Track 5 - How's Your Courage?

After taking a break from recording last week, I'm back to finishing up my album (here). This week's track is one of my favorite originals called "How's Your Courage?" The title refers to the question the priest asked me the day before my wedding - luckily, all was well and the courage department : ). Here's the tune:

"How's Your Courage?" - an original fiddle tune by Jeff Norman (me). Played twice through by me on my Buckeye tuned to aDADE; guitar accompaniment the second time through using a 12-fret Epiphone Masterbilt in standard guitar tuning capoed on the 2nd fret.
Tune and recording Copyright 2017 - Jeff Norman.

A bit more about the tune:
A quick listen should tell you that the tune's a bit crooked - in fact, its kind of hard for me to figure out whether or not the first phrase is a lead-in or the first note is the 1 beat....doesn't really matter all that much I guess. Assuming the first note is the 1 beat, the chords look like this:

Chords for "How's Your Courage?"
D       G       G       D       G       G
D       G       G       A        A      Bm   F#m
D       G       G       D       G       G
D       G       G       A       A       Bm   F#m
D       G       G       A       A    
D       D       Bm    F#m
D       G       G       A       A     
D       D       Bm    F#m
D       G       G

The tune could be thought of as AABB with a little extra tag at the end of the 2nd B part (the last line) but I just kind of wrote all the chords out in a row for simplicity.

On Banjos
Tuning for this one is double D (aDADE). As has become the pattern for this adventure, I couldn't resist tinkering with the Buckeye again: while nylgut strings and a fiberskyn head were a fun diversion, I got a hankering to go back to the standard Steel/Renaissance setup. I'm also back to a single tone ring and a no-knot tailpiece. While its been kinda fun to find the edges of the Buckeye's tonal capabilities, I always end up back at this setup and I plan on keeping it that way until a gig I'm playing in a couple weeks.

Hope you enjoyed this one - I'll be back with another installment next week!