I think Bach wrote it in F major.

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Originally posted by DougD

I think Bach wrote it in F major.

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Doug, please review my recently posted topic.  I value your input on it.  Thanks

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Originally posted by NCnotes

I was actually considering taking up tenor banjo (same fingering as fiddle! GDAE) but I thought about being the butt of all those banjo jokes....

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I had no idea. That's interestingly awesome. hmmm

Might be the same tuning (for Irish music) but the scale length and technique are completely different.

Yea I watched Enda’s video more closely and I play Last Night’s Fun (on fiddle) with those same exact fingers…so if somebody handed me a tenor banjo and pick, I could probably get a few tunes out (slowly). But those triplets they do, phew!

I suspect he is tuned down a step, and then he capos it to enjoy short/easier scale length and lower action? (I used to capo at 1 or 2 fret on guitar for the same reason)…

Ok sorry again for drift…

…back to “whatcha playing today!” :-D

I'm learning to play La Danse de Mardi Gras. Although I live 2500 miles from Cajun country, pretty much never have my fiddle tuned down to the Cajun C, and can't speak a lick of French, never mind sing it, I want to be ready if Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys ever need me to sit in during the Mardi Gras season.

I love, love love, the Cajun and Zydeco stuff!

I recently found out the 99 comp voices on my keyboard have an A and a B part. So I'm checking out a whole new world. Sort of.

NCnotes - Not quite so fast there! I noticed the capo on Enda's banjo too, and you're probably right about the reason. Tenor banjos are avaiable with either 17 or 19 fret necks, with 19 having a longer scale. In the old days I think the 19 fret was a later development and considered more "professional." I thought the Irish players preferred 17 frets without a resonator, but apparently they've succumbed to the lure of more notes and volume. I think they use triplets to make up for the banjo's lack of sustain.
Why Irish people fool with banjos at all is beyond me! Whatever happened to pipes and harps? I blame it on the noisy dance halls in jazz age NY and the (great) Flanagan Brothers.
Here's a short piece by Mick Moloney about the Flanagans, wth a sound sample: wardirishmusicarchives.com/WIM...thers.htm
I also found a video of the Scahills where Enda is palyig Mke Flanagan's banjo too.

Ditto on Cajun/zydeco!
Can’t NOT dance, with that stuff…

Doug, I haven’t researched but i bet that we Americans had something to do with “invasion” of banjo into Irish Trad! I like it though…maybe got “American ears”, that’s why :-)

NC - Mick Moloney wrote a good article about the history of the banjo in Ireland, but I can't find it online anymore. I think the banjo was adopted by the popular Irish-American bands of the 1920's through contact with the "jazz" bands of the time, both on record and in person in the venues they both shared. And also from a desire for a more powerful rhythmic sound. Then it apparently made it to Ireland through London, but it wasn't until the change in tuning during the "folk revival" of the 1960's that it became popular. This thread led me to the McNeela music website, which listed the five best "modern" Irish music albums (from the 1970's), and only one included the banjo.
Don't know if I've mentioned that I'm second generation Irish-American on my Mother's side, and although I don't play Irish music, I did inherit the 78 rpm records from the family Victrola, so I have some ideas. Still, I'd be as out of place at a modern "Irish trad" session as at a contemporary "Old time" jam. Bypassed by history - oh well.

Just answering the question...what am I playing today? Well most days I just don't get to play anymore, but spent some time and effort to try to get a little time to play something tomorrow...yes, tomorrow...lol...have no music callous left on my fingers so it'll hurt and sound bad. I would tell you the song that popped into my head today and I just gotta play it, but please don't link a buncha youtubes of other people playing it, especially pros...it messes me up...just wanna do it my way. But it's one I used to do back when I had my one and only regular unpaid, but steady for a couple of years (tips though!) music job at a restaurant on the busiest tourist stop heading south on I-75...Are you ready to hear what it is???? Lol...don't link them...I don't wanna hear anybody do it. But it's All My Trials...I used to play that one all the time in that restaurant...but completely forgot about it a few years after that...I don't know what on earth made me think of it today...but I'm gonna try to get a little time to sit down and put on a few tracks with it tomorrow, if at all possible. I'll be picking it and singing it in C...it just works well that way between my guitar and me...that's all I had to play on when I played at the restaurant...but I'll add more vocals and probably another guitar to make the picking fun and also a banjo, probably picking rather than clawhammer...then I thought since it's gonna be in C, I might try to put that ol' cheapo Chinese viola I've got to work with it, since it plays very nicely in C. Then I even thought of adding some drums, maybe...I'll have to think on that some more...and also maybe a flutely thing like a recorder or something. Just thinkin' all kinds of thoughts on that song...maybe I won't get to do it...maybe none of my ideas will work...but it'll be fun trying. If I don't get there, you can put up all the links that I don't wanna see at the moment...lol. Or put 'em up...but I will not watch or listen until I've got my own done...I'm sure they'll all be so much better than mine but I don't like stuff interfering with my own ideas before I get a chance to try 'em out on the presonus. So there ya go...I might play a song!

No links from here Peggy!
I am the same way with my design work…I don’t like to look at other stuff until I get my own ideas down first. Hope you’ll get lots of music time tomorrow!

( And Doug, I am sure you could hold your own in any jam anywhere!! Your 78s are probably a treasure for some Irish player somewhere…I went to a Frankie Gavin concert and he told a whole story about finding a cassette type in an old boombox that had tunes that nobody played anymore, and it was a treasure to him…:-)

I'm playing in a festival jam today, and we always play in D, so yesterday I played some simple D tunes - Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine, Keep the Old Ark a Movin', Soldier's Joy, Liberty, etc. But on harmonica - there are already too many "power trio" instruments, so I play uke and harmonca. That way I can explore this big festival without lugging around a heavy guitar case, plus, like GHP I don't have music calluses anymore. Also like GHP, I'm spending most of my time in a life-or- death struggle with invasive bush honeysuckle.

NC...i sure hear ya. Ideas can get contaminated so easily...contaminated is a bad word choice...but...we can easily, get too influenced by other ideas.

Doug...I hope you have fun at the festival jam. Sorry your fingers are tender...that sure makes playing difficult. But how are you on that D harmonica? I'm so bad and just can't seem to learn it. Are you cross-keying from a G harmonica to play in D, or straight playing in D? I have only a cheap0 C harmonica that daughter and grandson bought me when my arm was broken...and I think either way...straight or cross-keyed, is equally unachievable for me...lol. But have fun. Oh, I also have a uke now because I bought one for grandson when his home school co op offered uke classes one year...well I guess he "loved" it so much he stopped after one year and gave the uke back...I can't play that either...it just feels like a sawed off guitar to me and I can't find my way on the thing...lol. It just sits there lonely and unused now.

Peggy, I have Hohner harmonicas in C,G,D and A. With straight and cross that covers a lot of ground, although I'm not very good at cross harp. For fiddle tunes straight is better - although the D harp is very shrill n the upper register, so I have to be careful not to sit right behind somebody!
Uke (a plastic Flamingo) was my first instrument, and its nice because you don't really need calluses to play a little. Like anything else, a good sounding instrument is more inspiring. Years ago I came across a really old Ditson uke made by Martin at an antique show that was cheap and is a beautiful instrument. Then I bought a Favilla from the same dealer, same price, that's what I usually play. I have a couple tunes on my music page here played clawhammer style, which works for some tunes, but today I'll just be strumming.
PS - Here's a YouTube of this jam from years ago. It's much bigger now, and not as much fun. youtu.be/sYijBgaNxRY?feature=shared

One of these days I might play some Greasy Coat in C Modal on banjo...which to me, sounds cool and so modal and old timey...I was never that crazy about it in G Modal...by the way, I love Double C tuning on banjo and if you use it modally...by leaving off the index finger to make the C chord...you get some really nice modal sounds. I've shied away from Greasy Coat in the past because it just never occurred to me to try it in Double C--- modal style. Also...I think the condom rumors are just flatout stupid too...I've known so many old farmers and fishin'/ sangin' folks (people who ahd no job but sold catfish and ginseng for a living) and not one of them thought a condem was worth singing or dancing about...lol. Maybe I'm wrong. But I've heard the term Greasy Coat associated with pelts or like when horses work up a lather or the sheep were sheared or something. But whatever...if I can get a chance to play again before long, and my chances are dwindling...I've got a lot to keep up with...same type situation as Dolly Partin, but without the money or social connections...lol...but if I can, I would like to try some Greasy Coat in Double C. But since I'm on the fiddle forum, I should add if I put fiddling in with it, which I should, but my fiddling is especially suffering these days because I just haven't played the thing long enough to never play...and I wasn't good enough to begin with to stop playing...but anyway, if I do put the fiddling in, I'd probably tune Cumberland Gap style...in C...GCGC. Or if worse comes to worse, I could always go back to sawmill on the viola...backwards from the fiddle tuning, i.e., CGCG...sometimes sawmill tunings just work better for me...but...if and when I get the chance, I guess I'll find out...lol. So...what do I plan to play? Greasy Coat...maybe. I don't wanna hear the stupid condom jokes and rumors when I do...lol...I used to be a tolerant person, but I'm getting to be downright impatient anymore.

Peggy, I am a fan of the C tuning and C tunes. Not sure why...For some reason, and maybe it's just the tone my fiddle gives off but, the low C note sounds pleasing to my ears. My daughter bought a banjo and with school and college, she hasn't touched it. Maybe I should? I watched a guy play a fretless banjo this morning to the tune of Dry and Dusty and wow, my desires have changed without me realizing it. I was the "biggest fan" of fretless banjos and now, I'm seeking them out.

Lol...welcome to the banjo freaks of America, Erockin! Banjo is a really fun instrument. Of course, you have to get used to the jokes involved...lol...but it's just really fun.

Drifting back towards the topic - Not today, but Saturday I played at the jam at the big festival. Here are a couple videos taken by the citizens. They're on Facebook, but I think anybody can see them.
The camera work leaves a little to be desired, but here's "Whiskey Before Breakfast," a perennial favorite:
facebook.com/share/v/mkASGaQJR...id=WC7FNe
People asked for this one, and I suggested they just play the record, but that wasn't possible. Its allergy season and I got choked up partway through, but its against jam etiquette to spit in the middle of a song, so they got what they deserved. If you listen on headphones you can hear the low end noise from a stage a couple blocks away. That festival is incredibly loud.
facebook.com/share/v/CGdbaBfBY...id=WC7FNe
Later we were visiting and passed around a fiddle someone had been given - a Chinese fiddle, $600 from a local music store. It had a satin finish, which was a little strange, but would be plenty good enough for anybody to start on. We'd been talking about Itish music, so I played "Boys of Bluehill" and "Galway Hornpipe," which made me think I don't really play Irish music, and that I need to get back to the woodshed!

I've been playing a C tune I wrote, "Jump Reggie, Jump," at a slower, more deliberate pace than it was intended to be played (after all, it IS named after a springy little terrier). It is a tricky, challenging tune that gives me a workout every time I play it. Who else foolishly writes something above their skill level?

That jam is bigger than most I've attended. And way more spread out than the few big ones I've been in. No wonder you don't feel like you really fit in with modern OT jams, I wouldn't either.

Ha...I'd sound good in that jam....no one would hear me...lol. Only a few close to me maybe?

When I was in the little amateur BG band and we went to the huge BG jams, it was so crowded and noisy and hectic I could not hear if or what I was playing...lol...sometimes on the guitar I had to look down and see if the strings were even buzzing or not...lol.

No tunes still making terrible noise trying that one chord that feels so unnatural and each time I try it I hear nothing but an unbearable squeaky sound. I feel like quitting forever. My dog runs upstairs each time I try.