That Tuneful Rag (Buel B. Risinger, 1911) played by Tom Brier & Andrew Barrett

YouTube's "KawhackitaRag", Andrew Barrett, was invited to join Tom Brier for a duet of this rarely heard number by Buel B. Risinger (who was an organist at the Knickerbocker Theater from what I saw when briefly looking up his name).

You can download the sheet music for this rag here:
http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/lilly/starr/LL-SSM-2-305-0372-01

This was recorded on 23 May 2009 in Sacramento, California.

See Andrew's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/KawhackitaRag

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ragtime
• piano
• duet
• risinger
• 1911
• rag
• brier
• barrett

[KawhackitaRag]

hahahaha thanks for posting this Ron; this was a lot of fun! I wonder what Mr. Risinger would have thought...

where did you see that he was an organist? I would be interested to find more about him. I'm sure this rag would sound great on a theatre organ!

[Keeper1st]

I just did a Google search on his name, and a couple references popped up. One of them includes a picture of what they believe to be him seated at an organ.

[Maturkus]

Lol, I told one of my friends that I was going to try to play the next thing that you posted on youtube. But both him and me were just staring at this, thinking: this aint going to work out as good as I'd hoped... (Being pretty much an amature when it comes to ragtime, this seems abit hard for a first piece. I think I'll wait for better times until I try this one out.

As always, good job and keep it up!

[Keeper1st]

They're really fleshing it out. If you look at the sheet music, you'll notice it has fingering notated, which most rags don't. So maybe that'll help you out. It doesn't seem a particularly complicated rag, really.

I considered posting one where Andrew was simply playing off of a piece of paper with the chord sequence written on it! Also pondered posting a video of Andrew playing Maple Leaf Rag as a tango, or Tom playing one of mine with multiple-voice melodies. So you lucked out, actually!

[Maturkus]

I don't often speak of my disability, but I'm afraid to tell you that I'm practicly note-blind. It'd take me days on days, maybe even weeks to get through just one sheet of paper...

I have pretty good ears though, about everything I know is either from playing it by ear, having someone teach me or basically something that sounds the same for people who heard the thing once or twice, but in fact is a mare copy with improvisational fill-ins wherever I couldn't figure out how to play.

[Keeper1st]

Ahh, well, trying to ear-learn a piece that's being played by two people might indeed be tricky. It's not a disability, though; that's an ability! Check out YouTubers "mikewoollett" and "solong36". They don't read music (though the latter mostly had videos of other pianists, so you have to search to find ones with Stan playing). I wish I could hear something and figure out easier. It's quite a chore. I do well at it only from perseverance and attention to detail.

[jawharp1992]

This would be marvelous in stereo.

[KawhackitaRag]

Tom sounds like cannon fire at 3:01-3:03.

bahahahahaha we really did a number on this one.

[KawhackitaRag]

well, there's a headshot of him on the cover of this rag, so it should be easy to compare this with the attributed organist photo to make sure.

[Maturkus]

Video game busic is very good for playing by ear, since they oftenly have a disinct right hand and simple left hand, but then there are those games that have like complete orchestral pieces written for them. Those are not as easy. (=P

Most Zelda songs are quite easy, yet still fun to play. I've been messing around with Gerudo Valley, you should try it. =]

Another thing I did was to convert Song of Storms to 4/4 and playing it with new left hand things. It's alot of dun. (:D

[idasynco]

WOAH, that was great! Section D was so exciting too!! thanks for posting this, a consolation for those of us not at the live SJRF this year!! *****