> > When practicing I always have the problem to remember or to write down > (hopefully) nice ideas. And two days later I start again from scratch, > trying different sticks/fingers, patterns, rolls, colors of sound > (sorry, is this english?), playing short or long sounding, ... > > I can note some important rhythmic points. That can be done pretty > compact. But remarks about all the other things tend to become novels. > So I just have to learn the bdr-accompaniment for each single > piece and > I play it from memory. Hints on this whould be wellcome. > =========== > Sorry I can't help with notating bodhran parts. I have been > playing for almost 2 years now, and played in a band for most > of that time. I usually end up playing a tune over and over > and settling on a part to play that seems to gel over time > (in rehearsal). After a while, I remember the important > parts to play, the rhythmic and tonal variations for the > tune, but I likely never play it exactly the same way any two > times, but seeing it's folk music, I don't worry about it much.
Ok, that's the way I do it now and all the other B'players I've asked do so. No problem. But if you think of e.g. an instrumental break when performing a song it's much better to have a plan (in your mind or on the paper). And when you are working out an arrangement for a concert or a recording the percussion should be part of it. I need the notation for this test-phase. > Seems it would be a difficult thing to notate a bodhran part, > especially seeing you are talking JJK style playing with all > the different tones, and a continuous "scale" of tones, at > that (like those darned fretless instruments ;-) ). BTW the much bigger problem is to reproduce what you did before. Without this we need no notation. > One suggestion would be to assign the tones, in general to > the staff, high is high, low is low, but not necessarily > certain pitches, and maybe use "chord symbols" to notate > either open or closed sounds. You could even use slurs to > indicate sliding from one tone to another, and, of course, > the standard accents to indicate accents. That would give you > enough information to jog your memory about the part. This was my first approach. It looks a bit overloaded but it's ok. May be I should talk to some drummers and learn a little. My real problem is I just can't stop me from playing with different symbols and changing my own syntax again and again. So there's no progress at the end. ;-) I hoped to find someone with the same problem to find a 'common base' of rules and symbols. Usually, if you have to talk to other people, it turns out very fast what's basic, useful, useless, ... So, if there's somebody who tryed or wants to try a bodhran notation, we should exchange (off list?) what we have. Toni To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
