I have posted a YouTube recording of a 1903 vaudeville number called “Japanesa.”
The composition is credited to “Yama Sen (Arranged by J. A. Le Barge)”. I think Yama Sen is a pseudonym for Le Barge. Here’s him:
Thanks to paperclip design for the sheet music I learned it from:
Said the email about the video at nophoto.org:
At the free sound web page we have found your great “Homestyle Mandolin matched set” which we would like to use for a short vídeo which I am sending you. We are a photography collective and we have been asked by NOKIA to test their new N8 camera. We have made 7 short pieces and one of them is Matías Costa’s on his daughter birthday. The vídeo will be on the NOKIA page and their blog.
It doesn’t bother me that a business like Nokia is involved, by the way.
This same mandolin music was also used in mandolin love by gurdonark, which is a fun bit o’ honey that I posted about previously.
The instrument I played here was made in Boston in 1900. First posting of the music was homestyle mandolin sample pack.
I have done a mix mp3 of my recordings, including a few scraps not by me. Hereby, herewith, herefore, heretofore, and hereunder I give you:
Africa Polka is a song I got from Turner’s Banjo Journal #10, a British magazine of sheet music from the 1880s or 1890s. I think it was a yankophile thing populated mainly with American music. There was a banjo fad going on in England, an early example of American folk culture crossing over to the top of the pops. It was similar to the way that Howling Wolf’s shows in Britain in the 1960s influenced the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.
I was playing with live dancing in mind. The part with just chords and no melody might be fun to jam over — the chords are C-G-G-C and G-D-D-G.
The guitar has a couple rattles. There’s a blooper note near the end that I am hoping doesn’t really affect anything. YouTube reencodes the original video to sound and look really bad.
This recording is hereby in the public domain.
I know this is obsessive, given that I’ve already done five, but I have two new versions of Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig, this time dated March 3, 2010. I thought I was done with this tune but I happened to play it at a slower tempo that was just right and magic happened.
The first of the two new versions is a straight acoustic recording from the mic on my laptop. The second is the same recording with an effect that gives it a electronic feeling. After all these straight acoustic recordings, it’s interesting to hear it with heavy processing.
The untreated naturalistical acoustic version:
The unholy electronista version aka Horace Weston’s Electronic Jig:
About the copyright on these recordings, I hereby put them in the public domain.
“Egyptian Retreat” is another tune I got from Ellis’ Thorough School for the Six or Seven- Stringed Banjo (PDF). In this recording I play the 1st banjo part on the Fairbanks potato-bug mandolin I just got and the 2nd banjo part on my parlor guitar.
Here’s the sheet music for people who are inclined suchlike and accordingly:
My recording is hereby in the public domain. Do whatever you want with it.
“Juba Breakdown” is the first tune in Ellis’ Thorough School for the Six or Seven- Stringed Banjo (PDF). It’s a lot of fun to play.
Juba Breakdown (MP3) Juba Breakdown (Ogg Vorbis) Juba Breakdown (Ogg FLAC) Juba Breakdown (MP4 video)
This recording is 1:10 long. The tune would be a natural fit to connect segments in a larger piece like a radio play, so I have also clipped out shorter snippets to fit as needed:
Here’s the sheet music for people who are inclined that way (I use the 1st banjo part):
I’m playing it in an anachronistic style, something along the lines of 1930s country, which it absolutely wasn’t.
My recording is hereby in the public domain. Do whatever you want with it.
Yesterday’s version of Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig was better than the day before, but it started weak and was emotionally distant. It needed a beginning and it needed fire.
So here it is, the fourth and (I hope) final recording.
It’s 1:43 long. It’s in A minor. The time signature is 2/4. The tempo is 173.
To the extent possible under law, Lucas Gonze
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig version 4.
This work is published from
United States.
Here’s a version of Horace Weston’s Old Time Jig which improves on yesterday’s in that it’s faster, it fixes a timing problem, and it’s on my steel string instead of my nylon string.
I have done a new recording of the 1885 schottishe “Slightly On The Mash”. You are welcome to reuse my recording in derivative works or upload it to other people. It is in the key of D. The time signature is 4/4. The length is 1:16.
This is the second recording I’ve done of this tune and the fourth post related to it. Other posts in the series: Slightly on the Mash; E. Pique revealed; E. Pique motherlode
Here’s a new recording of Horace Weston‘s Celebrated Polka (sheet ♫), which I wanted to try a different approach to. The first one I did was classical style with rubato laid on thick. This new one is ragtime flavored.
It makes sense that that you could do either way, considering that Weston was part about European art music and part about American vernacular styles like minstrelsy. In his time people thought that the euro influence was automatically better, in our time it’s maybe the other way around (at least if you’re more into rock/blues/jazz/disco than classical) but this one guy managed to integrate them. And if this composition sounds more snooty highbrow euro than rube yank, keep in mind that it was written for banjo not guitar.
The main theme has a swirly mood like a lady getting dressed up to go out.
The second theme has colorful and daring harmony for that time and place.
The third theme is a jig, as in an irish jig.
And the last bit of the third theme would sound perfectly at home in a 1920s jazz or blues tune:
(Code for indexing into sections of the video courtesy Splicd.com).
More posts about Horace Weston:
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Go digging for music by the 19th century banjo star Horace Weston and you’ll won’t find much. He was more of a player than a composer, I guess. Fortunately this 1880 compilation of banjo tunes:
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On page 18:
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Had this sheet music:
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I don’t have a banjo, and if I did I still couldn’t play this on it. What I do have is a parlor guitar from more or less the same time period and an hour or so a day for practicing the damn thing until I get it right. So I did this video:
Bleak gospel in a raw bluesy style w/ bottleneck on resonator guitar + whistling and singing.
Recorded in a single live take using the mic on my laptop, so the singing goes out of tune in a couple places. I did this just to hear what the arrangement was like, then forgot about it for six months or so. The jagged guitar tone is the cool thing about it.
It’s the same song as “Rocking Yukon Gold” — an old time number called “Talk About Suffering” that Ricky Skaggs, Doc Watson and many others have covered.
St Louis Waltz needed a video in the Flickr “moving photograph” style, because I wanted to do something with the cinematic flavor of the music, so I clipped out a 130-second fragment of 1899 Thomas Edison footage of dancing bears and put it next to a 130-second segment of the music. And then I made a playlist of my Flickr moving photographs:
To see just the one new item, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucas_gonze/3919617319/.
Here’s a video of a parlor guitar instrumental version of a sentimental dance tune called “St Louis Waltz.” It’s a civil war -era song that I learned from The Drummer’s and Fifers’ Guide by Bruce and Emmet.
Just the files: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Flac, Aiff,
My recordings here are all hereby dedicated to the public domain per CC0 1.0 Universal.
Over in the classic banjo group on Ning I came across a couple recent versions (by Clarke Buehling on cello banjo and by Tim Twiss on minstrel banjo) of a catchy old number called “Too Utterly Too.” It looked fun to play so I learned the song on my 1916 Orpheum mandolin-banjo.
Just the files: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Flac, Aiff, MP4
It’s from a book called “Banjoist’s Budget” by Mr. A. Baur. According to Carl Anderton:
Baur was from New York, soldiered in the Civil War, was badly wounded in Georgia during Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” and spent the next 9 years recovering his health. He practiced banjo constantly during his convalescance and became one of America’s leading players. His “Reminiscences of a Banjo Player” published in S.S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal are quite insightful.
I didn’t find the date of this book, but I did find a stray comment on the internets claiming it’s from 1880, which sounds just right.
Here’s the sheet music for them that can read it:
My recordings here are all hereby dedicated to the public domain per CC0 1.0 Universal.
All the relevant files are on Archive.org.
MP3
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