5 February 2022. A story... In the mid-1990s when I was first getting into Irish traditional music I bought my first banjo-shaped-object for the purposes of trying to make music myself. I was living in Camden Town at the time and I used to visit a few pubs in the area to listen to sessions but I despaired of ever being able to sit in with any of the musicians. The standard of musicianship was so high... But the listening was great!
So I used to travel about a bit to sessions far and near in the hope of finding one that was a little more on the beginner-friendly spectrum. Eventually one night I visited a bar where a session was underway and it seemed that the pace and the selection of tunes was a little more accessible. I introduced myself to one of the players and asked if they'd mind a raw beginner sitting in on a session with them. He was very welcoming and for the next year or so I made a weekly journey halfway across London to join them. In the process I found my feet and the rest is history.
Anyway, at that session there was a mandolin player who had a favourite set of jigs and this was his lead-in tune to the set. I was very taken with it and asked its name. When he said it was called The Frost Is All Over, I was a bit taken aback. It didn't sound like The Frost Is All Over which I was familiar with, courtesy of Planxty. He explained that it was a different tune altogether but with the same name and they knew "Planxty's The Frost Is All Over" as Kitty Lie Over. Next week when I turned up he presented me with a cassette(!) of his version of the tune and a hand-written sheet of GDAE tablature...
It was a very generous gesture and if I had only known how inspirational such kindness was going to prove to be, I would have kept that hand-written sheet of tablature and had it framed!
***NB Printable versions of tab used in these videos are available to download for free at TheIrishMandolin.com - follow the link to "learn some tunes."***
Why "revisited"? In early June 2021 I took the opportunity to review the sound quality of the sound files in the videos which I posted to this channel when I first established it in November 2020. My original recordings were made with recording equipment which was a little more primitive than my current set-up and I hadn't figured out how to remove ambient noise from the sound files. I'm now using a Zoom H1n digital recorder and I clean away ambient noise and normalise the sound file to -3dB using Audacity software. I'm also playing different instruments to the Eastman MD304 which features on those early recordings and which has since been sold. Therefore I decided to re-record the "offending" sound files with updated and improved versions. From time to time in these "revisited" videos I will play the tunes in both a mandolin version(s) and a tenor guitar version, each of which will hopefully spotlight different aspects of the tune in question. I hope these new recordings are easier on the ear and a better aid to learning tunes than the original sound files.
Also my original "policy" when making these tune learning videos was to play each tune through once - allowing the viewer ro rewind, replay, etc at will. However it's virtually unheard of in Irish music circles for tunes to be played through once only. So my current policy is to play each tune at least twice-through and I will occasionally revisit tunes whose sound quality was good enough for the purposes of tune learning but which were originally played through only once...
Notated, tabbed for mandolin and played on his Paris Swing Macaferri mandolin and separately on his Eastman MD304 mandolin (original website sound file with background noise minimised; no repeat) by Aidan Crossey. More on this and many other tunes from the Irish musical tradition at www.TheIrishMandolin.com - follow the link to "learn some tunes".
Help support The Irish Mandolin. Volume 1 (100 tunes, £7.00), Volume 2 (50 tunes, £3.50) and Volumes 3 & 4 (50 tunes and 20 tunes respectively, available as a 'package") are now available to buy online at [ Ссылка ]-... Your contribution will be gratefully received and much appreciated!
#mandolin #trad #tablature #GDAE
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