Clawhammer Goes Zoom

For me last weekend was stuffed with clawhammer banjo 😉
Just a few days before the start I came to know that the famous Ashokan Festival has got an Oldtime version called "The Ashokan Online Rollick" (sorry to say but I found it on infamous Facebook 😟). I registered and via "Zoom" participated in great concerts with wonderful musicians and amazing clawhammer banjos. I even joined a workshop online. Rachel Eddy taught us "Over the Waterfall". She demonstrated a slow version and led us through the tune and then demonstrated an upspeed version with some really hot licks. Some day I´ll try to find out, which almost jazz-like licks those were, but that could take time... Applaudable how systematic and precisely she guided us through the tune. I think all participants have gained a lot. The Rollick-guys uploaded some videos and audiofiles to google drive which is open to participants, so we can repeat the great experiences.
Of course I would have loved to attend a real festival with real people - but connecting with all those guys through Zoom came very, very close to that real festival feeling which I learned to love e.g. in Gainsborough.
The guys from the Rollick (I think lots of work was done by Debra Clifford ) probably are already planning their next edition, so look out for it.

Apart from the Rollick I attended a 1/2 hour concert from Allison De Groot on Facebook (horribile dictu again) which was clawhammer-wise wonderful and great and amazing - but technically not as good as the Rollick because the streaming didn´t offer an appropriate quality. But anyway - to see and here Allison De Groot was worth it. She will offer a workshop again this weekend through Facebook and I will try to attend it.

And not enough said, Horst and Hans from Hamburg tried to jam with me using "jamkazam". But as my PC in my man´s cave is connected to the wide wide world via Wifi (although fibreglass connected to the house) we had a latency which didn´t allow me to join the music. Anyway we talked banjo. The two guys are both equipped via LAN-cable from router to PC so they could jam - and I could listen 😁 For them jamkazam did work pretty good. My next mission will be to find a way out of latency - without spanning a LAN cable throughout the house. Perhaps an adapter for the notebook could help, so that I can have the notebook connected to the router in our livingroom via LAN? But that would mean I find a way to use the livingroom alone... My banjo could be helpful 😁

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