Originally published in FoT Issue 107: Apr-Jun 2006
Now here’s a sentence I never thought I’d begin a column with. Not that, this: I have a podcast to recommend. A few issues ago, it would have been meaningless, but now, with the increasingly rapid advance of civilization (smiles ironically) it means we can acquire infotainment while on the move and looking hip (removes tongue from cheek). First, a word or two hundred of explanation. If you know all about podcasting, and don’t know how you managed to survive without it until last Christmas, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Even if you haven’t, you will I am sure have realised how important podcasts are because the state broadcaster and the national press have all jumped on the bandwagon and told you so. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Podcasts are essentially rather old-fashioned, because they are little more than a radio programme. An “on demand” radio programme admittedly, but for “downloading a podcast” read “taping off the radio”. Back in the last century I used to use an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to record programmes to listen to later. Then I progressed to cassettes. Only the technology has been changed, to protect the self-image of the upwardly mobile society. You don’t need an iPod or even an mp3 player. You do need a computer with a soundcard and speakers. You don’t need any fancy software. You would be better off with broadband, just because the size of some podcast files are on the large side. And listening to anything at a time that’s convenient to you seems admirably well organised, especially if it’s enjoyable and informative.
Which brings me back to FolkCast, which claims to be the first folk podcast, and I certainly wasn’t aware of any others. And really it’s just a very good radio show. Presented by Phil “Widds” Widdows and Ken Nicol, who promise “the best new music, interviews with artists, behind the scenes soundseeing tours at festivals and fun and frolics from the broad world of folk”. Ken is a musician, Widds a journalist. There is a new edition on the first Saturday of each month, produced in Ken’s studio in Preston, with songs, interviews (Ken in edition 001, Simon Nicol (no relation) in 002) and articles. Bits of it are great. Bits of it are not. Bits of it were not my cup of tea but may be yours. But if you like folk-rock, FolkCast is for you. And they certainly introduced me to people who I will be looking out for. And it’s free! In 001, I found a really interesting arrangement by London trio 3 Blind Mice. There was also an overlong interview with Ken Nicol, but as it’s his studio, I suppose that’s allowed. He is currently with Steeleye Span, so I guess he does come under the umbrella of folk music. I say that because a lot of the show is geared towards the singer-songwriter and folk-rock genres, rather than traditional songs or tunes. Issue 002 actually gets into traditional mode quite early on, with an effective Jock o’Hazeldean from left-handed Scottish guitarist Dave Gibb, but that’s almost it. Also the programmes do have a tendency towards American acts, but that’s because there is oodles of US stuff available. As more British acts realise they can put their music online, more of it will come onstream. And people are invited to send songs, comments and information in to them, so as FolkCast becomes more well known, there should be more British material available.
And by the way, despite having been listening to the Watersons’ “for pence and spicy ale” while rewriting most of the above, I just had a screen break and put on ‘Ducks on a Pond’ by the Incredible String Band and John Martyn’s ‘Outside In’ and ‘Solid Air’, so I agree, I have no right to champion traditional song over contemporary.
It will probably not have escaped your notice that early in the year BBC4 honoured the British Folk Movement with some cracking programmes which will hopefully be repeated on a regular basis, including showings on the more widely available BBC2. It’s surprising what early footage can be dredged up when people make the effort. There were quite a few goosebumps of nostalgia round my place, I don’t mind confessing. But for the purposes of this column, the series also threw up shed-loads of information on the BBC website as well as links to a lot more, and lots of attention in the press. But to keep it all in context, my cynical half must share this “nail on the head” summary with you, from uk.music.folk contributor William Black:
“The current 'folk revival' is being powered by the people who fell in love with the late Nick Drake last year and then suddenly realised that he wasn’t a ‘lone genius’ but part of something else. It’s not folk music, it’s more like the singer/songwriter thing that was popular thirty-five years ago.
“Apart from a sort of reflex genuflection to the Seegers and Cecil Sharpe they’ll ignore the folk scene, probably because there’s obviously no money in it, and concentrate on manufacturing a new generation of ‘singer/songwriters’ (anyone noticed how Donovan is currently being rehabilitated?) who’ll be high profile and exploitable, and disposable...
“It’ll run for a year or so, the usual suspects will put on a few big concerts with manufactured ‘stars’, and the folk festivals will get a few more customers who’ll wander about wearing fashionable clothes, looking slightly puzzled and drinking bottled lager.
“Next year it’ll be something else and we’ll be left alone with our beards, beer that tastes of something and even less money because the predatory manipulators of the media and music industry have taken a proportion of it. If we’re lucky none of the big festivals will go broke thinking that the increased ticket sales will happen again next year and so overspend...
“Oh yes, and folk will be uncool again...”
Now let’s finish on a more uplifting note. I was delighted to see that the Old Rope String Band have put their annus horribilis behind them and undergone a sort of reformation, with Tim Dalling and Pete Challoner joining forces with Jock Tyldesley and Vera van Heeringen as the New Rope String Band. Their new website is in its formative stages but includes forthcoming gigs and festivals. Do visit it, and if you can, stop surfing and go and see them.
Friday 25 April 2008
Wednesday 2 April 2008
Teach yourself guitar and piano with tablature and KlavarScript
Originally published in FoT Issue 106: Jan-Mar 2006
Despite being an old dog, I am always ready, willing and able to learn new tricks. As if there wasn’t enough clutter round here already, I even bought a rather nifty electronic keyboard, so for this issue, just to get a bit of a theme going, I thought I would explore the world of online music lessons. My first instrument is the guitar, which I have been playing since I was seven, self-taught except for an enjoyable couple of terms at evening classes back in the Sixties and occasional workshops at festivals. And apart from the version of ‘Anji’ our evening school tutor Stephanie Syers taught us and which has stood me in good stead as a party piece ever since, I have never learned more than when sitting as close to the front as possible in small folk clubs, watching the hands of Davy Graham, Isaac Guillory, Martin Simpson, I could go on but you get the picture. Invariably I was also enjoying myself.
The “Passion For Jazz” website is a bit dry and even a bit daunting when it comes to music theory, especially when you see a page full of chords written in real music notation, but fortunately it has several handy diagrams and charts about harmony, chords, the circle of fifths and so on. And it has very useful virtual guitar and virtual piano chord finders. With these you click on the chord name on the page and you get a graphical display of that chord for guitar or piano. Alternatively you can click on a few notes on the virtual piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and find out what that chord is called. Nice. The “Jazz Guitar” website is even better, because a bit more thorough and dare I say generous in the information it shares. There are highly informative essays about such things as jazz guitar chord theory, blues chord progressions and guitar warm-up techniques. And of course a virtual chord finder. You have to be online for these chord finders to work, but “Piano Chord Helper” is downloadable and free so you just run it on your PC and tell it which chord you want, for example F#min6/9 (!) and it shows you where to put your fingers. If you have a MIDI compatible sound card it even lets you hear what it should sound like.
There are plenty of guitar lessons for the picking (sorry!) at sites such as “Acoustic Guitar”, the online version of a US-based magazine. The lessons from the past year’s issues come in a variety of styles, such as clawhammer, jazz, and so on. I was particularly interested to find a lesson focusing on open tunings. David Hodge, the author of the article, writes “...exploring different chords and chord voicings can help you find new approaches to songwriting and arranging, and trying an alternate tuning, which will immediately make you search for new chords, is a good way to make you think and experiment. And that’s always a good thing.” I entirely agree. The lesson talks you through a very simple tuning, EADF#BE, which is one which I have not unreasonably spent most of my guitar-playing life ignoring, yet which surprisingly has quite a lot of potential. After half an hour with the lesson I was noodling along - teacher’s words, not mine - with ‘Handsome Molly’, trad arr Hodge, and a jolly good time was had by all.
Another good site is the ubiquitous “Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions”, which obviously wants you to buy as many of the zillion Mel Bay books as you can, yet is generous enough to give you a free online edition which again covers a variety of styles, jazz, resonator, classical and so on. Some of the lessons are mere tasters for the books, but more usefully there is a whole series of lessons on guitar scales, positions and shapes, or a complete guide to French polishing for the acoustic guitar, written by a luthier from St Louis, Karl Markl.
Mel Bay’s site has links to numerous other Mel Bay sites - Guitar People, Mel Bay Downloads etc - which are also worth exploration but one section that particularly caught my eye was “Tab Rehab”. This is dedicated to weaning guitarists such as myself off of tablature and on to “proper” music notation. Point of order! A noble sentiment I am sure but I’m afraid there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Now if you can give me something like tablature for the piano... Fortunately help is at hand. “Klavarskribo”, or Klavar Script, notation is a Dutch invention which is much easier to read than standard notation. Just like tablature it gives a graphical display of your instrument and the direction in which you are playing, so you don’t have to make that mental leap from what you see on the page to what you do with your fingers. All very decadent and symbolic of our short attention span age I am sure - except tabs have been going since the Renaissance and Klavarskribo was designed between the last two World Wars, so there is no need to apologise for using them. I have not yet found a free tab writer, although there are plenty of reasonably priced ones out there, but I have found an excellent free program which enables you to open any MIDI file and it appears in Klavar form which you can play on screen or print out. You can even edit it, or write your own pieces from scratch.
Finally, I must give a mention to the “Folk Map”. Jim Lawton, who edits “Filofolk”, a folk music club and event listing for West Yorkshire, has created a highly useful site - as long as everyone keeps it up to date. Basically it is a giant Google map, into which you can stick virtual pins to signify where there is a folk club. You can also add times and contact details. The afternoon I added the Ram Folk Club in there were already quite a few, and they are growing daily, so hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to see where the best clubs in Dorset and Cornwall are. You have to register but it is quite painless and of course free. Now, on with the practice.
Despite being an old dog, I am always ready, willing and able to learn new tricks. As if there wasn’t enough clutter round here already, I even bought a rather nifty electronic keyboard, so for this issue, just to get a bit of a theme going, I thought I would explore the world of online music lessons. My first instrument is the guitar, which I have been playing since I was seven, self-taught except for an enjoyable couple of terms at evening classes back in the Sixties and occasional workshops at festivals. And apart from the version of ‘Anji’ our evening school tutor Stephanie Syers taught us and which has stood me in good stead as a party piece ever since, I have never learned more than when sitting as close to the front as possible in small folk clubs, watching the hands of Davy Graham, Isaac Guillory, Martin Simpson, I could go on but you get the picture. Invariably I was also enjoying myself.
The “Passion For Jazz” website is a bit dry and even a bit daunting when it comes to music theory, especially when you see a page full of chords written in real music notation, but fortunately it has several handy diagrams and charts about harmony, chords, the circle of fifths and so on. And it has very useful virtual guitar and virtual piano chord finders. With these you click on the chord name on the page and you get a graphical display of that chord for guitar or piano. Alternatively you can click on a few notes on the virtual piano keyboard or guitar fretboard and find out what that chord is called. Nice. The “Jazz Guitar” website is even better, because a bit more thorough and dare I say generous in the information it shares. There are highly informative essays about such things as jazz guitar chord theory, blues chord progressions and guitar warm-up techniques. And of course a virtual chord finder. You have to be online for these chord finders to work, but “Piano Chord Helper” is downloadable and free so you just run it on your PC and tell it which chord you want, for example F#min6/9 (!) and it shows you where to put your fingers. If you have a MIDI compatible sound card it even lets you hear what it should sound like.
There are plenty of guitar lessons for the picking (sorry!) at sites such as “Acoustic Guitar”, the online version of a US-based magazine. The lessons from the past year’s issues come in a variety of styles, such as clawhammer, jazz, and so on. I was particularly interested to find a lesson focusing on open tunings. David Hodge, the author of the article, writes “...exploring different chords and chord voicings can help you find new approaches to songwriting and arranging, and trying an alternate tuning, which will immediately make you search for new chords, is a good way to make you think and experiment. And that’s always a good thing.” I entirely agree. The lesson talks you through a very simple tuning, EADF#BE, which is one which I have not unreasonably spent most of my guitar-playing life ignoring, yet which surprisingly has quite a lot of potential. After half an hour with the lesson I was noodling along - teacher’s words, not mine - with ‘Handsome Molly’, trad arr Hodge, and a jolly good time was had by all.
Another good site is the ubiquitous “Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions”, which obviously wants you to buy as many of the zillion Mel Bay books as you can, yet is generous enough to give you a free online edition which again covers a variety of styles, jazz, resonator, classical and so on. Some of the lessons are mere tasters for the books, but more usefully there is a whole series of lessons on guitar scales, positions and shapes, or a complete guide to French polishing for the acoustic guitar, written by a luthier from St Louis, Karl Markl.
Mel Bay’s site has links to numerous other Mel Bay sites - Guitar People, Mel Bay Downloads etc - which are also worth exploration but one section that particularly caught my eye was “Tab Rehab”. This is dedicated to weaning guitarists such as myself off of tablature and on to “proper” music notation. Point of order! A noble sentiment I am sure but I’m afraid there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Now if you can give me something like tablature for the piano... Fortunately help is at hand. “Klavarskribo”, or Klavar Script, notation is a Dutch invention which is much easier to read than standard notation. Just like tablature it gives a graphical display of your instrument and the direction in which you are playing, so you don’t have to make that mental leap from what you see on the page to what you do with your fingers. All very decadent and symbolic of our short attention span age I am sure - except tabs have been going since the Renaissance and Klavarskribo was designed between the last two World Wars, so there is no need to apologise for using them. I have not yet found a free tab writer, although there are plenty of reasonably priced ones out there, but I have found an excellent free program which enables you to open any MIDI file and it appears in Klavar form which you can play on screen or print out. You can even edit it, or write your own pieces from scratch.
Finally, I must give a mention to the “Folk Map”. Jim Lawton, who edits “Filofolk”, a folk music club and event listing for West Yorkshire, has created a highly useful site - as long as everyone keeps it up to date. Basically it is a giant Google map, into which you can stick virtual pins to signify where there is a folk club. You can also add times and contact details. The afternoon I added the Ram Folk Club in there were already quite a few, and they are growing daily, so hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to see where the best clubs in Dorset and Cornwall are. You have to register but it is quite painless and of course free. Now, on with the practice.
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