Another Week WTF I Can't Keep Up

Alright, so I've got a start on Washingtons March. Boll Weevil, didn't make it much further than the basics. Index lead, played around with it, didn't get anything seriously done. So yep onto the next week.

Back to standard tuning, I'm working on the L&N Rag, and stumbled across Last of Trion which I like a lot and they're both in C so that's the thing for this week.

Also I need to start learning some of the Contra tunes that the folk people round here play. The old time tunes I like just don't seem to fly with that group, they are mostly focused on Irish and New England stuff, so I will adapt.

DDAD and Index Lead

Not necessarily related. And yes I missed a week or so, but in my defense I learned 3 tunes in the last two weeks so I'm still on track right? Welp Half Past Four is starting to resemble a tune maybe in a year it'll sound ok, and Chinquapin Hunting is one of my favorites at the moment.

So for this week I decided to leave cross A behind and head over into DDAD tuning. So I'm learning Boll Weevil off of the Brad Leftwich video and Washington's March (Napoleon's Retreat variant) off of Bruce Molsky's video.

And banjo, so for banjo due to the awesomeness of alopecia my fingernails are all jacked up, clawhammer hasn't been a lot of fun. I tried picks and really don't like them eventually I could probably make it work but instead... So I've decided to get into index lead 2 finger picking. I've been going over some tunes I already play but really need to add to my list of tunes I actually know well on banjo. So this week This World Can't Stand Long from Benton Flippen my favorite name in old time music. Paul Brown taught it at banjo camp a few years back and I never got back to it, until now.

And I'm already behind, this week Half Past Four

So tune a week, and it's been two weeks. Cause I'm awesome at follow through. Anyway between then and now, I went to the Portland Old Time Gathering played a bunch of tunes that I wanted to learn and forgot to write anything down.

I was looking at a list I made of tunes I can kind of play, and I'm pretty light on A tunes. Not sure why, I blame Seattle, I suspect we play more in G and D generally speaking. Call it a regional thing, who knows. I'm trying to get used to cross A tuning so I've been working that out a bit. Tunes I've been learning/relearning in the interlude have been:

Cold Frosty Morning - Melvin Wine, I learned from an Erynn Marshall Class
Breaking Up Christmas - Learning off of Brad Leftwich's video
Jimmy Johnson - Another tune from an Erynn Marshall Class at ABC

Then a friend told me that they were learning Half Past Four on mando and banjo, so just learning it the easy way on the banjo was out. I'm starting to work it out on fiddle, there's about a hundred and thirty-five versions on youtube give or take. I've been listening mostly to Bruce Molsky and Pete Sutherland renditions. I just dug up an Ed Haley recording that I'm going to put on repeat for awhile. I do have the dot's in the Milliner-Koken book but I don't do well learning from them I never get the phrasing right. Well so that's the homework for this week.

I guess at some point I'll have to make some recordings but, I'm much to shy for posting any of that, and it's not too listenable at this point anyway.

That's what I forgot, Five Miles of Ellum Wood, Ed Salyer, I'm learning off the Canotes and Bruce Greene recordings. Also I got sidetracked by Chinquapin Hunting. That is to say I'm having a bit of trouble with Half Past Four.

Starting Tune a weekish project.

Hey look it's a New Year. I'm going to try and do a thing that I won't keep up with, so to keep a record here it is.

I'm going to go ahead and learn a tune a week and report on that process here. For all the internet to judge. Cause why not. So at last count i've got a stupid number of tune books with about eleventy billion tunes in them, even more instructional videos, countless recordings and all of youtube as sources. The issue won't be a lack of material.

So for the inaugural tune, being Jaunary 10th. Seems like a good time to learn January 8th. Also known as the Battle of New Orleans apparently it's celebrating that shitbag Andrew Jackson's victory over the British. The tune probably pre-dates those events, and its a good tune, so I'll go ahead and learn it.

So here's some of the sources I seem to have:

Tractor Tavern Fiddle Tune Book
Benton Flippen - Old Time New Times
John Hoffman and Mac Benford - It's About Time
Josh Turknett
The Milliner Koken book only has 7 variations of it.

So I'm gonna try an learn a version from John Lusk here's some sound of something like it from the Youtubes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGwnWlv1_w&index=2&list=PLIyiA73GyruPqfvKpqsyk19hCOS7oJgCm