Song Circle Part I -- The Dynamics
I love the dynamics of social intercourse. People can do such interesting things. I like to get a big rum & coke and stand in the corner at cocktail parties and watch people...cultural anthropologist that I am. And I especially like song circles.
I started out in music playing dance music and watching the dancers and then I shifted into esoteric ethnic folk songs and I became a musical lost-and-found department. I felt it was my duty to go find neglected songs that belonged to folks (public domain) and dust them off and give them back to their owners all pretty and shiny. I feel that way now about songs of 1900 to 1939.
That is the reason I like song circles...the swapping of songs...not just the unfamiliar, but the familiar done in personal ways.
I have been in a lot of song circles over the years and noticed a bunch of stuff. They are like English villages and pubs; it is hard to know what makes a good one but you recognize one when you see it.
So let me share some song circle observations.
It doesn’t take much, but someone is going to need to know some songs and it seems the rotation goes to the left. This is music in rotation; not a lot of music at the same time – that we call jamming. So the circle starts going and then others come in and it starts to grow. Someone comes in and sits immediately to the left of the person doing a song. Then when it is their turn (next) they do their song. Then they get up and leave.
Mmm....
The only way I have found to leave a song circle politely is to announce that I will do two more songs because that is all I know. Everyone will know this isn’t true but it explains the leaving. I am not so paranoid as to think that when it is my turn and half the circle gets up, en masse, and leaves that this is some comment about me...though it could be. (Dang that Framus 12-string guitar!)
If all the circle is filled when I walk in, I get a chair and drag it up in a slot between two guys. When one of them finishes a song, I give a nice gentle twang and that lets them know I would like to do a song, and then to be polite, chairs are rearranged for me to have a gap to pull my chair in.
I am ready to play when it is my turn. Being ready is Part II.
Song Circle Part II -- Being ReadyBe like a Boy Scout.
The song circle has been perking right along. We have 15 people taking their turns and someone did a train song, then several did their favorite train songs. We were glad when the next guy didn’t know one and he switched over to a cheerful murder ballad about whacking ladies with big sticks and drowning them.
A while ago someone new walked in, sat down, put his guitar on his knee, and started listening to the songs. After perhaps nine songs, the person to his right finished his song and there was a polite smattering of applause and we turned our attention to the new guy.
He seemed to be engrossed in thought about his shoes. Something about the laces it seemed. I thought they looked fine. After a little he looked up and said, "Oh, is it my turn?"
Then he studied the ceiling tiles a little and said, "Gee, I don’t know what I want to do. I know! There is that old song everybody knows...it is...it is...uh...what IS the name of that song? I used to do it all the time. Well, I can’t think how it starts so I will do this other one I have been thinking about."
He strums his guitar, leans back, looks at it in surprise, and then looks around at us to see who did it. Someone must have detuned his guitar while he was looking at his shoe laces or the ceiling. He worries with the tuning a minute and someone gives him a tuner.
In a little bit he has it moderately in tune and he hands the tuner back and drapes both arms across the guitar, leans on it comfortably, and says, "You know, I don’t think I have ever seen a tuner like that. That works pretty good, doesn’t it? Where did you get it?"
Once the tuner’s availability has been determined, he gives a strum and then looks back at us and asks us if we remembered what key he did the song in. We don’t know. We don’t even know what song he is going to do. And we wonder if he knows. But we would certainly be interested in hearing it...or any song from him.
He starts a line and stops and says it is too low. He switches key and tries again but that one is too high...he finds his capo and tries a couple of positions and finally finds one that suits him. After three tries, he manages to get going pretty good. He stops half way through the second verse because he had no idea what the rest was.
We quickly give him a little applause and the next guy makes a three sentence intro and starts playing the song that he had decided to do 20 minutes earlier.
Guess what?
When it comes back around to the slow guy again, he is fiddling with his guitar case beside him and is playing with the latches like he had just discovered that the case had them.
"Oh...is it my turn again already? My goodness! OK, let me think of another song you might like to hear."
How to be ready...if a fellow knows a song, he might write the title on a little slip of paper and stick it in his top pocket. Or he could tape cards to his guitar. I have done this card list thing for 45 years or so on most every guitar I have had and I have never had simple cellulose tape damage a guitar finish. The tape doesn’t stay on forever but that is good, I can replace the tape when I add a bunch more songs to new cards. On the card I have lists of the songs I am prepared to do right then – cold.
I might have written something like "Liza 6-C(D)-FL." This reminds me that I play "Goodbye, Miss Liza" on a 6-string guitar with C chord shapes but with a capo so I am really in D...and I use a flat pick. It could have told me that I used finger picks if that was the way I like to do it.
My personal problem is that while I am listening to someone across the circle from me doing some really great song, I realize that I know one sort of like it and maybe no one has heard mine. So during the change to the next performer, I put my capo in the correct place and put on finger picks so I will be ready.
Then that next person does a great song about a lonesome mother longing for her son to come visit her (Happy Mother’s Day!) and it reminds me of a song that I know like that. So I remove the capo and finger picks and get out a flat pick.
Only then, the next guy does this personal romantic song and everyone gets real pensive and the song I was going to do wouldn’t fit the mood, so I decide to do a love song I wrote and I switch to finger picks again, but leave the capo in my pocket.
I have been known to prepare for six different songs and I still wouldn’t decide until the guy to my right started his song. (It was a silly song about an old maid, and I happen to know an old maid song, too.)
The obvious point is, I was ready. There are 15 people in the circle, each song is taking right at four minutes. A rotation takes an hour, so in four hours, a fellow does four songs and hears 56! Wow, that is a lot of music. And the circle might start at 8 p.m. and run until 3:30 a.m.
When in a song circle, try to be prepared.
Song Circle Part III -- Etiquette
Ah...look who just walked in for the song circle! (nudge - nudge) It is pretty Angel Voice. Everyone is looking forward to hearing Ms. Voice sing again! And she plays really good, too.
Angel takes her place across the circle from me and I will get to hear her sweet, gentle voice sing away my cares. (I hope I don’t get all teary-eyed like last time.)
Her turn finally comes and she begins a soft introduction with slender finger nails playing the strings delicately and with precision. She starts her first verse and even the birds in the outside trees stop singing. Everyone wants to hear her. Her little, soft voice is clear and distinct.
We all are moved by Angel’s singing, and the fellow next to me is so moved, that he, Robbie Rosewood, decides to noodle along with her on his jumbo Gibson. (Surely everyone would enjoy his part "to enhance her song.")
And that was the last I heard of Angel’s song. Rosewood being so close to me, and several others, drowns her out. Two people on each side of Robbie can’t hear her and most likely a few on the other side of the circle can’t, either. It is a lot louder in front of that Gibson than behind it...Robbie doesn’t know this. Robbie is unaware of the glances because he is really bearing down now and he is in awe of his lightning-fast, heavy-handed noodling. He doesn’t know the song but he has the key figured out now and he is getting the chord progression mostly straight – and he is getting a chance to practice his riffs. We, leaning forward in our chairs and cupping our hands to our ears, don’t register on him.
I am a pretty up-front sort of guy but I just haven’t figured out a polite way to hear the singer and words rather than the noodler sitting beside me.
And what about the singer?
She sorta’ wanted to do the song for everyone, not just those immediately beside her.
Yet, there are songs where everyone is invited to join in...maybe that is the key idea...being "invited" to join in. This is, for that person’s song, an invitation to jam. This can happen several ways. The easiest way is to say so.
"Hey, here is a song everyone knows...it just has those three main chords on the first few frets." Then the singer launches into a vigorous "Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms," "This Land Is Your Land," – it doesn’t matter – we were invited to participate on that one song with that one person.
Then there is the other thing that happens – particularly to me, I think. I introduce a song and it is a rather complex song with lots of words, no recurring chorus, and I have to concentrate to not mess it up. Half way into the second verse, there is this sudden, blindingly-fast riff that just about knocks my socks off! I think, ‘Wow! That was amazing! Who DID that?’ I look up to see who, with what, did it and then I discover that I have forgotten the next line. I am not even sure which verse I’m on. Consequently, I look like an unprepared idiot searching in my head for the next line. I try to fake it by making up lines but I am sure everyone is wondering why the brown dog started playing with a red ball -- when the song started out being about Greenland and whales. (I knew it had animals and color was in there somewhere.)
The way to avoid this (for the second song...I never remember to say it on the first) is to say, "Hey, Guys...I don’t play with many people so I am used to playing alone and if you start playing, with my attention span, I know I will start listening to you and I will forget the words...so don’t help...the pretty music will confuse me." Or something like that.
A lot of guys do play together and they are used to the other’s contributions. This is different...let's just hope they are sitting together. People don’t mind moving chairs to let a couple of good pickers sit next to each other. But something needs to be said so the circle knows to scoot over some.
A song circle is a social gathering of musicians singing songs or playing tunes in rotation; a jam session, it isn’t.
Song Circle Part IV -- Joining In
A "song circle" is a group of individual performers who share and swap songs in rotation. Each individual may invite all, or one or two others in the circle to play or sing along with them. What is rotating is the "opportunity" to perform solo and the "attention" of the whole group is to rotate, as well, focusing on the individual whose turn has arrived.
A "sing-along" may appear to be a song circle because of the seating and rotation but it generally involves old standards, and in some cases, sheets with lyrics are handed out. Each person in turn selects the song that s/he will lead. They also select the key...and they customarily establish the rhythm. Sometimes it stays that way.
Some one might go to a sing-along and then sing an esoteric song that no one else is likely to know. This makes people who came to "join in" just sit there. (It is not unlikely that if someone in a song circle starts an old standard, others feel it an invitation to join in the playing and singing, thus converting the song circle into a sing-along. Local custom dictates in this case.)
A "jam session" is the playing of songs with little rotation other than the rotation of solos and leads. Everyone who would like to play along is expected "to jump right in." On each song, each performer is given an opportunity to play lead on a verse, chorus, bridge, etc. This is generally spontaneous and is done with nods, eye contact, and the like...or in my case, the shaking of my head means ‘I don't want it' to someone's implied, ‘Take it.' The person who starts the song will often raise one foot to let the group know the song is coming to an end so they can stop on the same beat...not always easy in a crowd -- even a sober one.
A "hootenanny" was closer to a folk music festival or loosely arranged concert. It was a celebration and involved everyone, performers and spectators. I use the past tense because this term isn't used that much anymore except to describe the hybrid off-spring of an owl and a goat. (I couldn't resist.)
A "confusion arc" is all of the above in the same circle and one of these appears twice a month in a nearby town. At one end of the arc will be four people who play fast and loud together and each will do their song while the others play fast and loud for each of their songs. This appears to be a concert.
Then the opportunity to play rotates to the next person and it becomes a song circle unless that person starts a familiar song and then it becomes a sing-along.
Then a mandolin player asks for help with someone providing backup on his song and before he gets to the chorus, the group has become a jam session and stays that way until everyone gets sick of the song and quits one by one – then we notice that the mandolin player seems to have gone home.
The next guy (me) will sing an old string band song of the type they seem to like but perhaps had never heard. It is a great Poppa' Stoneman narrative about a reckless crew on the western range and a letter from home. But they play along and it gets awkward when the song in C shifts to D and A. I sing that part loud to help them know that it was changing but most of them don't notice because they are playing so fast and loud.
I don't go there very often. (Maybe that is where I should take the rosewood Gibson.)
So, friends, this has been some observations on this idea of sharing of music and I have written these on the fly by just remembering some of the stuff I have been involved in.
Ken Cashion
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