Grass Cuttings and News In Brief
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After a long delay and much anticipation, the Mel Bay edition of Pat Cloud’s book The Key to the Five String Banjo is now available, with CD instead of cassette. It is $10 cheaper than the original White mountain Publications edition if ordered from: Jack Hatfield, Hatfield Music, 325 Laurelwood Dr. Pigeon Forge, TN 37863. 1-800-426-8744 Web site Also from Frets in Liverpool (regular price) Ed Ingley is set to rejoin the Dalebilly swing band The Ken Tardley Playboys after an absence of 18 months. KTPs have a six track CD in the pipeline which should be available for this years festival season. Write to KT Word has it that the latest in the Bluegrass xx series, Bluegrass 99, was due out on 20th April. The International Lyrics Server (http://www.lyrics.ch), a popular Web site containing the words to more than 100,000 songs, was closed recently when police officers seized their computers after music publishers accused the site’s Swiss operators of copyright violations. Years ago Geoff Stelling wrote that he learned the following point from a master bell maker in Southern California, regarding the sound of a bell. The tone of a bell is governed by its shape, while the volume and power are governed by its weight, so Geoff took this advice into account when developing the Stelling tone ring. Congratulations to Ray Whiteway-Roberts, the British IBMA Representative, who has married his Romanian girl friend in Medias, Romania. Ray played for some scool children on his last visit and the head teacher asked him to play for the whole school, so he’s been playing bluegrass in schools, not far from Chernobyl. Ray said “They paid me in trinkets they had made themselves - they’re worth more than any money!” He was the first Englishman they had met. Tim Stafford told me that the new Blue Highwayproject is finished. He reports that they got a terrific sound (using Ricky Skaggs’ amazing collection of vintage microphones) and that the material is very strong. It will be released on Ceili Records, Skaggs’ new label.
Tom Adams also told me that he was delighted with the banjo tone he got
on the new recording. We will be getting to work soon on a Tom Adams book
from this project. They plan to have “special issue” copies of
the new CD available at Merlefest. These will have the CD but not the finished
artwork. Could be an interesting collectors item?
He just picked up a 1941 TB-75 conversion (Frank Neat neck). It came from the estate of good friend Troy Spencer. Troy, who wrote Cardboard mansion on the new LRB CD, recently passed away and had told his son that Sammy was to get first crack at the banjo. It sounds terrific; very different from his top tension. I got to play it for a few minutes and it is the genuine article. Interestingly, it sounds quite different from Steve Huber’s RB-75 from the same year. Steve’s has a top tension neck (RB 7) and I don’t how much effect that has. The difference may just be in set up but Sammy’s had a very delicate, transparent tone and played quite well. Steve’s banjo also plays very well but has a louder, more throaty tone. Go figure...
My personal recommendation: Catch LRB in concert if you can and pick
up a pre war flathead if your situation allows =)
For those who don’t know, Transkriber is a sound editing application
designed specifically to allow you to record a piece of music from a CD and
then slow it down to as much as 1/12 of the original speed - without changing
the pitch! It is far superior to the fee and shareware applications of its
kind that some folks may have tried. There are also free upgrade files for
existing users.
TABPerfect supports 4, 5 and 6 stringed instruments and creates the tab as a text file using a custom font (included). This makes the files very small and easily imported into word processing or page layout programs. TABPerfect can be downloaded free of charge from the AcuTab Web site at: http://www.acutab.com/tabperfect
John Lawless, AcuTab Publications P.O. Box 21061 Roanoke, VA 24018-0108. 540-776-6827 (FAX)
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From John
Lawless, Acutab: