Getting to know the tune

[Tim Twiss]

I was playing in the Briggs' book this morning, looking at "Zip Coon"...never really did it before. Then I got to looking at ""Going Ober De Mountains" and "Nebber Do To Gib It Up So". I already explored these tunes and have vocal versions of them. They seemed easy to play from Briggs' because I knew the tune, having sifted through the Levy collection and the Hans Nathan book. The version in the Briggs' is nice, and it is something one might play in between verses in a vocal performance. It made me think about playing jazz tunes in "The Real Book" where young players (myself being guilty of this) play the songs with little knowledge of the actual tune and melody. It becomes an excuse to "get the head out of the way" in order to play a cool solo, usually being set improvisational licks that fit on any tune in the same format. When I first started, I did not know any of these old Minstrel songs, so the arrangement of the tune had no separation from the original melody. The result was a memorized finger game. Of course it was a cool sounding thing to play, but is a different experience from knowing and being familiar with the actual song. So many of the Briggs' are such songs. I still have never done "Alabama Joe" as a vocal tune, so it is still a set arrangement for me, which is okay, but I still intend to check it out...(that being one that is not very appropriate as a vocal tune anyway).

[Rob MacKillop]

Did Gottschalk ever say categorically that he ''was attempting to capture the actual sound of banjo music'' or is that the idea of the guy writing the article? Lots of composers imitated non-classical instruments like bagpipes, flamenco guitar, etc, without claiming accurate transmission of actual performance practice. I'm sceptical...

[Trapdoor2]

Perhaps we could get Professor Smith's input, I contacted him a year or so back. Very nice guy and an excellent banjo player. He put out an album back in the 1980s that was a big influence on me. Anybody that would arrange Couperin's "Mysterious Barricades" for banjo (and then relate that to women's underwear in the liner notes) has to be an interesting guy. ;-)

Besides, he put his version of Lamb's "Ragtime Nightengale" on the album...which went directly #1 in my book for a very long time.

[Tim Twiss]

"Banjo methods and tune books were never intended as literal and complete representations of actual performances. Rather, they either presented outlines of tunes already learned by ear, or provided a simple starting version of a tune, with the assumption that the player would supply the gestural and aural information necessary to complete the musical performance. The notation itself would therefore not be a reliable indicator of the actual sound of the music."

Sounds interesting. What evidence is that statement based upon?