Oak: Triplets

The hardest thing I've faced in playing the banjo and bouzouki is triplets. That's where you pick a quick down-up-down or up-down-up on one string to provide ornamentation. You usually do this in the space of a quarter note. As a keyboard and woodwind player who once took violin lessons and can play a little fingerpicking guitar, I find flatpicking the most alien finger/hand action involved with stringed plectrum instruments. Coordinating the right-hand pluck with the left-hand fingering of the note, keeping the ups and downs straight when crossing strings--I'm getting a handle on those. But the triplets are only just starting to come. And only when I play quietly--i.e., when I'm picking lightly across all the strings, which means that my pick doesn't have to dig in hard, and can flick across the string surface easily enough to produce the ornament without snagging. In a session, to be heard, at least given the acoustics in the venue where I play most regularly, you can't play that quietly. Which means that I have not yet managed a triplet when I was leading a tune set on the banjo. I've done it from the safety of the crowd, on relatively simple tunes like "Saddle the Pony," when I wasn't worried about being heard messing up or being heard at all or carrying the melody without an overambition meltdown. And I've done it at home. But never at a session when it was my set. So that's my small personal banjo ambition.

( ornaments and ice skating )

One of these days soon I'm going to land a triplet on the banjo in public.

Pixels: Separated at Birth?

The main problem I have with Firefly is that Nathan Fillion looks and sounds like Gale Harold, but he's not Gale Harold.

I'll get over it as I get to know the character Mal Reynolds better, and when Queer As Folk comes back and I'm getting new hits of Brian Kinney. But last night I just kept running up against it.

If I can find two photos that exemplify the resemblance (which may be too much in the manner and voice to be evident from stills, and, further, may be purely a product of withdrawal), I'll include them on an update.


[Update: I actually tried pretty hard to find matching images, and I was right that the resemblance isn't there in static photos. But I looked at some video clips on the Firefly site, and I was also right that it's there in the voice and mannerisms. And I found out from the QAF site that the third season doesn't start till March of next year! Aieeeeeeee!]