Monday 30th October 2006

What's been happening in the sessions recently? Well recently the sessions have been banished to alternative venues for a one-off. Neither were very conducive to nice tunes. For our regular Wednesday night session, it was the function room upstairs which is cold and gloomy - a world away from our beamy snug downstairs. Andy made a welcome return but only briefly. Still not well so we wish him all the best and hope to see him when he's fully recovered. There were only the banjo players left at the end (Paul, Jez, John and myself) so we played a selection of what we iked. Funnily enough, it was the other Irish session which got moved as well. This time from the Anchor Faversham to the Three Tuns Faversham. Once the darts match had finished and the juke box went off, we played some tunes and had a reasonably good time, but it was a poor substitute for the Anchor. Nice to see Adrian again.

The English (or mixed lumpy) session in the Bear though was fine. It escaped all the venue changing gloominess of the Irish sessions and a good time was had by all.

I've added a load more session tunes to my site now at http://www.banjolin.co.uk/tunes and written a 'tune finder'. You can search for tunes with certain snippets of text in the title, or restrict the list to types (Reels, Jigs etc), origins (England, Scotland etc) or which session they're played in - or any combination. It's really quite flexible and doing it made me realise how many tunes are up there now. It's heading for 300 and they're all available as abc format, NoteWorthy Composer or as combined score and tablature images in either gif or pdf. Some of the tunes still have no name (such as 'Prior to the fire' and 'The French Tune and The Swedish Tune') so if anyone knows a title I'd be grateful. I've used the fiddlers companion quite a bit to check origins - http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/FCfiles.html.

No news yet on the Yew Tree at Barfreston, and some talk about alternative Sunday sessions and a Friday night session. More news when it happens. Let's see what this week brings ...

Friday 13th October 2006

And what a treat Wednesday was. Tim Edey was back in town for a while and came out to the Irish session to play a few tunes with the regulars. He was accompanied by Lucy who is a stunningly good Bodhran player. When you are joined by such good players, it lifts everbody's playing to a different level. A good evening and much longer than usual. I understand that Tim has been playing with Seamus Begley and Steve Cooney most recently, and Lunasa before that. Accordianist is in Hungary and the other banjo player is still moby.

Thursday session was good. Mostly. Two problems really. Three guitars playing different rhythms and sometimes different chords and sometimes in different keys! Oh, and a recorder player and how they like to tootle along to tunes they don't know. Hope they learn. Apart from that, some good tunes and a full pub as usual.

Nothing on the next two Sundays as far as I know, but the Anchor at Faversham on the last Sunday. Off now to play with my Behringer AB switch. On the basis of this experience of buying from them, I can recommend Thomann in Germany if you want gear. Cheap and organised!

I hadn't realised that it had been so long since my last post. What's been happening? Well it's been fairly quiet on the normal session front. Illness and holidays have depleted the Irish session ranks for a few weeks but we've kept going. Acquired a new sessioneer as well (another banjo player - hoorah! Welcome Jez.). The English session has been the same as normal. Which means that it's different every week - you never know who will be turning up apart from the hard core Bear sessioneers. It looks like the Anchor at Faversham may become a two Sundays a month venue, as it it is such a good place to play and the staff like us and advertise to get punters in.

Just acquired a Mandola and for the record, it's a tenor mandola. That's right - not an octave mandola or an octave mandolin but a mandola tuned GDAE - which is tenor (the ordinary being alto). Yes I know it's confusing and tenor banjos don't help. Also ordered a handy programmable A-B switch from Thomann (Behringer AB200) so I can switch between banjo and mandola at gigs. Much handier than a mini-mixer but thanks to Mike for lending me a little Phonic mixer to try.

I've been putting a lot of tunes on my site at http://www.banjolin.co.uk/tunes/, now organised into the two main sessions as well (Bear and Anchor {Wingham}). Formats are .abc, .nwc, .pdf and .gif - the pdf and gif are tablature and score and all the tunes are 'bare bones' - provide your own decoration, ornaments, chords. Beginners find it a lot simpler to have a basic tune outline which they can flesh out later.

Well, it's Irish tonight - lets see what happens!