Bert Jamiesons Polkas

[Spinningwoman]

The other day at a WCCP play day we played Bert Jamieson's Polkas. It was much too fast for me to play with the group at this stage in my learning but I took the music home to have a go. However, I can't 'hear it in my head' well enough to get the sense of it sight-reading. I should have recorded it at the time but didn't think of it. I can't find a recording anywhere but the music is available here: http://www.bushtraditions.org/tunespdf/Bert%20Jamieson's%20Polkas.pdf. If anyone had time to spare to play and record it (the first treble part is all I would play) and put it up on soundcloud or somewhere, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

Edited January 9, 2014 by Spinningwoman

[PeterT]

Fingers crossed that the links work!

 

What I have found is the ABC notation for this tune 'Bert Jamieson's Set Tune No.2', which is X:41 on the attached list (first link).

 

If you copy all of the text from X:41 onwards, and paste into an ABC converter (second link), you get the option to see the sheet music, or hear a midi file. The latter will give you what you want - an audio file. This is the first time that I have used this particular software, but it seems to work fine. All I did, in addition to pasting the text in the box, was to select the key of 'G' from the drop down menu. Don't know whether is is necessary, as the coding is there within the ABC text.

 

You can repeat this procedure with any tune which you want to learn, as long as you can find the ABC coding by searching on the internet.

 

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~torchia/aussie.abc

 

http://www.mandolintab.net/abcconverter.php

 

Good luck!

 

Regards,

Peter.

 

 

 

[Spinningwoman]

Oh, excellent, thank you - I did search for abc files but was looking for something with 'polka' in the title so obviously missed this!

[JimLucas]

The other day at a WCCP play day we played Bert Jamieson's Polkas. It was much too fast for me to play with the group at this stage in my learning but I took the music home to have a go. However, I can't 'hear it in my head' well enough to get the sense of it sight-reading. I should have recorded it at the time but didn't think of it. I can't find a recording anywhere but the music is available here: http://www.bushtraditions.org/tunespdf/Bert%20Jamieson's%20Polkas.pdf. If anyone had time to spare to play and record it (the first treble part is all I would play) and put it up on soundcloud or somewhere, that would be awesome.

 

Here's a recording I just did, printing out that PDF of the 4-part arrangement and reading just the first line, as you suggested. (From what you say, you'll probably want to slow it down in your early stages of practice. Or if you want, I suppose I could record it again at a slower tempo.) Twice through the whole thing. See what you think.

 

Hmm, it seems that Peter posted his suggestion while I was recording. Well, two is better than none, I hope.

 

I also tried playing the top two lines together, since much of it is parallel thirds, which are pretty easy on the English. Not too hard, though in a few places I didn't really agree with the arranger's harmonizations. Maybe something to look forward to?

[Spinningwoman]

That's great, Jim - slowing it down is no problem, I have an app to do that! (Swift player slows down music and video without changing the pitch and does lots of other good stuff too.). I just downloaded it and on half speed I might just manage to join in - mostly, though, I just need to hear the music before I can read the rhythms properly. Although theoretically I could tell you how dotted notes etc work, if I try to play them just from the music it is like someone trying to sound out a sentence letter by letter, I don't get the overall picture. All tunes should have names like Buttered Peas that gives a clue to the rhythm!