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Author Topic: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess  (Read 22940 times)

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Clive Williams

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #20 on: February 05, 2014, 01:58:21 AM »

Great stuff!

As promised, here's a tutorial walkthrough (as best I could manage) for a D/G 2 row melodeon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTzRTa_ZJI0

Quite a hard tune to do a demo of apparently - I've resorted to annotating the chords on the screen on the full playthrough which is at 9 mins 52 secs roughly. Of course, this is just my quick version of the tune, simplifying and horribly missing the subtlety and treble chording that Andy put in his original. The chords are, as far as I can tell, relatively close to the original, but you can still make up your own if you like!

Hope it's useful to someone!

Cheers,

Clive

WestOz

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #21 on: February 05, 2014, 06:08:36 AM »

Thanks for this Clive - extremely useful! It would be great if you prepared a tutorial for each TOTM! A labour of love, rather like Lester's Tune a day.
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Barry M

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #22 on: February 05, 2014, 10:02:08 AM »

Very useful tutorial
Thank you
Barry
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Myrrh Music

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #23 on: February 05, 2014, 11:09:12 AM »

 ;) Clive, you are a life-saver! I struggled for ages yesterday over just part of this. Thanks so much.

Mary :-*
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Mike Carney

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #24 on: February 05, 2014, 03:53:04 PM »

Here's mine - an early attempt, and I hope to improve greatly as I get to know this tune even more.

https://soundcloud.com/oysterboy6/the-abbess

Mike  :||:

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Clive Williams

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2014, 04:46:09 PM »

;) Clive, you are a life-saver! I struggled for ages yesterday over just part of this. Thanks so much.

Mary :-*

Glad to be of service :-)

hirundine

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #26 on: February 05, 2014, 04:53:05 PM »

All players turned in credible efforts, which is applauded! Oh yeah! Such wonderful contributors!

Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #24 on: Today at 03:53:04 PM »
ReplyQuote
Here's mine - an early attempt, and I hope to improve greatly as I get to know this tune even more.

https://soundcloud.com/oysterboy6/the-abbess

Mike  :||:

Very nice!
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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #27 on: February 05, 2014, 06:59:37 PM »

As promised, here's a tutorial walkthrough (as best I could manage) for a D/G 2 row melodeon...
Hope it's useful to someone!

Thanks Clive, this is really useful and it's really helping me to put this tune together.  Just recently the whole 'organise your cross-rowing to get the basses you want' thing has really started to fall into place for me after seeming like an interminable chicken and egg problem for the last 18 months.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well I was able to work out the cross-rowing and some of the chords needed for this tune but some parts of it, particularly the minor chords remained a complete mystery so  many thanks for shedding light on this.

Now, all I've got to do now is learn the tune.  I can feel another late submission coming on  :|||: ::)
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arty

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #28 on: February 05, 2014, 07:13:26 PM »

As promised, here's a tutorial walkthrough (as best I could manage) for a D/G 2 row melodeon...
Hope it's useful to someone!

Thanks Clive, this is really useful and it's really helping me to put this tune together.  Just recently the whole 'organise your cross-rowing to get the basses you want' thing has really started to fall into place for me after seeming like an interminable chicken and egg problem for the last 18 months.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well I was able to work out the cross-rowing and some of the chords needed for this tune but some parts of it, particularly the minor chords remained a complete mystery so  many thanks for shedding light on this.

Now, all I've got to do now is learn the tune.  I can feel another late submission coming on  :|||: ::)

Ditto to all of the above! I have learnt the tune and most of the basses - now all I have to do is learn to play them all at the same time and in the right order! What an absolute delight this tune is.  (:)
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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #29 on: February 07, 2014, 07:54:02 PM »

Thanks folks. It's a beautiful tune played on a lovely box.

Strange about the Soundcloud link - even stranger is that I can't play my own uploads and I have no idea why.

Martin

I find that when I try to listen to my own Soundcloud recordings, I have to start them, hit "stop," and then restart the tune. This always works for me; I hope it does for you.

And a beautiful recording of a great tune. Gives me a goal to work toward!
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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #30 on: February 09, 2014, 11:55:02 AM »

http://youtu.be/sh_8ZjdgZmI

I enjoyed the challenge but the tune.....

All the best

Bill
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arty

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #31 on: February 09, 2014, 06:29:43 PM »

This makes me feel a little embarrassed!!!

It is less than 2 years since I first picked up a melodeon, (21 months to be exact), and this is my very first submission to Tune of the Month. I love all the music of Andy Cutting and it was me that proposed The Abbess as Tune of the Month, thinking, as I listened to it over and over again in the car, that it didn't sound so hard! Then, 10 days ago I printed off the music and saw so many basses that I don't have and soon found that I had to learn to play across the rows too. So much to think about!

This video is a long way from good. It's full of mistakes and stumbles and I have made up my own bass line, according to 'my ears', as I don't have many of those written in the music. I know that I have to practice, practice, practice, in order to smooth it out and to stop making silly mistakes but I wanted advice about how to improve the bass line especially.

I hope no one minds me asking for help but I don't have a teacher and feel very much as though I am groping along in the dark.

Thanks  (:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCMc73jPhSY
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AirTime

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #32 on: February 09, 2014, 10:26:59 PM »

In spite of the fact that I have played this before & already "knew" the tune, I still struggled to record a satisfactory version on my DG Dinn III:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdFlG76xgQ&feature=youtu.be

My earlier version on a vintage BbEb Hohner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU7dlLY04cU
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TomB

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #33 on: February 10, 2014, 01:48:50 AM »

This makes me feel a little embarrassed!!!

It is less than 2 years since I first picked up a melodeon, (21 months to be exact), and this is my very first submission to Tune of the Month. I love all the music of Andy Cutting and it was me that proposed The Abbess as Tune of the Month, thinking, as I listened to it over and over again in the car, that it didn't sound so hard! Then, 10 days ago I printed off the music and saw so many basses that I don't have and soon found that I had to learn to play across the rows too. So much to think about!

This video is a long way from good. It's full of mistakes and stumbles and I have made up my own bass line, according to 'my ears', as I don't have many of those written in the music. I know that I have to practice, practice, practice, in order to smooth it out and to stop making silly mistakes but I wanted advice about how to improve the bass line especially.

I hope no one minds me asking for help but I don't have a teacher and feel very much as though I am groping along in the dark.

Thanks  (:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCMc73jPhSY

I'd say that was pretty damn good, 21 months or not. Well done.
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Clive Williams

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #34 on: February 10, 2014, 10:30:57 AM »


I hope no one minds me asking for help but I don't have a teacher and feel very much as though I am groping along in the dark.

Thanks  (:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCMc73jPhSY

Ditto - that's really good I'd say; I think most of the basses correspond to what I recognise too, but I would emphasise that there's no such thing as 'right/wrong' with basses; it's just whatever you want to do with it. There are a set of chords at the end of my tutorial video (at 9 min 52 secs I think), but while I tried to copy them from the recording, please treat them with a healthy pinch of salt...

Cheers,

Clive

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #35 on: February 10, 2014, 11:01:21 AM »

@arty - as everyone else says this is an excellent version. I totally agree with Clive that you should play the bass notes and chords that sound good to you on tunes, not what someone else says they 'should' be.  One little hint is that you'll see in many of the videos posted people playing a bass note with a different chord - an A bass note with a C chord or a B bass note with a D chord. One reason for this is that a lot of boxes have an A major and B major chord with no stops to take out the thirds whereas the tune requires minor chords and the above is a way of achieving this. I've not used this much in the past as I've made sure my boxes either have 'neutral' chords or a stop to take out the thirds. Even so, they work nicely in this tune as they give a minor 7th which sounds nice.  Don't try and relate this explanation too closely to my version as I've only been getting to grips with this myself in the last week or so (and I've been playing for 30 odd years :|bl)! Hope this makes sense and helps and that at least some of it is correct!
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butimba

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #36 on: February 10, 2014, 02:20:56 PM »

Ok, like Arty I'm new to Tune of the Month, but I couldn't resist having a go at this one (and now that I'm no longer doing a 2-hour commute I'll hopefully have time to join in more often!). For some reason I ended up trying to work out a right-hand only harmonised version of the tune, and then decided not to push my luck by trying to record a bass line as well, so just left it at that.

Here was the best take that I got: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVxETnpCxRY&feature=youtu.be
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butimba

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #37 on: February 10, 2014, 02:37:27 PM »

This video is a long way from good. It's full of mistakes and stumbles and I have made up my own bass line, according to 'my ears', as I don't have many of those written in the music. I know that I have to practice, practice, practice, in order to smooth it out and to stop making silly mistakes but I wanted advice about how to improve the bass line especially.

I think this is a great version and flows really nicely!

Re improving the bass line, I'm hardly an expert, but perhaps the next thing you could do is try to play the bass line without the om-pah rhythm. I.e. just try literally playing block chords where you hold down both the bass note and the chord note for the whole length of the chord. (Trying to learn the bass line as Clive plays it in his tutorial video would be really good practice.) Then you can start to create bass lines that are more rhythmically independent from the tune (I remember this is one of the things Andy Cutting talked about in a workshop at Witney once).

I've found that working out other people's bass lines from YouTube videos is really helpful for learning how to create more interesting bass parts. This takes a bit of patience, but if you set the video to half speed (in the settings tab directly under the video), it makes it much easier to work out exactly what's being played.
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Pete Dunk

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #38 on: February 10, 2014, 10:25:10 PM »

I'm not the person to advise you on basslines or indeed on how to play the melodeon, but I think you are being hard on yourself.  This is way better in competence and musical phrasing etc than your description led me to expect.  I understand you want to take it further, but I enjoyed that.

I couldn't agree more, there was much more that was right about this recording than was wrong. Is it just me but in the last twenty seconds of the video did you really say "What the hell" and play your socks off??
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arty

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Re: Tune of the Month for February 2014: The Abbess
« Reply #39 on: February 10, 2014, 10:42:42 PM »

Thank you so much for all the very helpful comments and suggestions. A lot to work to do I think but I shall practice to be able to play what I am doing already without all the stumbles and cock-ups. Then I can try playing the basses different ways, rather than oom pa, oom pa all the way through.
Teaching oneself and practicing alone every day, as a lot of us on this site must do, it is very easy to lose confidence.
It is so good to feel the support and know there is a lot of help from the good people of this Forum - a BIG thank you once again  :D
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