Folk music minus one

Subject: Folk music minus one
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 03:20 AM

Music minus one sells CDs, I think, with all the instruments playing a classical piece, except one of your choosing. You can then play your violin or piano with the full orchestra.Anyone had fun with this?

But more importantly is their a folk equivalent so that I can play steering wheel bongos with the Chieftains?

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST,Penguin Egg
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 04:03 AM

This will be popular with buskers.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: bet
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 01:27 PM

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 03:40 PM

Interesting idea. Maybe I should try remixing Boat Band CDs with the fiddle missing, or the accordion, or whatever. Trouble is, most of our stuff(and I suspect a majority of folk records) was not recorded in a way that would make a clean separation possible. I'd be interested to hear from other people on whether this would be possible with their CDs.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: jeffp
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 04:07 PM

There used to be a bluegrass guitar Music Minus One album.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 04:11 PM

Works best for a capella solos. ou don't have to buy a lot of CDs.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Bernard
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 05:28 PM

Better still, why not do a mix with everything missing... then we could have a session?!!

Hee hee!

(Runs for cover, ducking missiles!)

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Bernard
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 05:30 PM

Sorry, folks, but my Da's home made wine is magi-hic!!

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 07:37 PM

Music Minus One always seemed sort of like Painting By Numbers to me; yet another fad craze. We could combine the two!!

Possibly you could add a background narrator (ala Bob Wills) yelling out numbers. Each number would coincide with a color. At the places where instruments, other than yours, take their break, you can shoot a paint gun with that color at a canvas. Taking your own break would keep you tasteful; force you not to get too carried away and outrageous. When the song is over, that could be the title of the painting too---as in "Shenandoah", or maybe "Roll Your Leg Over The Man In The Moon." ----- Then you price it accordingly -- and sell sell it.

("Hey, Art, go get a day job!" --
"What, and leave show biz???")

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: DonMeixner
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 10:07 PM

I remember Music Minus One for Bluegrass mostly from about 1974 or 75. Guitar banjo and Mandolin.. I'm sure there must have been one for fiddle bass and dobro as well. As I recall Russ Berenberg was on the Guitar release and Peter Wernick was on the banjo.

It always seemed to me to be a good way to learn how to play in a group or explore a new style of music if no one else was available.

Don

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 03:39 AM

I guess you could have dancing minus one in which Morris sides could leave an empty space so that members of the public could join in. Somebody would have to shout out instructions ............. or is that Northwest?

I seem to have this folk (what else) memory of sessions with 2 or 3 instruments being available via the BBC. Since the whole point of sessions is that all sorts of people can join in, they are almost by definition "Music minus some number" :

Session = musicians - x

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 06:08 AM

Folkworks in Gateshead/Newcastle have a couple of practice CDs of session tunes (can't remember the title-you'll probably find out about them by contacting www.thesagegateshead.com), but they are played deliberately slowly - hence, great for getting a tune under your fingers, probably no use for busking!

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 06:14 AM

Thanks Guest, I have checked it and they still seem to be selling the CDs!

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 10:33 AM

There's also the BBC's Virtual Session:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST,Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 10:52 AM

How about music minus the pillock who thinks they can play and continues to do so loudly despite the fact that it is obvious to everyone else that they haven't the faintest idea?
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Tootler
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 10:57 AM

The folkworks stuff is called "The session collection".

It consists of a book of music plus a CD with the tunes played slowly for learning and more quickly for practice. There are three books altogether and IIRC they are £8 each.

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 28 Nov 06 - 12:48 PM

Any more idaes?

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: MartinRyan
Date: 28 Nov 06 - 12:55 PM

Used to use that sort of thing when learning barbershop - "teachtapes" with 3 out of 4 tracks at normal volume on one channel of the stereo feed to earphones, the other at reduced volume into the other ear. That way you could sing along with a little help from your friend. Or was it the other way round?! Only risk was that you'd all be fighting to be on the one side of the chorus!

Regards

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: Rowan
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 02:53 AM

"Begged, Borrowed and Stolen" is a collection of session tunes, collated by Suzette Watkins and Chris O'Connor and published in 1979 by Talunga Music in South Australia. I think it is still available in its original form and, should anyone ask, I'll contact Suzette about it offline. About 3 or 4 years ago Celtic Southern Cross came to some sort of arrangement with Talunga Music whereby they sell a copy of the sheet music with a CD (or 2?) with each tune played very slowly and also at session speed. These are sold at the (Australian) National Folk Festival shop (Canberra, every Easter) but I have no other contact details.

My first (and 'only' now I think on it) experience with Music Minus One was at Mawson in 1969. We had four Americans from USCG&GS doing the Pageos program with us and one, Bernie Mandelkern, didn't want to spend a year away from his cello and his classical music. Being a New Yorker, he got a large reel-reel tape deck, squillions of tapes, and set up his FM radio so that he taped a full reel of classical music every day for a few months before he left for Mawson. He also bought a practice cello (really just a spike with a fingerboard, bridge and set of strings) and taped some Music Minus One pieces for cello.

Bernie gave me my first experience of music through headphones. We all took it in turns to do nightwatch where, every three hours, we were obliged to visit every building and check its heater (oil fires), do the Met. Obs, lubricate the power generator and do other chores like burn out the crapper and do your laundry. All this required you to traipse around in the wind and blizz (in the dark, in mid winter or the sun, in midsummer) and the average wind speed at Mawson is 30 knots. With lots of masts, aerial antennae and guys for the wind to howl through and their clacking against solid objects, you can feel the lack of civilisation when you're on nightwatch.

I was checking the donga that Bernie and I shared and Bernie saw me and said "Listen to this" and handed me the headphones. I put them on and they completely blocked out all evidence of the outside; all I could hear was "quintessence of civilisation". It was probably something by Brahms but I don't know; I was literally transported. After about 5 minutes I reluctantly handed them back and went back outside into the blizz.

For more than 10 years now, the Mawson Sixtyniners have been trying to contact Bernie but he seems to have disappeared; Google catches only his stuff 30 or more years ago. I wish I could tell him, again, how that experience affected me.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folk music minus one
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 06 - 07:45 AM

I once sat in with Little Feat on my electric piano in the privacy of my own living room. Great band, can't think why they wouldn't want me in.