musicans: how to you communicate "demo quality" in the age of digital recording? 

I've decided to go back through all the clips I've uploaded to youtube since ~2010, try to clean up the audio from some of the better ones a little bit, and release them as an album/EP on bandcamp.

The base sound quality is not going to be great, since most of them were recorded via iphone mic a few feet away, encoded straight to AAC and who knows what youtube has done to them.

For that reason part of me wants to call it something "the early banjo tapes" to communicate that they're a bit rough around the edges, but that seems silly/disingenuous given that none of them were ever recorded to tape. "the early banjo clips," maybe?

Sneak preview of a track I'll be releasing to Bandcamp tomorrow! It's a funeral march from #1865, played on a fretted banjo in concert pitch with accompaniment.

Welp, it has already been a year since I recorded this song from 1872, which means it's also been a year that I've been spinning my wheels on the EP recording project I learned it for. Trying to get that back on the front burner, it feels like a few things have been slowly coalescing over the last couple of months. peertube.social/videos/watch/d

to this tune from Phil Rice's 1858 instructor that I recorded 6 years ago, which has a lot of interesting rhythmic stuff going on. youtube.com/watch?v=GvyDbKKId1

#banjo and its inextricable legacy of racism and cultural appropriation 

With all the stuff I post here, One thing I haven't really addressed is its problematic legacy. It's interesting to learn, play and record instrumental songs published in banjo tutor books that were published from 1855-1900 or so, but they are interspersed with *virulently* racist popular tunes of the time period, when was the star instrument of blackface minstrelsy... 1/

Sneaking in late with last week's over at minstrelbanjo.ning.com, "The Modoc Reel" by Frank Converse, from 1886.

youtube.com/watch?v=gVXUtxVD2T

More content: I recorded this James Buckley arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Nelly was a Lady" 3 years ago: youtube.com/watch?v=xJTw2PH2VU

Banjotown

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