[Feb 14 2006]
I’m trying to learn to play the guitar a bit better and perhaps learn the mandolin and tenor banjo in the process. So I thought it might be a good idea to record what I find on-line here so [1] I don’t lose my notes and [2] they may be useful to other people.
My first project is to learn The Lakes of Pontchartrain as played by Paul Brady. Amazingly I found the entire score on his website. I’ve never heard of him before but he was on BBC 4 the other night there singing this song and his guitar playing was amazing. Now if I can get 10% of the way there then I’ll be happy.
I found a version of this on chordie.com using an open G tuning. This seems to be wrong as he uses open D with capo III. What does that make – open F? Anyway, it was close enough but this score is direct from the horse so I’ll give it a go.
Another open D user is Ritchie Havens. He even gives lessons on his website. Nice one Ritchie. All I need now are the rings, the caftan and about 200 tonnes of cool.
I’m now also the proud owner of a 5-string open-backed banjo. It’s fab! Very easy to play simple tunes on but could be a bit tricky playing more fiddly things on. What I need is practice.
Perhaps I’ll put some piccies and MP3s up at some point.
[June 27 2006]
I’ve jsut got back from a Bluegrass festival and I’m thinking I may give this a bit more of a go. I already regularly check out Patrick Costello’s HowandTao.com site which is perhaps the best site I’ve seen so far for learning 5-string banjo.
Someone at the festival also recommended BluegrassGuitar.com which has both MP3 and midi examples fopr beginners and intermmediates. You download a plugin to read Sibelius files (Sibelius is the musical equivalent of Word for Windows) and the midi file plays along soullessly with it – but at least you can slow it down and it does mark the notes in time. The MP3 gives you the human version at regualr speed. There are tips for picking styles and lots of example tunes to chose from.
I guess once you pick up some standard licks etc. you can play anything in that style. Chordie.com is great for getting words and simple chord tabs for absolutely any tune on earth.
On the folk side, if you are looking for tunes written in ABC then Mudcat is a good place to start and it is packed with lyrics.