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Musical chunterings
Mar. 15th, 2022 07:45 amMy sometimes quartet ThingamaJig has recently asked me to cover the fiddle riffs in the Old Crow version of "Wagon Wheel." My first thought was to do it on a flute, since I do not pretend to be able to play fiddle well. At least, not in public. But the styling is stuffed with fiddle artifacts, particularly the droning on a second string while playing a melody on an adjacent one. Can't duplicate that on a wind instrument unless perhaps on a harmonica.
I don't like trying to learn something by ear. I can do it, but it's a slow and painful process for me. If I can find standard notation, it becomes much faster and less bothersome. Fortunately, someone good at the process has written out those riffs and posted them on the net. Unfortunately, our lead singer prefers the key of G over Old Crow's A major. I know I can do a reasonable cover on mandolin, so that's my target. But going down a note rather than up rules out the simplicity of using a capo. Suddenly those double stops or drones become impossible in at least a few cases, as the drone note is no longer an open string and moves up to the sixth or seventh fret of that neighboring string. Even in the pinched fret space of a mandolin, my hands aren't going to reach and hold that while fingering a melody down in the first or second position.
Now I have to rework the whole thing, changing the harmonies to make them playable in G. Bummer, but at least it looks possible. This goes way beyond just improvising the way I usually do on a flute.
I don't like trying to learn something by ear. I can do it, but it's a slow and painful process for me. If I can find standard notation, it becomes much faster and less bothersome. Fortunately, someone good at the process has written out those riffs and posted them on the net. Unfortunately, our lead singer prefers the key of G over Old Crow's A major. I know I can do a reasonable cover on mandolin, so that's my target. But going down a note rather than up rules out the simplicity of using a capo. Suddenly those double stops or drones become impossible in at least a few cases, as the drone note is no longer an open string and moves up to the sixth or seventh fret of that neighboring string. Even in the pinched fret space of a mandolin, my hands aren't going to reach and hold that while fingering a melody down in the first or second position.
Now I have to rework the whole thing, changing the harmonies to make them playable in G. Bummer, but at least it looks possible. This goes way beyond just improvising the way I usually do on a flute.
