How Many Musicians?

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NannyPatty said:
I read music, too, but not well enough to use sheet music. I use chord sheets and make up my own fill in or listen to the songs until I can play the part "by ear".
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That's me too. I know what the notes on the staff are and some of the symbols too. But to read music like one would read a book, not so much. I read music the way a first grader would read.

See Jane Run. See Spot Run. :LOL:It's tough to get a good flowing sound when you read like that. :rolleyes:
 
Patchouli said:
Piano and violin. I can read music but I am not as good as I used to be, which isn't saying much.

Angie, I am listening on youtube to Johnny Cash's "Ghost Riders in the Sky." I haven't heard that since I was a little kid.
I never realized what the lyrics were.

Edited to say: Okay, wrong again on that song. I wasn't a little kid in 1979. Then what song was it that it reminded me of?
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Patch, I get it mixed up with this rock song, don't know why but sometimes I do.

 
I use the wrong side of my brain for music.
I have no aptitude for music or languages.
I have tried to learn and it just doesn't get through my thick skull.
The Nave gave us a battery of test in boot camp and the guy that evaluated them said he had never seen anyone get a zero on language aptitude.
I can't think of anyone in my family except my Grandfather that played an instrument.
 
I don't play one but hubby does. He plays guitar, keyboard, drums. But guitar is his favorite and the one he plays the best. His whole family played and sang. His daddy played a mean steel guitar and harmonica. His 4 brothers all play guitars and one plays keyboard and guitar real well.
They use to have a band called ------ Five ' before the Jackson Five was -------Five. Later two of his brothers band played in Battle Of The Bands and came in 76 out of 500. One sounds just like Elvis even when he talks he does. Another one who is disabled sounds like Roy Orbison.
 
Meerkat said:
I don't play one but hubby does. He plays guitar, keyboard, drums. But guitar is his favorite and the one he plays the best. His whole family played and sang. His daddy played a mean steel guitar and harmonica. His 4 brothers all play guitars and one plays keyboard and guitar real well.
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That sounds like our family. My dad and one sister don't play anything but my mom, 2 other sisters and 2 brothers all play something. We don't get much chance to play together though. We're scattered around the country.
 
I'm the only one of 5 siblings in my family that has any ear for music. My dad played harmonica a little 2 or 3 pieces. Mom was completely tone deaf. My mamas played "French harp" ( what they called it.), but I never heard her. Never heard any of my brothers sing except one and he is very tone deaf.
Sometimes "make a joyful noise" is ok if the heart is right, just not in a crowd!
 
UncleJoe said:
That sounds like our family. My dad and one sister don't play anything but my mom, 2 other sisters and 2 brothers all play something. We don't get much chance to play together though. We're scattered around the country.
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Same here. Plus a couple of the brothers are not speaking and when we visit a 3 in Ga and one in .Carolina nobody wants to play anymore. One still does, the youngest who is 60 but the others are older and grouchy. Hubby gets along with all of them and wishes they'd grow up. Had argument over their mothers funeral, not the assets just BS which funeral home.
 
gumpy said:
But I do love listening to it.
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OK. We have a general idea of members with some type of musical background. So does anyone have any personal recordings they made?

I belong to a music forum and various members host get togethers over the course of the year. On the East side of the country there's one in Florida in Feb, Virginia in June, Upstate NY in Aug, and I host one in Oct. These gatherings follow the seasons. South in the winter and North in the summer. We had one fellow come to NY in '15 all the way from Portugal.

Here is a clip of my partner and myself from Oct. of last year. This is the one I host at my camp in the mountains of Central Pa.

I didn't bother to split the file so there's 2 songs here. The first one I'm pretty sure everyone knows. It doesn't sound like Willie Nelson or Arlo Guthrie; the ones that made it famous. It's my own rendition of the song. The second is a Van Morrison tune from 1979 called Bright Side of the Road. There's a little chitter-chatter between them while Scott tunes his guitar.


 
I muck around a bit on piano every now and then and only when no one is around. No formal lessons but I learned to read music to some degree; I figure I can swing a classical grade 7 with lots of booboos. I was always able to bang out things like camp town races, clementine and other ancient oldies on my grandma's piano when I was little. Grandma's piano had thumb tacks in the felts and some of the keys didn't work.

I had my hands on an accordion once and I might be able to do something with that given some time. I figured out the harmonica, but I guess I spit in them too much or something because they keep warping, so I did them a kindness and left them alone. I don't sing, it bothers the coyotes and the dogs run off.
 
ClemKadiddlehopper said:
I don't sing, it bothers the coyotes and the dogs run off.
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Yeah I'm a little lacking in the voice department. But I don't see me making it a full time, career endeavor. It's just for fun so I don't need a professional sounding voice. If folks don't like it they won't stick around to listen. :p

Here is our host for the NY get togethers. Now she has a voice!



This one gets cut off about a minute before she finishes it. The camera battery died. :rolleyes:

 
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Meerkat said: Patch, I get it mixed up with this rock song, don't know why but sometimes I do.

Thx for callin' me Patch, it works.
I think the Burl Ives edition is the one I was used to hearing.
Riders on the Storm, you get it mixed up with that. Hilarious. My NH loves The Doors. Lol
My daughters play the piano and sing beautifully in the choir at church; one has posted herself on FB doing a couple of different things, Lord of the Rings and a couple of hymns.
I sing quietly so as not to disturb anyone. My dad used to play violin, my mom sang in the choir always, the rest of the family not much going on there. Somebody has to listen.
Thx, Uncle Joe for asking who can manage an instrument. I wanted to ask but wasn't sure where to put the question.
 
UncleJoe said:
Yeah I'm a little lacking in the voice department. But I don't see me making it a full time, career endeavor. It's just for fun so I don't need a professional sounding voice. If folks don't like it they won't stick around to listen. :p

Here is our host for the NY get togethers. Now she has a voice!



This one gets cut off about a minute before she finishes it. The camera battery died. :rolleyes:

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She can sing, take into consideration there is no band, no recording studio helping liek most have,the girl does good.:thumbs up:
 
Patchouli said:
Meerkat said: Patch, I get it mixed up with this rock song, don't know why but sometimes I do.

Thx for callin' me Patch, it works.
I think the Burl Ives edition is the one I was used to hearing.
Riders on the Storm, you get it mixed up with that. Hilarious. My NH loves The Doors. Lol
My daughters play the piano and sing beautifully in the choir at church; one has posted herself on FB doing a couple of different things, Lord of the Rings and a couple of hymns.
I sing quietly so as not to disturb anyone. My dad used to play violin, my mom sang in the choir always, the rest of the family not much going on there. Somebody has to listen.
Thx, Uncle Joe for asking who can manage an instrument. I wanted to ask but wasn't sure where to put the question.
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I don't type well just hunt and peck so I shorten names to save on key strikes and errors. I'm always editing post ,:oops::thumbs up:
 
I'm a long-time percussionist, although nowhere even close to being professional. Started in 5th grade because I couldn't make noise out of a trumpet, and it's kept me sane...although my coworkers comment on how much they enjoy (despise) me tapping my computer mouse and feet :)

I'm one of the relatively few amateur drummers who can sight-read music, and it's served me well. I've played in smaller jazz bands (~20 piece groups) and in several community symphonies. For many years, I was a private drum instructor, but I got too busy. I used to be "okay" on alto, tenor, and bari saxes back in high school (and filled in when/where needed), but my ombissire was rudimentary. I took up trombone, but only played by myself, and that was years ago.

One day I'll get this new house built and finally have the room to get out all my instruments again.
 
Clawhammer banjo. Not melodic. Frailing, Appalachian style twanging. 5 fingers, 5 strings… Just made sense to me. 5 fingers, 6 strings… someone loses out in the deal. 5 fingers 8 strings fuhgeddaboudit. Can’t read music and have no idea what each string is called, or tuned to. I do know that I am usually tuned to “A”, or whatever the fiddle is in. When they do their tuning, I set the drone to whatever they have and the rest of the strings just seem to fall into place. I know groups of songs by tunings: Mountain Modal does Mole in the Ground, Shady Grove and such. There is another one that takes care of a bunch and A or G does most of the rest. I don’t use a capo, I carry extra strings. LOL



I am not a whizz-bang genius but if the fiddle starts it off, I can catch on in a round or two. If not, most songs sound like Cripple Creek or Old Joe Clark anyway and I take it from there. When I play with those folks again, I seem to remember most of it and can fumble through the rest. Heck, throw in a couple notes, drop thumbs, hammers/pull offs and you got you a song. I can’t remember what any songs are called, so when someone says Do ya know this one or that one... I tell them to just start it off and we’ll see.
 
ssonb said:
I have taken a few months lessons on the electric bass and I now have the ability to play something that sounds just like a song but just not the one that is being currently played.
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I remember that point in learning Banjo. I played tapes and learned a few songs, took a long time to get them to where they sounded like anything. Then, folks would come over to pick and I would play my song “AT” them, and they would try to play along with me. This went on forever. I just played my song and they played it with me. Sounded horrible and felt worse.

Then, one day, I was playing my song at them… and something happened. I stopped letting my brain get between my ears and fingers. I stopped concentrating on what I was doing, and listened to what THEY were playing. All of a sudden... I was playing WITH them! It was a glorious experience and has been ever since. The fingers seem to know what the ears want to hear and if I leave my brain out of the whole thing, works out fine that way. If I start to concentrate too hard, I lose my place. LOL



So keep at it. One day you will be playing at someone and it will just click.
 
Yep the Teacher on this first round wanted to teach me the tablature method... I was havin trouble with like what you said.. brain ears fingers...Tab is too blocky instead of feel I will be trying again soon.
 
Woody said:
All of a sudden... I was playing WITH them! It was a glorious experience and has been ever since..
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I had a similar "epiphany" type moment.

I was struggling with the barre chord thing. I learn the basic finger structure but had no idea why it worked the way it did. One day I was listening to a song and just trying to find the base notes in hopes that it would lead me to the chords. I was picking along on the E string. Now in HS I learned and retained the fact that E and B have no sharp. So I pressed down on the E on the first fret and thought, this must me an F since E has no sharp. I started walking up the neck saying F, F#, G, G#, got to B and thought, No sharp. All of the sudden it hit me. Holy crap! It's all laid out in a line! So I formed the barre structure and started playing it on each of those notes. Then I moved over to the A string, did the same thing and realized I had found all the Minor chords. Shortly after that someone showed me how to make all those barre chords into 7th chords. It was so simple I couldn't believe it took 2 years to figure it out. It opened up a whole new world for me.
 
D-45.jpg
Yep, there is one more picker here. Sorry but it took me a couple of weeks to find the photo’s (surgery and then a computer crash, don’t ask).

The only instrument I have left is my old D-35 Martin. I’ve had it since I was 15. I picked regularly up until about 5
D-35 01.jpg
D-35 02.jpg
Pickin Jim 010.jpg
years ago. Since I moved back to Bama some old friends and I played at a restaurant on Friday nights, pic #3. I’m not in the pic but my hands are, was playing a mandolin that night.

We didn’t even get paid. They had a nice fire place and plenty of rocking chairs. We’d sit around the fire and play for a couple of hours. Afterwards there was a perk, we ordered dinner 30 minutes after they stopped taking orders and got a 10% discount. That’s a lot at my age!

This gig stopped when a competitor complained to the city that the owner didn’t have the permits for live music… lol. Since then a couple of people retired and moved to Nashville and a couple more passed away. So, I don’t pick anymore, most folks don’t know what Bluegrass is much less pick.

Just over a year ago I went to Nashville to visit some old friends. I stopped by “Gruhn Guitars”, they sell used guitars, “high end” used guitars. This little honey was on sale, a D-45 Martin built in 1942, they only made a few that year. The price was $195,000.00, I may be old but I can still dream!

Sorry, the D-45 pic got placed first...
 
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