Since I’m a total medieval and renaissance music junkie, I really enjoyed Catherine’s contribution today over here
As I was playing my shamisen today I had a little improv session and when it felt good and I started noticing that I recognized parts of what I was playing from the clip I heard from Catherine earlier I decided that I should record it just because everybody here enjoys music and we should all share more of our sessions! I for one would be really happy if I had at least one new clip every day of some member playing something.
Wow. Really nice Karl! I love how one thing leads to another and oftentimes there are more similarities than differences in music. When Kate and I were practising last week and playing around with Lamento Di Tristano, I started to sing a verse of Darrell Scott’s You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive. Different melody but almost the same mode. Went really nice together.
As a junkie for both classical and metal, I was grooving with it! Especially 1:13 and onward had my attention. Very nice.
I think the shamisen could really do early baroque/classical songs justice. I’ve been really wanting to do shamisen/vocals together to cover John Dowland pieces at some point.
Foreshadowing for future collaboration?
Thanks for all your comments! Its pretty hard to know what other people think so thanks!
One thing I realized when watching the clip again is that its important as a guitar player to not make lazy bar chords on the shamisen. Obviously, there are no frets and you gotta make sure you are holding your finger at 90 degrees of the sao!
I think that early music medieval, renaissance, some baroque even is much more similar to the roots of more folk oriented music than people might realise. It was great playing with Kate on that 12 century piece as she is an early music encyclopaedic genius (and contemporary too but seems to steer clear of classical, romantic etc)
At any rate, there was so much that we talked about that I could relate to with my own roots in trad irish music. Especially in approach to playing and that in essence every musician in those old days was also a composer and that the divide that happened in the classical world didn’t really exist much then.
Dowland songs and Shamisen, Kyle, would be so beautiful, I think. You must do it! And I personally love anything like that which shows that so much music from around the world has more similarities than differences.
I recall when I was doing some Gaelic Immersion and Sean Nos singing in Donegal about 10 years ago. One of the songs we learned, Meilte Ceann Dubhrann, had a melodic path that reminded me of some old chinese songs I had heard. I mentioned it to my fellow students and I got that look that said, ‘what the hell are you talking about?’ that I often seem to get. And then, last winter when I was doing a motor bike tour way out in the mountains of Nan in northern Thailand, I met a big bunch of lovely people up from Bangkok. Well, we made a big fire and sat around for the evening and sang songs and dances etc. I sang that Irish song and the people all said, ’ wow, it sounds SO Chinese!’
Ha! Vindicated a decade later!
Loving this thread…
Maybe we should create a Improv thread? While Kevin kind of stole the show from my improv, it’s pretty sad that his epic stuff disappears in the middle of the thread. The same goes for Kyle and Brian’s clip.
Also, it will feel less like spamming if you don’t have to create a new topic every time you’ve got something to share.
yeah, that just might be a good idea. I was going to say that this bunch of improv posts was goin’ all monster. Could be a monster improv etc sharing category.
Logic would suggest this. It’s worth a try, but remember our previous attempts at creating specific threads for this kind of thing. For example, “The Composer Thread”, which was started by Karl, and the last post was made in January 9th…2012.
Anyhow, this is an excellent question, and is worth a shot! Let’s do it!
A thought I was thinking last night that maybe the category already existing ‘Share Your Music’ does that job just fine.
Do I have that right? That a thread and a category are the same thing?
Especially 1:13 and onward had my attention. Very nice. 
Let’s do it!