In the past six months or so I’ve been half-heartedly trying to learn to play DADGAD guitar. Tuning the guitar to DADGAD provides a very different timbre for accompaniment to songs or melodic instruments: the strings ring out (if you can be accurate with your fingering) and the deep bass provides a lovely accent when needed.

Back in August I posted a cover of Wild Mountain Thyme, which I used a DADGAD guitar to accompany. I used some basic chord for that:

Recently, I’ve been trying to do more finger picking on DADGAD. The video below is Shi Beg Shi Mhor written by Turlough O’Carolan, the blind harpist that lived from 1670 to 1738. The tune is apparently based on a legend about a war between two fairy tribes. It’s a beautiful tune.

I have also been learning to play Paul Brady’s lovely tune, The Lakes of Pontrachain. Paul actually plays it in DADF#AD (Open D) tuning, but it’s just as easy (easier?) to play in DADGAD. The issue with doing a video of that, is that it requires someone to sing the melody

Toyota Aygo

Yesterday, Daisy and myself purcahsed a new car. It’s a 6-month old Toyota Aygo.

Although buying a new car is somewhat against the general eco-principles that Daisy and I try to live to, it became clear that it was becoming a necessity.

For the past year and a half, since my car died, Daisy and I have been sharing our car. When I needed to go to work, I would take Daisy to work first. Due to the locations of our respective works, this car sharing meant the car was actually doing more miles than two cars going separately to the locations. As I’m going to be going to work a little more often during the first year of my new project, this would quickly become uneconomical (and less ecological).

Another problem was that Daisy’s car that we were sharing has just run out of MOT and, without some work, is not going to pass any time soon.

However, we tried to get a car which was as ecological (and therefore economical) as possible. The Aygo is very basic (and therefore quite inexpensive). It only has a 1 litre engine which will get it to 60mph in about 14 seconds. It’s not sporty, that’s for sure, but I’m old and staid now and it suits me perfectly On motorway driving it should return about 70 miles to a gallon of petrol. It’s cabon-dioxide emissions are 109 grammes per kilometre, which puts it in tax-band B, in the UK. This means we only pay £35 road tax this year and next year it will only be £20.

We purposely bought an almost-new car such that we would still retain most of 3-year the manufacturer’s warranty. As it’s the “plus” version, it has extra air-bags and child-seat fixing points. We got one without air-con, partly to save money and partly because it’s more ecological not to have it.

It’s really the first time I’ve had a modern small car and I have been surprised at the room inside. It’s very spacious, although the boot space is tiny.

Anyway, I intend to keep a log-book of the mileage I do in it, so I shall be able to let you know exactly how economical it turns out.

For Christmas I was a very lucky boy. I got myself an Rochelle anglo concertina. It’s like an small accordion – in fact, it’s more like two harmonica’s tied together with bellows. It was pretty confusing to play at first because each button plays a different note depending on whether you are drawing air through the bellows, or pushing air out of the bellows.

Anyway, for the past couple of months I’ve been trying to get a bit better, and I’ve now posted my first recording on YouTube.

The tunes are two jigs – The Swallowtail Jig and Out on the Ocean.

I found that to play the anglo, you have to clear your mind of anything and do your best not to think about whether to draw or push the bellows and just let your arms work it out — that’s why there’s a blank look on my face most of the time!!

The music is available on The Session, although I’ve scored it out below, if you want to play along.

The Swallowtail Jig

Out on the Ocean

As with all the multi-track videos I do now, this was recorded into the computer first (while videoing onto tape) and mixed into an MP3. The video was then captured and synched up. This time I was trying out the trial version of Edit Studio 6 which is why there’s a watermark on the video.

Stumpy posing for the Christmas Card

It was a sad moment early in January when Stumpy died. She was the last surviving chicken from our first batch of chickens that introduced us to the wonderful world of smallholding. She had a sour crop and our best efforts with the drugs seemed to clear that up, but there was clearly another issue. Up until lthe last few hours, she seemed quite content and Daisy and I thank her for all the eggs and pleasure she gave us. She is now buried in the garden with her three friends.