a look at the Scottish National Library’s collection of Broadsides. Now there’s a beautiful use of the internet. Nice work. Thanks.
Another nice session in Fergus tonight. Good tunes, a few laughs, some new faces and one or two folks back after some time away. At one point I counted twenty players. Sometimes we all played along, sometimes most of us listened, a great balance. I managed to pass along another verse of a traditional song that someone’s been doing a great job of, heard another version of a Dylan tune I’m sneaking up on learning, oh yeah and I did another new piece so I’m on a bit of a roll. And folks don’t mind me thumping along for much of the night, so I’m having a good time.
Ah, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that everything is perfect all night at these sessions. A few new faces means that some folks are learning as we go, and sessions like these are deceptive in many ways. Volume, for instance. A good rule of thumb when you’re playing without a sound system, especially in a social setting, is don’t play your instrument louder than you can sing. And of course the same goes for someone else’s singing, right? If you can’t hear ‘em singing don’t play louder, play quieter. It’s a mark of a really good session when we can play groovy and quiet at the same time. But no, not everyone gets that in any given moment.
As a matter of fact that was a bit of a thing a few times tonight. At one point I counted no less than three different grooves and tempos (okay, technically ‘tempii’, but who says that any more?) being played at the same time. None of which were what the person who was leading the song was playing, which I only knew because I could see their strumming hand was moving up and down in a way that had nothing to do with any sounds I could hear. So I’m busy trying to figure out the groove from the way they’re singing, an imperfect science at best. In the meantime I’m hearing three other grooves being played around me. But I’m pretty sure no one playing any one of those grooves can hear the others. So apparently it’s my job to find some kind of average so we can keep this thing moving along. Most of the time it’s okay, but every once in a while I get conflicting musical signals, the hypothalamus creaks and it’s all over for me at least for a bar or two while I regroup and look for fresh clues (I believe this is referred to as the breakdown of the bi-cameral mind, or hemiola, I forget which, you can look it up). Meantime everyone happily playing their own groove wonders what’s up with the bass player.
And so it goes to the end of the tune, and then smiles, laughter, and yes applause. You see, one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that while I might be searching for the perfect groove, the average listener and most of my fellow musicians are getting their joy from other things we’re laying down. Maybe it’s the meaning of the words, or the beauty of the melody, or the emotional content of that cool hook that buddy’s figured out, or maybe their memory of when they first fell in love with the song. In any case, what I’m after might just be my own trip and nobody else’s.
Which is why I came up with house rule #1. If it’s your performance, let the first thing you say about it be a positive thing. No really. Look at it this way–if someone’s really enjoying what you’re playing, and then the first thing you say when it’s over is how much you thought it sucked, you are in fact explaining to them that they have no musical taste. (I got a belly full of that kind of attitude in my time wandering through the professional folk scene–’what, you like that?? Obviously you’re an idiot.’ This from people who hadn’t had an original musical thought their entire lives and yet somehow managed to set themselves up as professional tastemakers. Little ponds, big fish, and ignorance becomes its own reward, you know how it is…) So while I don’t lean on the rule too heavily, I will gently chide from time to time. You see it turns out that my own internal experience of the song has very little to do with anyone else’s experience of the same performance. And I must not dishonour their experience.
So, no, not perfect. But still a really good time, and working on getting better. And that friend, is about as good as it gets.
Yay team.
While we’ve been talking about chords I’ve mentioned the minor scale a couple of times. So now we know at least two things about a minor scale. We know that the 3rd note of a minor scale is a semi-tone lower than the 3rd note of a major scale. And we know that an A-minor scale is the only one that has no sharps or flats. And since we know there’s a pattern of tones and semi-tones that make up a major scale, you can figure out that there’s probably another pattern of tones and semi-tones that makes up a minor scale. And of course there is.
Let’s use the A-minor scale. Since it has no sharps or flats the notes will be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and A again at the top. I asked you to remember that there’s a tone between every note except in two places, and that’s between E and F, and between B and C. So that minor scale is going to have a tone between every note except between B and C, and between E and F. So if I lay that down it would be;
- A–up a tone to
- B–up a semi-tone to
- C–up a tone to
- D–up a tone to
- E–up a semi-tone to
- F–up a tone to
- G–up a tone to
- A
So the pattern of tones and semi-tones that make up a minor scale are.
Tone, Semi-tone, Tone, Tone, Semi-tone, Tone, Tone.
Which you can memorise like that if that’s your style, although I think of it as;
Tone,Semi-tone
Tone, Tone,Semi-tone
Tone, Tone
which makes up a rhythm I can remember.
But however we remember it, if we start on any note and adjust any letter name we need to by using sharps or flats to get that pattern of tones and semi-tones we will always get a minor scale.
So if we start on a G, we go up a tone to A. Then the next note is up a semi-tone, but from A up to B is a full tone, so we need to lower that B-note by a half-step, making it a B-flat. B-flat up to C is a tone, and that’s right. C up to D is also a tone, also good. The next note is supposed to be a semi-tone up from D, so it won’t be an E (that’s a full tone), it’ll be an E-flat. Then up a tone from E-flat is F. And finally a tone up from F is a G, and we’re done. So a G-minor scale is G, A, B-flat, C, D, E-flat, F, and G again at the top.
So try that using a few different starting notes and see what you get. Of course you can try working these out on your instrument, too. But I think it’s a good idea to be able to work these out without playing them. Sort of why you work to get the words down for a song, it just works better.
Actually there are a couple of different minor scales, the one we’ve been talking about is sometimes called the ‘natural minor’ scale. There’s another version where it’s slightly different going up from coming down. Going up the 7th note is raised a semi-tone (becoming like ‘ti to doh’ at the high end of a major scale), and coming back down the 7th note is back where you’d expect it to be, down a semi-tone from where you raised it (now there’s a full tone between the 8th and 7th notes of the scale). This fancy version is sometimes called the ‘melodic minor’ scale. But the natural minor is a little more useful to us when we’re figuring out chords and such. So I start there.
Tone, Semi-tone
Tone, Tone, Semi-tone
Tone, Tone.
Minor scale, naturally.
You and I have been talking about chords for a bit, specifically about how to take a chord you’ve been told the name of and figure out how to play it on a guitar tuned in DADGAD. Because my own approach is to play just enough notes to give an idea of what the chord sounds like, rather than making sure each and every note is present and accounted for, I think of it as ’sketching out the chord’. And by the time we’ve wandered through these thoughts you’ll have a pretty good idea of how I get there.
Just a reminder of where we’re at. We started by getting used to finding the root note of a chord (doh, the one the chord gets its name from), and adding the fifth above that (soh), I gave you a headsup about some of the more common 5ths to give you a model to work with, then we paused for a minute to admire the grooviness in the pattern called the ‘circle of fifths’ just because it is so groovy after all. After that little side-trip I asked you to wrap your head around the pattern of tones and semi-tones that make up a major scale no matter what note you start on. And we explored how we can figure out ‘mi’ for any given ‘doh’. And, of course, a while back I dropped on you the concept that a major chord is made up of doh, mi and soh starting on the letter-name of the chord–in other words a G-major chord is made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of a G-major scale. So that’s where we’re at so far. Any questions? Yeah, me too, but let’s push on and see if we can get to where this all fits together.
The next idea I want you to get is actually quite simple. You’ve probably seen the names of some chords that include a number. For instance a C-chord which has a number 6 attached to it is called a C6-chord. A G-chord with a number 9 attached to it is called a C9-chord. Okay, here comes the simple bit;
- make the letter name of the chord number 1, start counting up the scale and stop when you get to the number in the chord name. That note is part of the chord.
So for a C6-chord, start with C as 1 (music always starts on 1, ain’t no zero), and count up to 6.
1 = C
2 = D
3 = E
4 = F
5 = G
6 = A
So you know that a C6-chord is going to involve an A-note.
And because you already know that a C-chord uses the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the C-scale, and we’ve just counted them out, you also know that a C-chord uses a C-note, an E-note and a G-note.
So a C6-chord is a C-note on the bottom, an E-note above that (called ‘the 3rd’ of the chord), a G-note above that (called ‘the 5th’ of the chord), and finally the A-note just above that (yup, might well be called called the ‘6th’).
Important to remember two things here;
- It’s easy for a C-scale, because you remember that a C-scale is the only scale that has no sharps or flats–other scales are a bit trickier so you have to work out the major scale pattern of tones and semi-tones (that we talked about earlier) starting on the letter-name of the chord you’re trying to figure out.
- If you haven’t got to your number before you arrive at the 8th note in the scale (hi ‘doh’, also called ‘an octave’), just keep going–hi ‘re’ is 9, hi ‘mi’ is 10, hi ‘fa’ is 11 and so on.
And so far we’re only talking about major chords, okay? In other words, all this works only if the chord you’re trying to play is either clearly called a major chord (like say, a C-major 7 chord), or it has no special name attached to it (no extra words), as in a C-chord, E-flat chord, G-sharp chord (as oppposed to a chord which uses words like ‘minor’, ‘diminished’, ‘augmented’–you figure those out differently, we’ll get there).
So take a minute and work out the notes that might be involved in some examples–maybe a D6 chord, or a B11-chord, or maybe an E-flat13-chord. Each one has doh, mi, soh, plus the number. Use the major scale tones and semi-tones pattern and see what you come up with.
We’re almost there.
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