Michael "Whitey" Andrews (1902 - 1968)
Tenor guitar player Michael Andrews is primarily known for his recording work with Michael Coleman and Paddy Killoran in the 1930s.
Some great bouzouki playing from Alec Finn and Kevin Macleod.
Alec Finn & Kevin Macleod, Vence 2007 from Kevin Macleod on Vimeo.
Before doing some more traveling this past summer, I decided to modify my Voyage-Air VAD-06 a bit. Nothing major, just swapping out the stock tuners and bridge pins, which was easy enough to tackle by myself.
A little bit of an update during the Milwaukee Irish Fest week.
The Summer School week has gotten off to a great start. Some brilliant sessions at Brocach Pub Milwaukee last night. Tunes will be over at John Hawk's tonight.
Here's a great set of reels from fiddler MacDarra Ó Raghallaigh.
YouTube is a great source for backers of Irish music. You can find a lot of clips of solo melody players, which is a great way to practice accompanying, learn new tunes, and get exposed to different musicians and styles of playing.
So I've begun focusing some practice time on flatpicking Irish tunes on bouzouki. I know—heaven help us all! I'm starting out learning a tune I play on flute known as “Patsy Geary's” (no, the other "Patsy Geary's”). The version in particular is from Harry Bradley, which I got while at the Frankie Kennedy Winter School back in 2007.
A couple lessons learned while starting this journey:
Since I pretty much keep my D-15 tuned to DADGAD, I've been using a mixed medium/light set of strings for a few years now (.013, .017, .024, .032, .042, and .056). I got the idea from Austin area guitarist Jeff Moore after playing with mediums for a while.
My guitar felt and sounded “stuffy” for a lack of a better description with mediums. Switching the middle strings over to light gauges really opened up its sound in DADGAD tuning, and the string tension felt more even.
Air travel with a guitar is freaky business. Flying on a regional plane in the States, you'll at least have to gate check a full sized guitar. And even that freaks me out without a flight case.
So as I prepared to fly out for the Catskills Irish Arts Week last year to give a presentation on the Dunn Family Collection, I decided to not bring a guitar. I already had to bring a laptop, A/V gear, a couple visuals... I decided I should skip the guitar, especially since I didn't have a flight case for my trusty Martin D-15. Hey, I was going to be busy, so I wouldn't miss the guitar, right?
Just came across this clip from Gerry McKee's Mad-for-Trad CD-Rom bouzouki tutorial. Gerry plays in GDAE tuning. His work with the band Nomos is absolutely brilliant. It's been a while since I've gone through his lessons, especially since I'm focusing on GDAD tuning now. Still, I'd recommend taking a look it for Gerry's strumming techniques alone!
I tend not to have too many lucky streaks, but every once in a while, good fortune falls in my lap. So when I won a month's worth of free access to the lessons at the Online Academy of Irish Music (OAIM), I was pretty excited.
OAIM's mission is to become a large online community for tutors and students of Irish traditional music. They have a monthly subscription fee which give you access to a number of online video tutorials. OAIM offers courses in bodhran, bouzouki, concertina, fiddle, flute, song, whistle, and uilleann pipes.
Given this opportunity, I was eager to check out the bouzouki basics class, taught by Billy Mag Fhloinn. The course offers twelve video lessons and is geared towards newcomers to the instrument.
Billy does a fine job of starting off with a good core lesson of bouzouki information: tuning, posture, session etiquette, and an emphasis on developing good rhythm. Thankfully, and unlike so many other instructional methods on the market, the following lessons don't just teach a few chord shapes and toss the student into immediately backing tunes. Billy teaches a number of chords based around common keys in Irish music (D major, G major, A major and minor, E minor, B minor, etc.) and gives his students different patterns, progressions, and scales to work through. I feel this is a very comfortable and natural way to teach an instrument that might be totally new and foreign to the student—not to mention students that may not be totally familiar with Irish traditional music. Written thoughts and patterns are also provided in pdf format, as are mp3s of certain patterns and loops for students to download.
Later lessons also cover the very basic concepts of counter melody accompaniment. Note that these lessons are more along the lines of adding simple scale runs to connect chords rather than teaching someone to play like Alec Finn. Still, Billy adds some good tips and rudiments to start preparing the bouzouki learner to further explore counter melodies.
Starting with lesson eleven, Billy demonstrates backing to some familiar session tunes (“Wind that Shakes the Barley,” “Kitty Lie Over,” “Pigeon on the Gate” and the like). These sections also includes mp3 downloads of unaccompanied versions of these tunes, which are pure gold for practicing.
I think the normal subscription price of $25.95/month is a good value for this level of instruction, especially if you wouldn't have access to a bouzouki instructor locally. There is a lot of material in the course, so I doubt anyone working at it on a regular pace (say a week spent on each lesson) could get the full class done in a month.
Oh, and just a note that I did not have any technology difficulties viewing the videos. They're all flash-based, as far as I can tell, so if you can access YouTube videos with no problem, your setup should be fine.
Overall, a very fine way to start learning bouzouki in Irish music. Hopefully any follow up course would include access to mp3 tunes from the other instrument classes at OAIM. This would give the bouzouki student a nice little library of tunes to learn and explore backing concepts from their own lessons.
If you're like me, life has a way of throwing you a couple curve balls that get in the way of making music. Holding down a day job, late evening meetings, and teaching restricts my own personal practice time. When I get home after 8 or 9pm a few times a week, it's easy to pull the “I'm too tired” excuse to avoid practicing some guitar scales or working through a couple reels or jigs on the bouzouki.
Plus, my eating habits get horrible on this schedule! It's convenient to give into temptation and grab some fast food on the way home. Hello to the TV, burgers, and fries; goodbye musical technique.
A couple weeks ago, I decided to change both my practicing and my eating habits—at the same time! I call it my Turkey Burger to Better Scales plan. I picked up a box of turkey burgers from the store when I finally forced myself to go grocery shopping (making a point of getting some lean turkey burgers as the healthier option). I set my timer for four minutes, throw a burger on the skillet, and go practice some scales in DADGAD. Timer goes off; flip the burger and set it for four more minutes. Go back to working through part of a tune. Timer goes off; dinner time! I manage to carve out eight minutes of practice time and make a decent meal!
Note: I practice with a clear line of sight to my stove to make sure nothing's burning! I also highly recommend playing music in your kitchen on a regular basis.
This routine has helped me get back into the swing of regularly practicing on my own. I've also trimmed a couple pounds and saved some money by not eating out so much. Maybe it's not a perfect practice regimen, but it's enough to focus on certain technique areas that I want to improve.
GDAD Bouzouki String Frequencies
G: 98.00 Hz
D: 146.83 Hz
A: 220.00 Hz
d: 293.67 Hz
I've been meaning to compile these for my own reference for a while. These are helpful when diagnosing feedback and sound issues when you're amplifying a bouzouki on stage. My setup is kind of quacky on the low D course, so dialing down the 145ish range of the EQ helps quite a bit.
Maybe the chart will be of use to others out there!
Recently got the Kane sisters' Side by Side CD which features Mick Conneely's fine bouzouki playing on several tracks. Here's a clip of them in action from YouTube:
Just came across this YouTube clip of Patsy O'Brien backing Miss Monaghan's in standard tuning. Seems like a good online music instruction series. I had a class with Pasty a couple years ago for DADGAD playing. He's a great guitarist, excellent teacher, and an all-around nice guy.
Wow. I had no idea when I recorded this for the eHow series that the video would A.) end up on YouTube and B.) create so many comments. To respond to some of these comments, I'll deliver some context about this clip, as well as offer some of my own points.
This video was created when a filmmaker friend asked for some help to deliver some clips based around an Irish music theme for eHow. One of these assignments was to make a video about “How the Bouzouki is Played” in Irish music (note again the Irish music theme). And it had to be under three minutes long.
Obviously this is a topic that could better be covered in thirty minutes. Or three hours. Or three years or more. I definitely couldn't teach someone how to play like Alec Finn in three minutes, so I decided...
Above is a pdf chart of some chords for GDAD tuned bouzouki that I compiled towards the end of last summer. These are for the key center of D major.
The top line chords work well for Alec Finn inspired cross-picking patterns. Han Speek details an example on his website.
The second line contains the minor chords for the key, E minor (ii) and B minor (vi). The final two chords I think of as transitional chords to move from cross-picking patterns into strumming patterns.
The third line I consider more for full strumming and are more open (or “modal” if you want to go there) sounding. These are just I, IV, and V chords...
