I am a proud capo user. In five years of professional play I've worn one out, which is kinda crazy, lost three and had to begin using a spare. I know all my keys and can play without one, but some songs call for open strings---only they're in Eb. Once in the studio after a take on a song in D my leadsing guitarist said, "it's too low, I'm capoing up. Roll tape." I had to capo up too, time is money. My final view on the capo is unless you only use open strings to tune--and you never play an open string even in the key of G or A, only then it's understandable to be down on them.
Now addressing Adam's question about solo construction, in my experience I have found that each songs benefit differently from the mandolin taking the lead. Sometimes restating the melody is what's called for. Sometimes it's a spontaneous expression of the moment and sometimes it's another melody, different than the vocal or main line, but consistent. Over the years I've found that on some of our older songs my solos have gelled into little compositions. Taking a cue from that I've started sitting down and working up stuff for our newer songs. What I like about winging a solo is sometimes it's awesome, but what I don't like is that sometimes it's not awesome; sometimes it's bad. Having a composed solo takes some of the guesswork out. As I've gotten older I've lost some patience with myself when I improvise a bad solo. Now I sort of feel that if I'm going to step into the limelight, it had better be worth it. There's a David Grisman quote where he calls improvising solos "fast composition." Over the years I've had to be a hard taskmaster on myself and decided that I'm not that good at fast composition so I've worked on my slow composition. I think both approaches have their place, but I'm definitely better at one over the other. And having said that, every now and again I completely left field a solo that I've been playing the same for months, just to shake up myself and my bandmates. It's generally worth the look on their faces when a familiar kickoff is replaced with something else. erik PS--Having reread Adam's original post, I don't think there's too much difference for myself between the studio and the stage. I would like to share a story, though, that combines all these topics. On one of our records I really wanted to take an "autoharp" solo, but didn't know any players or anything so I wrote one on the mando. I tuned the instrument funny, I think AEAD, then capo'd it on the seventh fret and overdubbed the solo as the melody with as many open ringing strings as I could. It sounded cool and is still one of my favorite studio moments. However, when I came time to play live, there was no way I play this song and then solo with my retuned, seventh fret capo so I'd have to wing it. And it always was bad, especially compared to the studio track. Finally we rearranged the whole song so I'd take a solo over the verse, which enabled me to play the vocal melody but witha regular tuned mandolin. Problem solved, circle completed. Whew, maybe I'll take a breath now. On Nov 17, 7:55 am, Mando Chef <[email protected]> wrote: > guys and gals, > > I went to a workshop on sunday and the question came up, is it ok to > use a capo? I am not one to use one but the instructor said when he > laid the track on guitar he didn't remember he was in Bb, so he put a > capo on the first fret to use the mando solo he worked up in A > originally. Now I have seen this guy play guitar, mandolin and banjo > in every key uncapoed so I know he could have done it but he had > worked out a solo and wanted to use it... > > How do you folks work up a solo for professional be it performance or > recording(is there a difference) -vs- just an off the cuff jam scene. > > I am not at the point really of knowing the difference. > > Adam --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Taterbugmando" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
