Tunes from the garden

Not a lot has been done on the music in the last couple of weeks - but there has been some progress.

The first important thing to tell you is that I got a mandolin at Christmas. I have played it for real a few times now in the ceilidh band I am in, and I am not doing too badly with it.  It is after all strings, frets and familiar stuff like that. It is tuned differently to a guitar, which makes the adjustment interesting (it's actually tuned like a violin) and I have started to work out some tunes on it.

So I have written a few tunes on it - broadly ceilidh-type (folk) tunes, most definitely suited to the mandolin of course. On BODY:MIND:SPIRIT I had a section which was three ceilidh tunes I had written, and would like to repeat the feat. I wrote the first one and half of the second one day while in the garden with the family. My wife suggested I called the first tune "The Beech Grove" which is a nod to a famous tune called "The Ash Grove". Nice naming. I have named the second "Daisy Chain", partly because we were making a daisy chain when I stated writing it, partly as a reference to my daughter's middle name (Daisy) and partly because it's a round of sorts.

The third tune was written more over the past couple of weeks, mostly in the Sitting room while twiddling. I wondered about calling it "Peggy-Oh" or even "Our Peggy-Oh" because it has a lot of arpeggios in it, but have decided to call it after my sister-in-law who has been staying with us for most of the time while it has been written, so it is called "Bob's Your Auntie".

"Daisy Chain" has had a lot of work done on it to make it work properly as a chain/round - initially I wanted it so it could change harmony as it progressed - it doesn't really do that, I think because it was too hard a thing to attempt. I still quite like it though.

And some work has been done towards recording, namely I think I have the mandolin parts down. I have cheated, in that I recorded it at 144bmp and have sped it up to 192bpm which is quite a lick, but sounds good, It also helps me fit all three tunes into 4 minutes. I got a surprise when I found the tunes were of different lengths, but that's all good actually.  I did all of the recording so far to a click track, with many, many takes (the hardest bit is the last line of "Bob's Your Auntie" - it doesn't have the most notes but it has the most string changes). I have pretty much mapped out how the three tunes are realized over the four minutes. I will also have in accordion, and I hope violin. This will be the first time Purple has used other musicians, but I am hoping to use a fiddle player from the ceilidh band. Oh and there is the small matter of accompaniment to sort out.

All this will be the last section in the track that's all about my home life, broadly because it's tunes written at home.