Sometimes Tuesday Feels Like Wednesday
Quite awhile ago my band, The Orange Mighty Trio, did a collaboration with Maggie Bergeron and Co Dance Company. In it were duets featuring one musician and one dancer, and this is the music I wrote for mine. The title has to do with the disoriented feeling you get when you think it is one day of the week when really it is another.
The basic “melody” is actually just more of a rhythmic figure, and will help students internalize the 12-bar blues progression. One note on playing it: I actually hold down my 1st finger almost the whole time (and scrunch down and play the B’s on the A string with my 2nd finger). I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that unless you’re advanced—even then it’s hard to get the B’s in tune— but you can always experiment with it and see if you can get it to sound good. Otherwise, just hop back and forth with the 1st finger and that works fine. Lastly, I would recommend playing the D string rather softly during the 8th notes. It is much less important than the notes around it.
Notes on Playing the Tune
There is the challenge of lots of string crossing, and the most important thing to help with that is to keep the motions of your arm to a minimum. This includes the back and forth bow motions…so narrow them all down as much as you can!
It is also a challenge to jump your finger down the G string for the second note. This requires swinging your elbow forward so you can play the on the G with normal finger position (instead of having to reach you finger sideways).
In measure 9 and 12 (the A chord measures) you should hold down first finger on A and D when you play the B (the 4th note of the measure) so you don’t have to hop across strings.
Avoid any temptation to retake or lift the bow after the first note of each measure. Instead, you should bring to bow to a stop and quickly rock to the lower strings.
Use a somewhat heavy bow (without getting scratchy, of course) for a clear and crisp, focused sound. The quarter notes should be semi-staccato, that is, starting firmly and farily fast but sustaining more than a typical staccato.
In the A chord measures, don’t forget to change the double stop to a 5th and the E in the fast pattern. These are easy to miss because you do it the other way so many times.
To bring out the change of chord, you can play the first notes of measure 9 and 10 and 12 a bit louder.
The structure is 12-bar blues, which you can memorize in groups of 4. (It’s like a house with 3 stories, says bass player Mark Schatz).
D D D D
G G D D
A G D A
This will give you an idea of what it sounds like (with no repeat).
P.S. Here is a link to the Orange Mighty Trio recording if you would like to hear our performance. After the introduction and basic melody, the whole band improvises somewhat crazily, and in an increasingly abstract manner, on the chords.