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Post by bod on Jun 18, 2009 16:00:33 GMT
Thanks Michael - just one more quick question for now, if I may: is that (very) Fine Resophonic squareneck tricone of yours conspicuously present on any of your recordings?
Cheers
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Post by bod on Jun 18, 2009 14:11:06 GMT
Fantastic thread this! Nice link to the site about music acoustics, too, like the way it gives a non-mathematical explanation and gives me more reasons for wishing I was better with numbers. Good questions LR.... I have a few more down the same path (Michael, if this is getting too far from the original post, just say and I'll ask my questions in a new thread instead)
So, insofar as I understand it - and I'm out of my depth again here, but keen to learn something if I can - the original tricones had square metal necks and these necks were of hollow construction - is it helpful or misleading to think of them as sort of more like a Weissenborn in this respect?
Not sure now, but I think I read somewhere that these hollow metal tricone necks were (sometimes? / always?) "filled" with a (drilled / chambered?) wooden insert, is that right? If so, was this more of a structural or acoustic thing (or both)?
So, I'm wondering: is the neck hollow on one of these continuous with the body chamber? (and would that matter?) Does the elimination of this design feature in some way amount to the amputation of a significant acoustic device? Why does no-one make such a design any more? (Madly intensive on the labour? Not enough demand?)
Also, is the neck on a Fine Resophonic wooden-bodied square neck tricone hollow (or does it just look like it might be)? (I sometimes visit the FR site just to stare in wonder at these, they do look just amazing, but for some reason the relevant page is in French and my French is barely better than my maths!)
Cheers
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Post by bod on Jun 16, 2009 16:35:41 GMT
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Post by bod on Jun 16, 2009 15:25:22 GMT
Personally i find singing and playing to people i know way more intimidating than strangers. Roj Good point! In a similar vein, I had a couple of friends among the people at a work-based event t I was fronting one time, hit by nerves in a way that I'd not been for a long time. The perfect crime against music? Sneak out before sun-up with guitar in a sack, board a train to a town where nobody knows you busk some in the vicinity of a few random strangers and make a getaway before any gets a good look! ;D (Born and grew up in Cosham meself, so just outside the main city in a different direction. Lived in Stubbington for a few months once, though)
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Post by bod on Jun 16, 2009 9:42:39 GMT
Hi Just wanted to echo the appreciation for this thread, really. Hugely helpful, very encouraging.. Personally, I'm not in the same boat (yet), more like shuffling around nervously on the jetty... (I can even get "stage fright" trying to play with a friend in my own front room - never mind having an audience in a public space - so will tend to avoid rather than pursue even that : Still, I guess given that I actually do want to play with others and, perhaps, eventually, in front of others, too, the only way forward is start doing it... There's a weekly blues jam in one of the local pubs that a friend keeps trying to get me to take a guitar to, maybe I should just go along and freak out, freeze up and generally make a fool of myself a few times and get over it! Funny thing is I'm quite used to talking to a room full of people, sometimes for a couple of hours at a stretch, but although there is a performance aspect to that, the prospect of a few minutes playing a guitar in public still scares the hell out of me... pre-minstrel tension? Too right ! (Complete aside - Hi Roj, I'm originally from Portsmouth, too, there seems to be a few of us here... I am, of course, assuming that the best explanation of your sounding like like a tall middle class white boy from Portsmouth is that that is where you are from... sort of strange otherwise ) Cheers Dave
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Post by bod on Jun 16, 2009 8:58:33 GMT
that Grossman's Guitar Workshop also has a YouTube channel with lots of free instructional goodies... ...among which it turns out there are a couple of Woody Mann extracts: These are similar to, but but not from, the materials I referred to but should give you a good idea of what his dvds are like. (The ones I have are a little more introductory - the version of 'Saturday Night Rub' on The Basics for example is, well, a little more basic and features a walk through in addition to using the split screen visuals) Have to say, though, that Steve James lesson looks really good too.
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Post by bod on Jun 15, 2009 22:00:28 GMT
Hi Fibrebundle,
I'm just a learner, so no claims to expertise about this and of the three names mentioned so far I only know Woody Mann's tutorials but, for what it's worth, I've been happy with the Woody Mann materials I've used and would recommend them. That said, I should add that from what I've seen I think you'd get some, but not all, of what you're looking for in his books/dvds. I'll say a bit more...
I've got three in the Art of Acoustic Blues Guitar Series, namely, The Basics, Ragtime and Gospel (of Gary Davis), and The Logic of the Fretboard - each has a book and a dvd. Now the books are pretty much TAB for a handful of songs each, plus a little further information and a further basic exercise (the same on in each book) that provides a series of examples of variations and developments on the same basic blues. However, these are just supporting materials. Mann's aim is to avoid simply teaching a few numbers and to focus on providing a foundation (this is the sense of the title of 'The Basics, it is not "easy tunes for tiny fingers" territory) that will support learning and playing in a variety of blues and related idioms. There are two strands that he comes back to time an again:
1) Developing bass and melody / thumb and finger independence on the picking hand - don't (just) learn whole picking patterns, that'll lock you in... practice the bass and melody lines separately, learn to hear and play the two things together, so that you can eventually learn how treat the relationship between the two as a kind of dance, which Mann seems to see and going to the heart and soul of the style.
2) Breaking down the chords - learning to see how different parts of chords can be, so to speak, broken off to form moveable shapes and used for melodies and harmonies all up and down the fretboard.
The underlying idea is that despite the wide diversity in the range of forms and styles involved in fingerstyle blues guitar, the above two themes are at work in and relevant to all areas, so getting on top of them is a useful thing...
The tunes and the versions taught in the series have apparently been chosen to help the learner develop along these two lines as they move though the different numbers. (I certainly found it instructive) Each tune is performed in a more advanced version, as well as played and tabbed in a more basic version and subjected to a walk through. One nice thing about this is you get the detailed description and demonstration of an accessible version and quickly shown a version that you'll have to move to by eye and ear, if you want it. This struck me as a nice balance.
But I really don't remember any real focus on 9ths and 13ths and so on and I think you'd probably have to look for that elsewhere (although I suppose it might be elsewhere in his materials)
Dave
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Post by bod on Jun 14, 2009 13:11:21 GMT
Thanks Michael.
(Beautifully explained, by the way - clear and succinct, yet chock-full of riches!)
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Post by bod on Jun 14, 2009 5:00:01 GMT
Any chance of a quick explanation in layperson's terms of 'headspace' / 'headroom' and 'foldback'?
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Post by bod on Jun 10, 2009 12:54:21 GMT
This might seem an odd post, but bear with me (or don't ), it is about music, among other things... and I'm feeling strangely moved right now, and felt like sharing with people who might get it... Having just partly plugged one of the more serious holes in my cd collection with a budget Blind Willie Johnson collection - arrived in the post this morning - I've just heard 'When the War was On' for the first time in what must be rather over twenty years.... All of sudden, I'm back in my best mate of the time's room at his mum's, as we play our way through his (even then long dead) dad's rather fine selection of blues records. It all seems half a lifetime ago, and it almost is, too. One notable summer a crate of his father's home made wine - made about a decade earlier - was unearthed in the tool shed, so we drank that and toasted him well we listened his records. This all brings to mind things that I haven't thought of in years, like us playing 'When the war was on' or Freddie King's 'Driving Sideways' over and over, putting the needle back to the start of the track just as soon as it finished. Or my feeling seriously awkward and not knowing how to react when Mike's old mum suddenly started talking as if she knew some of these cool people we were listening to - and then being astonished when Mike quietly remarked (out of his mum's earshot), 'It's ok, she's not gone bonkers her and dad used to run a folk and blues club down town, apparently they used to have all sorts of people play there back in the 60s and most of them crashed over! They gave it all up when they discovered I was on the way'. This was quite a shock to my youthful presuppositions about the relationship between interesting stuff and my elders.... (and a good thing, too) And then there is the priceless, if embarrassing, moment (which might well be what led up to the above, can't say for sure at this temporal distance), when Dot (Mike's mum) popped in with a tray of teas and asked me if I was enjoying the albums, I said that I was adding what a shame I thought it was was that some kid had scribbled on one of the covers, to be abruptly informed that the artist had been blind and had not had a neat signature.... (to my regret, I cannot recall just whose album it was now, maybe my mate'll remember, either way it'll give me a pretext for ringing an old friend who I've not talked with nearly enough since we started living at opposite ends of the country) One other reason for mentioning all this here: I figure it is an outside chance, but does anyone here know anything about (or even remember!) the Railway Folk and Blues Club in Portsmouth back when Ed and Dot Wenham used to run it (no later than the mid-sixties, to go from Mike's remark about his then upcoming birth putting an end to that particular party)? I sometimes forget what an impact they had on my musical taste a good decade and half after they stopped doing the club, let alone what they did for the local scene in the club's heyday... Hats off to 'em (and all relevantly similar others), I say. Dave
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Post by bod on Jun 7, 2009 14:24:56 GMT
Hi Pete, nice to meet you
On the basis of my extremely limited experience, flipping the bar around fast without dropping it doesn't seem like it is going to be terribly difficult easier than (other forms of) juggling, perhaps, just so long as I'm not trying to anything (else) complicated - like play dobro - at the same time! ;D
Dave
More seriously (he added, unable to help himself) I'm just starting out on dobro, I have and am learning to use both types of bar and am not planning to chose between them any time soon, if ever, as each seems to me to have its merits and limits. Then I read somewhere that, despite what is often said, it is actually possible, with experience and technique, to play with a rail anything that can be played with a bullet and vice versa. And I'd kinda like that to be true but try as I might I could not do - nor see how to begin going about learning to do - decent pull-offs with a bullet... now I know how it does sound rather advanced, but a) it is fun to try and b) Rob Ickes suggests trying to learn the full range of bar techniques, even if you don't plan on using some of them much, as it is all good learning for a person's bar hand and their relationship with the bar. Granted he says this with a rail in hand (and probably in mind, too) but I figure the point is generalisable, and it is pretty much on these sorts of grounds, rather than any conviction that I'll actually succeed in putting this to use while playing at real speeds, that I'll be exploring this one)
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Post by bod on Jun 7, 2009 12:51:47 GMT
Hi Mel {Edit - I see Pete has just posted something more informative while In was writing this, even so I'll leave it now it's done] I don't know the dimensions, but there is a body plan for a tricone in the archive on the MIMF site < www.mimf.com/ >, you'd probably be able to get a sense of the dimensions you need from that, by counting along the grid on the plan (but if you're not already a member of MIMF you'll have to register to search the archive, and if you don't already have some form of CAD program or dxf viewer you'll have to get one to open the file - happily there are some really basic programs available for free download, if I remember rightly there is some info on where to get these on the same site...) Hope this helps Dave
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Post by bod on Jun 4, 2009 17:37:21 GMT
Bump! ;D
(Reading Gerry C's new post on National Avenue reminded me of the great Fred McDowell recording - among others - that Zak made available via this thread, which prompted me to put it on, and it is just so good I felt I had to 'bump' the thread for anyone who might have missed it at the time or has joined since)
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Post by bod on Jun 4, 2009 10:39:02 GMT
Thanks Michael, appreciated as always - exploring that one will, I imagine, add whole new epicycles of slide-related fun to my efforts!
Dave
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Post by bod on Jun 3, 2009 19:02:38 GMT
Hi Michael
A quick question for you, if you'd be so kind:
Can you - or anyone you know of - actually get a clear, strong sounding pull off using a bullet-style bar on a dobro? Or would you say it is pretty much the case that if a person wants to get that effect in a piece they should use a rail for that piece?
Cheers
Dave
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