Despite the best efforts of the pot holes on Rt 95 to swallow my fully laden mini cooper, i finally made it back from the hill country of West (by God) Virginia. My 18 yr old son and I Spent a week staying on the beautiful campus of Davis and Elkins College and attending a full program of swing and bluegrass music. Starting with breakfast in the mess hall at 0800 and not ending til 0200 in the morning made for a very exhusting schedule.
I chose to attend the swing week portion of the program to get a taste of something that is a little harder to find than bluegrass. I am glad i did, however i think next time i will stick to bluegrass. Even though i signed up for the intro fiddle level, I found 30's and 40's swing music a bit too challenging. I just didn't have the background in music theory to really keep up. However, i did learn a lot just trying! Sometimes our Berklee? grad instructor would have us write out the notes in each cord and pick out various harmony and melody lines. Then we would take turns improvising a melody while the others played cords and harmony. Despite some major mess ups i stuck with it and think i ended up learning something. I'm not sure what ! but maybe it will hit me sometime. We performed a swing version of East Tennessee Blues in the student band showcase with Ralph Gordon on bass and Tom Cambell guitar. This was my first music camp experience and now will plan to attend more in the future.
