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Author Topic: Les Deux Freres  (Read 3311 times)

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Ollie

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Les Deux Freres
« on: June 22, 2014, 08:52:49 PM »

Lizzy (oread_uk) posted a brilliant video of her playing the Naragonia tune Les Deux Frere on Facebook earlier, and asked for some helpful tips for improving the smoothness. I made this little video as a bit of a way of showing a few techniques that might help, and it may be of use to others too.

It's also the first recorded outing of the Microbot 9-Bass Erica, and a return to YouTube for me after a long absence (greatly aided by the arrival of an iPad!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGJIAz3eqU
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Ellisteph

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2014, 11:26:17 PM »

Lizzy (oread_uk) posted a brilliant video of her playing the Naragonia tune Les Deux Frere on Facebook earlier, and asked for some helpful tips for improving the smoothness. I made this little video as a bit of a way of showing a few techniques that might help, and it may be of use to others too.

It's also the first recorded outing of the Microbot 9-Bass Erica, and a return to YouTube for me after a long absence (greatly aided by the arrival of an iPad!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGJIAz3eqU
Excellent thanks Ollie. Inspired me to have a go at this. Curious to know which bass note the ninth button gives you? Never seen this before.
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Ollie

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2014, 12:04:28 AM »

Lizzy (oread_uk) posted a brilliant video of her playing the Naragonia tune Les Deux Frere on Facebook earlier, and asked for some helpful tips for improving the smoothness. I made this little video as a bit of a way of showing a few techniques that might help, and it may be of use to others too.

It's also the first recorded outing of the Microbot 9-Bass Erica, and a return to YouTube for me after a long absence (greatly aided by the arrival of an iPad!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGJIAz3eqU
Excellent thanks Ollie. Inspired me to have a go at this. Curious to know which bass note the ninth button gives you? Never seen this before.

Gives you F# on the push, and C# on the pull, which greatly aids bass runs as I have a whole scale of G and D on the left hand. I could have asked Mike to make it a 12 bass, but I wanted it to be a nice light morris/ceilidh box, where I'll rarely use any reversals or extra chords, so only having 9 basses keeps the left hand weight down a bit. I thought I was the first person to think of this, but apparently Roger Watson got there before me.  ::)
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Cooper

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2014, 08:35:48 AM »

Gives you F# on the push, and C# on the pull, which greatly aids bass runs as I have a whole scale of G and D on the left hand. I could have asked Mike to make it a 12 bass, but I wanted it to be a nice light morris/ceilidh box, where I'll rarely use any reversals or extra chords, so only having 9 basses keeps the left hand weight down a bit. I thought I was the first person to think of this, but apparently Roger Watson got there before me.  ::)
\
Karel van de Leeuw, a builder from Holland has built a lot of those 9-bass thingies.
W
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arty

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2014, 09:30:40 AM »

Thanks for posting this YouTube clip Ollie.
I love the way you have broken the tune down and shown different ways of playing the same phrase. As you say, let each note have some air around it. This kind of thoughtful approach to the music would apply to virtually every tune one plays and especially the more emotive melodies I think. I shall remember this in my learning, although I am no where near the standard required to play Les Deux Freres. Good stuff!
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Chris Brimley

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2014, 10:17:02 AM »

Just a general comment on the 9-bass idea (not related to this tune, so apologies for the drift), more specifically the use of a F#/C# button on D/G boxes - I have a similar button within my 14-bass layout, and I find it probably the most useful extra to the standard 8-bass layout.  It's true that it gives you the full G and D major scales on the bass, but its most useful function I find is allowing you an alternating low bass note when playing in the key of D, and it really spices things up, adding in these thirds.  An example of the basses might be that instead of:

Dbass Dchord Dbass Dchord,  Abass Achord Abass Achord,

you could play

Dbass Dchord F#bass Dchord,  Abass Achord C#bass Achord.

However, and it's just a suggestion, probably most of us would normally play LH fingers 2 1 2 1, 2 1 2 1 for the first pattern.  If you have the F#/C# button the other end (as is the case on my layout), you can easily swap to 2 1 4 1, 2 1 4 1, to give the second pattern, while keeping that natural LH alternating finger rhythm going.   If you have the extra button the other end as on the 9-bass described above, to play that would perhaps be 2 1 1 1, 2 1 1 1, or perhaps alternatively 3 2 1 2, 3 2 1 2, both which I suggest may not be quite as easy to do naturally.

To many who have not tried a bass layout like mine this might seem a little bit of a niggle, but actually I've found this alternating use of 2nd and 4th fingers to be something you can automatically incorporate into your playing without thinking about it, to give a more interesting sound to the accompaniment than the simple 'boom, chink, boom chink'.  If it's possible for 9-button Ericas to be built that way round, I would suggest it might give an easier and natural improvement to all those 8-bassers' '2 1 2 1' bass playing techniques.
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oread_uk

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #6 on: June 23, 2014, 06:23:11 PM »

Thanks so much Ollie!  I started learning this last week and I've just spent some time this evening on some of the technique suggestions you made and the tune is already sounding crisper and more 'musical' - the video was a great help - definitely my kind of learning style!

:-)
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Ollie

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #7 on: June 23, 2014, 10:58:40 PM »

Really glad the video has been of use. Much easier than trying to explain what I mean over Facebook!

Thanks for posting this YouTube clip Ollie.
I love the way you have broken the tune down and shown different ways of playing the same phrase. As you say, let each note have some air around it. This kind of thoughtful approach to the music would apply to virtually every tune one plays and especially the more emotive melodies I think. I shall remember this in my learning, although I am no where near the standard required to play Les Deux Freres. Good stuff!

It's great for dance music too, as the gaps really give the tunes some punch.


I quite liked doing the little video tutorial. Happy to do some more, if there's other stuff people would like going over.  (:)
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arty

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2014, 08:58:32 PM »


I quite liked doing the little video tutorial. Happy to do some more, if there's other stuff people would like going over.  (:)

I have watched your video, Les Deux Freres, several times now and there really is so much helpful information here, I wanted to thank you again.

Following on from your post offering to make more video tutorials, there is something I would like to ask your help for, if I am not being too cheeky. I have been playing for two years now and I am trying to develop the bass side, i.e. making more use of the 8 bass buttons I have and trying, where appropriate, to get away from the oom pah rhythm, which tends to get a bit monotonous.

Would it be possible to do a tutorial, maybe using a fairly simple melody, showing different ways of thinking about the bass and different ways of playing it around the same tune?

Sorry if I am asking too much!
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DaveD

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2014, 09:51:15 PM »

Thank you Ollie very informative video, has inspired me to try this wonderful tune again.
DaveD
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Chris Brimley

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #10 on: June 26, 2014, 10:44:28 AM »

Ollie, I should have said earlier - I also thought your video was superb.  I particularly like your approach to thinking in harmony terms about everything you play on the LH.
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Ellison

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2014, 10:32:34 AM »

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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: Les Deux Freres
« Reply #12 on: August 27, 2014, 08:41:23 PM »

Hi Ollie,
Wanted to give my thanks too.
A great and thought provoking explanation of putting some air around each button and not letting it get too mushy. The crispness therefore gained is a lesson to be learnt. Something for me to bear in mind!
cheers mate
Q
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I think I'm starting to get most of the notes in roughly the right order...... sometimes!
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