The oldtime banjo blog from Kiel

Recently I ordered the "Banjo Gathering" set consisting of two CDs "100% pure old-time banjo". Various artists play their banjers unaccompanied. It´s astonishing how many different sounds can be produced with 5strings. Great stuff, and: for every tune there are informations about the tuning - as real old-time banjo means to retune the instrument whenever you start a new tune :-) So I tried to learn one of the them. It´s in double C-tuning gCGCD. Here is "Hook and Line". The pictures were taken on my journey to the retreat.

Ok, this song needs female vocals. I definitly will not sing about my "waving black hair" nor my ringlets in it. But the melody is so beautiful that I cannnot resist to offer it to our Transcontinental Jam Session. I played sort of melody during the first round, then just chords, then again melody and so forth. Thought it would better suit to a banjo this way. So the frailer may begin with vamping the chords then frail the melody, then vamp and so on. And if anyone dares to sing about his waving black hair, he´s very welcome. Wildwood Flower (chords are G, D, G, D, G, C, G, D, G).

Some weeks ago Neil sent me his recording of the Wreck of the Old 97 as an mp3-file. It is pure wonderful banjo frailing. But it turned out to be difficult to combine it with my guitar-mp3 which I had made before (see post on May 18th ). I found it kind of difficult to match them properly. So I postponed the task for a while - and asked Pat how I could manage this. He sent me some good advice: I had to open the first mp3 with audacity, then import the second mp3 and afterwards take the tool in the left above corner at audacity which looks like two arrows to match the two tracks. Thank you very much, Pat. Nevertheless its not as easy as it sounds but I think I (nearly?) succeeded now . I´d welcome some vocals to this! Anyone has the guts? When continuing the "Transatlantic Jam Session" it seems to be the easiest way that everyone who records a piece to an existing file combines the two tracks ("export to mp3") after recording and then sends it to the other guys (or g...

Austria / Germany 0 : 1 From now on the family sticks together again ;-) (But I like the melody of the German anthem better. It´s from an Austrian composer. Such is Europe.)

For my non-German friends: This is a German-Austrian-Thingy: Tonight German and Austrian soccer teams will meet in the European Soccer Championship. It´s not a great step in history but in football history. Although I´m half Austrian through my mother, tonight during 105 minutes I´ll know no relatives any more ;-) Ich denke, dies ist eine angemessene Gelegenheit, ein trotz allem schönes Lied auf dem Banjo einzuspielen. Mögen die Yogis harmonischer sein! (Und es gibt keinen Grund, "Land der Berge, Land am Strome" zu frailen!!!)

Once upon a time, when my mind and soul wasn´t filled up with banjos and anglo-american folk music, I had - and in fact I still have - a passion for Greece, it´s people, it´s landscapes, it´s architecture, it´s food, it´s language - and it´s music. One of the most well-known dances in Greece is the "dance of the girl Evdokía". I think no Greek can hear this tune without at least clapping his hands to the 9/8-rhythm. Bum-ba ba-bum ba, bum-ba ba-bum ba-ba. Just now I stumbled across a mp3-file which I recorded about one year ago sitting in my living room, playing the percussion set (mp3 from the internet) through the hifi-rack, picking my bouzouki live and recorded both in one with a microphone and a minidisc recorder. It was before I knew how to use my PC with Audacity to record music ;-) I combined it with a slide show of some photographs (which I took during several journeys to Greece) and uploaded it to youtube. Have fun with the "Zeimpékiko Tis Evdokías" :