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Back garden mysteries – details from Imagination Station #3
Looking forward to banjo camp
Thursday morning, I’m off to Olivet Michigan to attend the Midwest Banjo Camp. Olivet is just short of a 6 hour drive from Toronto (maybe a bit longer for slow-pokes like me who stop and stretch at just about every rest area). The camp is on the lovely campus of Olivet Collage. We stay in the collage dorm rooms, which are the next building over from classes. This will be my third time attending MBC – I was there in 2014. In 2015 I had to cancel because I badly broke my ankle, but I attended again last year. It’s a fabulous event – banjo immersion from Thursday afternoon until lunchtime Sunday. It features workshops, demos, concerts, jams led by faculty as well as late night impromptu jams.
The camp directors are Ken Perlman – the guy who literally wrote the book on melodic clawhammer banjo, and Stan Werbin, who operates the fabulous Elderly Instruments in Lansing Michigan. Once again they have a great group of instructors – some whose workshops I’ve attended at previous camps and some I haven’t yet met – in both the old time (what I play) and bluegrass genres.
The program includes a selection of workshops and demos that covers everything from playing the blues to mid-western square dance tunes, from the songs of Uncle Dave Macon to minstrel banjo technique. I’ve been going over the schedule, trying to decide which classes to attend, and it’s a difficult decision because there are so many excellent choices again this year. I try to attend workshops led by most of the old time instructors while making sure I get to the “must attend” classes I’ve identified.
Last year I was just about overwhelmed by all that I learned and it really took months for me to digest everything and really learn all the tunes I started on. It’s going to be so much fun this year!
Black Mountain Rag – two approaches
I first heard Black Mountain Rag as played by Doc Watson, so I think of it as a flat-picking guitar showpiece kind of tune. Doc really moves on this one.
Before that it was known primarily as a fiddle tune. Here’s Patti Kusturok’s take on it…
It’s a great tune and I enjoy both approaches.
Bizarre telemarketer action
I pick up the phone and can here the tell-tale noises coming from some huge overseas telemarketer outfit. I know in my heart it’s a guy selling duct cleaning. It’s almost always someone selling duct cleaning. I say hello several times while buddy on the other end gets his script together.
Hi my name is Bill Evans.
Bill Evans? The piano player? I thought he died over 30 years ago. You aren’t dead are you?
Hello sir, my name is is Bill Evans and I’m calling because you have been selected for a free membership card.
A free membership card? How exciting is that? I can’t believe I’ve won that. I never win anything. What exactly is a free membership card all about?
Yes sir, you can use your free membership card to get discounts on good and services.
I can? Oh wow that sounds wonderful. Can you give me an example of something I could get a discount on?
Yes sir, for instance you could get a discount on duct cleaning.
Duct cleaning. That makes you a winner.
Silence on the other end.
You’re the 15th guy calling to offer me duct cleaning this week, so you win the prize.
Click. He didn’t even give me a chance to tell him I don’t have any ducks or that it’s such a coincidence because I own a duct cleaning company too.
AlphaGo has retired
After defeating the top human players at Go – the most difficult and challenging of human games – the whiz-bang AI bot called AlphaGo has retired from competitive play.
From the Tech Crunch article:
This week’s series of thrilling games with the world’s best players, in the country where Go originated, has been the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program. For that reason, the Future of Go Summit is our final match event with AlphaGo.
The research team behind AlphaGo will now throw their energy into the next set of grand challenges, developing advanced general algorithms that could one day help scientists as they tackle some of our most complex problems, such as finding new cures for diseases, dramatically reducing energy consumption, or inventing revolutionary new materials.
Deep Mind is also developing a Go teaching tool. After having lost several games last time I played my regular Go partner, I can use all the help I can get.
Patti Kusturok on fiddle
Check out Patti Kusturok’s 365 days of fiddle tunes on YouTube. She’s from Manitoba and she’s one of the best fiddle players anywhere. This is an incredibly generous resource for fiddle lovers. I’ll share some samples from her 365 days here, but go visit her channel. It is a treasure.
I just listened to Day 307, Quadrille Canadienne
And then there is this one with Calvin Vollrath (!!) and Daniel Gervais (!!) It’s a Calvin Vollrath tune called LITTLE John McNeil…
OK just one more – a fox trot – with accordion accompaniment. The White River Stomp.
Alpha Go beats Ke Jie again
I stayed up late last night to watch as much as I could of the second game between the world’s top Go player Ke Jie and the whiz-bang AI bot Alpha Go. Once again the game was streamed on the American Go Association YouTube channel, with expert commentary.
It was a tremendously complex game that found Ke Jie creating a ko battle in an interconnected fight involving precarious groups on the bottom side of the board. Large areas of the board were in flux and Ke Jie’s stones were under great pressure, as he tried to keep the game as complicated as possible. In the end the ko battle was settled in Ke Jie’s favour, but he lost a huge group in the bottom right and there would be no opportunity to make up that loss. Ke Jie finally resigned.
One of the interesting things the commentators discussed before the game is that the current version of Alpha Go uses 10X LESS computing power than the version which played Lee Sedol last year. Alpha Go has the ability to learn and this version was trained by playing millions of games against itself. While it may be possible for the bot to lose an occasional game, the current version has yet to lose and as now played numerous top pros. Fascinating.
Back from the range
Cowboy Tom is looking a little rough after a hard winter on the range.
Watch for the bear in the bushes
…as if we can’t see him hiding behind that peony
Ginseng Blues
My brother the trout was telling me that there are people who crawl around the woods looking for enough wild ginseng to sell commercially. Apparently there is quite a market for the stuff. Who knew? Not me.
Here’s Meredith Axelrod performing Ginseng Blues…this one’s going out to Salvelinus Fontinalis.
27th Street 