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!