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annathepiperWe played a wedding today -- well, where 'we' is defined as a subset of our jamming group Three Good Measures. Specifically, me, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird (Dar), mamishka (Mimi), ssha (Cyn), Patrick, and Fred. spazzkat (Paul) came with us, and Dana eventually showed up as well, though they didn't play.
We all gathered at the Murk sans Fred this morning, since Fred was going to show up separately and meet us at the place in question, a wilderness center down in Maple Valley. Everybody got their stuff together in more or less timely fashion, and then Patrick and Cyn went in his car and the rest of us went in ours.
Things were going swimmingly until we got about four miles away from our destination, and Mimi looked at me in the back seat and went, "Oh shit."
It turned out we forgot our music stands. We had three at our disposal -- mine, an extra that Ben or Ian had left behind when they'd moved out, and Fred's. Monica's parents had offered to loan us a couple, but that still meant we were way short of a critical number of music stands. So it turned out that we were very fortunate to get there as early as we did; Mapquest had claimed it would take us an hour to get there and it only took about forty minutes. So while Paul and I waited at the site to make sure that Cyn and Patrick would find us, Dar and Mimi went back up the road a ways to check out a couple of the churches we had passed, to see whether they had any music stands we could borrow.
Fortunately, it turned out not to be a disaster. Monica's mother did in fact provide us two stands; there was a dance studio in the downstairs portion of the building where we were able to get a third; and Mimi got one of the churches to loan us three more. So everybody had stands!
It was kind of cool to be able to tell people as they were arriving, as well as the staff on site, that we were the musicians for the wedding. Almost makes me wish we could have shown up in black hats and sunglasses. ;) (I did have on my black leather jacket, which made Paul observe that I looked like I was about to go out to do some slayin' after the prom.)
Monica wandered around looking windblown but lovely, with her makeup done but her hair not done yet, talking flusteredly to her husband-to-be by cell phone as he had not yet shown up and they needed to decide whether to hold the ceremony outdoors or indoors. Ren, apparently, was still back online trying to soothe some ruffled feathers of SCA friends of theirs, who had been miffed that they had been neither informed about nor invited to the wedding. Doh!
The weather looked a bit questionable. It was certainly cool out, which I thought would be a bit of an adventure for tuning -- not so much for Dar's bamboo flutes (as well as one of mine that she was bringing along to play) but for my silver and my piccolo, definitely. It remained cloudy for the most part, though the sun made a few valiant breaks through the clouds. Everything was more or less "not rainy", though, so the decision was made to continue as planned with outside.
We didn't do a full rehearsal beforehand, but we did touch on some of the problem areas we'd been having during the week, and also worked out the various issues with seating and what to do with all our instruments and how to tell the stands we'd borrowed from the church apart from the others (this involved marking the church stands with green sticky tape). Dar brought along the speaker and tape deck and mike we'd been using to rehearse as of late, though it took a bit of effort to find someone who could help us out with getting power run out to where we'd be playing.
Paul took a few pictures of us with his digital camera, and for that matter, one of the wedding party whose identity completely eludes me but who was also armed with a camera snapped some shots of us too.
At about 2:30, we got started. Alarmingly enough, Dar actually had also brought the minidisc player, so we could be recorded as well.
"Acres of Clams" held together pretty well even if one of my very first notes was screwed up -- me forgetting the damned key was D and hitting my first C as a C natural and not a C sharp.
Next up was the classical piece we've been calling my "mystery music", since the only copy I have of this thing was an old xerox left over from my high school days. It's a flute arrangement in C and in 4/4 time and allegro. I can tell you that much. But who composed it and when, damned if I know at this point. It's a great flute solo piece, though. Would have been greater if my music hadn't gone flying off the stand about two lines in thanks to the breeze, making Dar and Mimi have to leap up and hold the sheet for me as I played.
"Lukey" -- ergh. I completely spazzed on what verse we were on and didn't realize it until Cyn stopped singing, and I was suddenly thinking, "OH HELL, we're in the bridge". This kind of seemed also to ripple over and screw Cyn up coming back out of the bridge. Fortunately, we managed to play through it -- and Dar says, listening to the recording, that it doesn't sound like nearly as much of a train wreck as one might expect, which is a relief.
"Andante con espressione" -- another flute solo piece of mine. I'd played this one at my little sister Sarah's wedding, and its primary virtue is that it's short and really simple, unlike the mystery music which is long and complicated. I keep wanting to call this piece "Andante with espresso."
"General Taylor" -- two thumbs up on this. We wound up singing it in E, as I have mentioned in previous Jam Reports, and although I was a little shaky coming in the first time, once I got going I was able to carry my harmony. Everybody else sounded fabulous too, and Mimi's even been getting in a bit of Séan McCann action going on that last verse and chorus, slowing things down to make it a bit more dramatic.
"The Wind that Shakes the Barley" sung by Cyn all by her lonesome came out gorgeous. She has such a deep smoky voice that it worked quite well all by itself, on these lyrics; it made for a very moody, very expressive rendition.
"Trois Navires de Ble" -- I had a bit of spazzing with my backup vocals but no train wrecks with the chords. Yay! I had been a bit worried, since my big mand has been having rattling issues again lately, and I'm starting to wonder if it is in fact me and if I need to just figure out how to play more softly. I do seem to get quite carried away. It's all Great Big Sea's fault, I'm tellin' ya. ;)
"By My Side" -- A song from Godspell that Mimi came up with, done by her, Cyn, and Patrick. Patrick did some lovely arpeggios on his guitar, and Mimi and Cyn blended so well together on the harmony for this all throughout the rehearsals this past week that their voices have been haunting me.
"Old Brown's Daughter" -- This also came out pretty fabulous. Paul, who was sitting near us in the audience, told us that this song seemed to go over really well, too. Because of the whole Monica's maiden name being Brown and all.
"Serenade" -- my last flute solo, another classical ditty (let's hear it for Haydn, ladies and gentlemen) which was the Seating of the Mothers piece. Monica's mom had come over just prior to our rehearsing to ask us about musical cues, and after Mimi and I had talked to her I'd planned to play this one just straight through without the repeats, but even that turned out to be too long. I kept looking up to check on the progress of what was going on and wound up completely improvising an ending. I hope Mr. Haydn won't spin too heavily in his grave.
"Si Bheag Si Mhor" -- well, really, this should more be called the instrumental version of "Judas Cart", since that is in fact what we were playing. I apparently have in fact gotten comfy enough with the mandolin part I have worked out for "Judas Cart", even the slightly more complicated third verse, that I managed not to screw up significantly anywhere in the piece. Cyn playing the melody on her violin and Mimi playing the harmony I'd written (originally for singing along with Mr. Crowe) on my flute worked splendidly. Very good processional piece. Didn't seem too long either.
Mimi had a flute of her own, though she wound up borrowing mine simply because it became obvious during our rehearsals this past week that her instrument was significantly inferior to mine. She'd been having some issues trying to play F sharp on the thing, and she was amazed at how much easier it was to do it on my instrument; she'd half thought that she'd just simply deteriorated as a flute player, but no, her instrument just sucks. ;) Plus, loaning her mine made for one less instrument we had to carry with us.
The wedding sermon talked about Paul and the Corinthians, and went through the whole "Love is not boastful or arrogant" passage that seems to be a staple at weddings these days. Monica and Ren had obviously written their own vows as well. I didn't really watch much; I couldn't really see much, truth be told, from my seat over there in the musician's semi-circle. But I listened, and wound up mostly just trying to quietly smooth some of the dust off my mandolin without making my strings go 'twang'.
It was pretty short as weddings go since once the party actually came out and things got underway, nothing happened to interrupt it. We didn't have any music during the wedding, and the preacher (a woman preacher, it must be noted) just did the one sermon, then the rings were exchanged, and, yay married.
Up then to "Dancing With Mrs. White". Which we didn't have to play as long as we thought we would -- we just played it straight through like unto how Great Big Sea does it, and although I flubbed some notes here and there I didn't screw up too terribly much. From where I was sitting though it did make it tough for me to hear Dar's bamboo piccolo echoing back her parts at me after I did my parts.
We actually got a little bit of applause after doing this, from lingering members of the audience. Go us. :)
"Mari-Mac" -- we had a bit of a flub here too as Cyn spazzed a bit on where she was, but she managed to pull something plausible back together and we all finished more or less together anyway. Yay!
"Old Black Rum" -- The amusing part of doing this for me was that an older gentleman by Paul after I did this song wanted to know if this was trad. We called over that no, it wasn't, but it's sort of now 'nouveau trad'. I wasn't too thrilled about the sound of my voice on some of those notes, but well hey, I made it all the way through.
"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" -- I'd been a bit worried on this one since I've been having issues all week following Mimi on the tempo on this thing. I just had to remember to watch her, though, and try to keep the rhythm going. It helped that I could hear her on the bodhran but I really couldn't hear much of Fred or Patrick over there on the dulcimer and guitar. And I wasn't as able to do as much backup singing as I generally like to do on this song. We'll have to practice it more if we ever want to think about doing this again.
"Jolly Butcher" -- I said something to the effect of "Last song, make it good" just before we did this one, and then managed to squeak my way all over my part. OH THE IRONY! However, the really hairy bits of the bridge, i.e., my high G's and the notes just under them, I still managed to get out credibly.
After that, everybody was more or less gone, so we packed up our stuff and moved it out to the vehicles. As we did, one lady wandered by Mimi and told us we'd sounded really good, and said something about how we ought to play at "her wedding". I'm mostly hoping she wasn't serious. Mostly. ;)
Once we got in and got some food, we finally found Dana. Who was also armed with a camera, and who wanted to take pictures of us so that she could take them and show them to her mother, which we happily let her do.
The food -- all very tasty, lovely salmon and pasta and veggie and fruit sort of spread. But we all wound up hanging out more or less together, sort of in the We're the Musicians Herd, since we didn't know anybody there but Monica. And we made it through the toast and the cake, but then hugged Monica a bunch and told her we all needed to take off and go home and fall over.
As we did, we heard music coming up from the DJ getting started for the reception downstairs. Great Big Sea's "Ordinary Day".
Which was highly appropriate, in all sorts of fashions, and a nice way to close out our first public performance.
solarbird (Dar), mamishka (Mimi), ssha (Cyn), Patrick, and Fred. spazzkat (Paul) came with us, and Dana eventually showed up as well, though they didn't play. We all gathered at the Murk sans Fred this morning, since Fred was going to show up separately and meet us at the place in question, a wilderness center down in Maple Valley. Everybody got their stuff together in more or less timely fashion, and then Patrick and Cyn went in his car and the rest of us went in ours.
Things were going swimmingly until we got about four miles away from our destination, and Mimi looked at me in the back seat and went, "Oh shit."
It turned out we forgot our music stands. We had three at our disposal -- mine, an extra that Ben or Ian had left behind when they'd moved out, and Fred's. Monica's parents had offered to loan us a couple, but that still meant we were way short of a critical number of music stands. So it turned out that we were very fortunate to get there as early as we did; Mapquest had claimed it would take us an hour to get there and it only took about forty minutes. So while Paul and I waited at the site to make sure that Cyn and Patrick would find us, Dar and Mimi went back up the road a ways to check out a couple of the churches we had passed, to see whether they had any music stands we could borrow.
Fortunately, it turned out not to be a disaster. Monica's mother did in fact provide us two stands; there was a dance studio in the downstairs portion of the building where we were able to get a third; and Mimi got one of the churches to loan us three more. So everybody had stands!
It was kind of cool to be able to tell people as they were arriving, as well as the staff on site, that we were the musicians for the wedding. Almost makes me wish we could have shown up in black hats and sunglasses. ;) (I did have on my black leather jacket, which made Paul observe that I looked like I was about to go out to do some slayin' after the prom.)
Monica wandered around looking windblown but lovely, with her makeup done but her hair not done yet, talking flusteredly to her husband-to-be by cell phone as he had not yet shown up and they needed to decide whether to hold the ceremony outdoors or indoors. Ren, apparently, was still back online trying to soothe some ruffled feathers of SCA friends of theirs, who had been miffed that they had been neither informed about nor invited to the wedding. Doh!
The weather looked a bit questionable. It was certainly cool out, which I thought would be a bit of an adventure for tuning -- not so much for Dar's bamboo flutes (as well as one of mine that she was bringing along to play) but for my silver and my piccolo, definitely. It remained cloudy for the most part, though the sun made a few valiant breaks through the clouds. Everything was more or less "not rainy", though, so the decision was made to continue as planned with outside.
We didn't do a full rehearsal beforehand, but we did touch on some of the problem areas we'd been having during the week, and also worked out the various issues with seating and what to do with all our instruments and how to tell the stands we'd borrowed from the church apart from the others (this involved marking the church stands with green sticky tape). Dar brought along the speaker and tape deck and mike we'd been using to rehearse as of late, though it took a bit of effort to find someone who could help us out with getting power run out to where we'd be playing.
Paul took a few pictures of us with his digital camera, and for that matter, one of the wedding party whose identity completely eludes me but who was also armed with a camera snapped some shots of us too.
At about 2:30, we got started. Alarmingly enough, Dar actually had also brought the minidisc player, so we could be recorded as well.
"Acres of Clams" held together pretty well even if one of my very first notes was screwed up -- me forgetting the damned key was D and hitting my first C as a C natural and not a C sharp.
Next up was the classical piece we've been calling my "mystery music", since the only copy I have of this thing was an old xerox left over from my high school days. It's a flute arrangement in C and in 4/4 time and allegro. I can tell you that much. But who composed it and when, damned if I know at this point. It's a great flute solo piece, though. Would have been greater if my music hadn't gone flying off the stand about two lines in thanks to the breeze, making Dar and Mimi have to leap up and hold the sheet for me as I played.
"Lukey" -- ergh. I completely spazzed on what verse we were on and didn't realize it until Cyn stopped singing, and I was suddenly thinking, "OH HELL, we're in the bridge". This kind of seemed also to ripple over and screw Cyn up coming back out of the bridge. Fortunately, we managed to play through it -- and Dar says, listening to the recording, that it doesn't sound like nearly as much of a train wreck as one might expect, which is a relief.
"Andante con espressione" -- another flute solo piece of mine. I'd played this one at my little sister Sarah's wedding, and its primary virtue is that it's short and really simple, unlike the mystery music which is long and complicated. I keep wanting to call this piece "Andante with espresso."
"General Taylor" -- two thumbs up on this. We wound up singing it in E, as I have mentioned in previous Jam Reports, and although I was a little shaky coming in the first time, once I got going I was able to carry my harmony. Everybody else sounded fabulous too, and Mimi's even been getting in a bit of Séan McCann action going on that last verse and chorus, slowing things down to make it a bit more dramatic.
"The Wind that Shakes the Barley" sung by Cyn all by her lonesome came out gorgeous. She has such a deep smoky voice that it worked quite well all by itself, on these lyrics; it made for a very moody, very expressive rendition.
"Trois Navires de Ble" -- I had a bit of spazzing with my backup vocals but no train wrecks with the chords. Yay! I had been a bit worried, since my big mand has been having rattling issues again lately, and I'm starting to wonder if it is in fact me and if I need to just figure out how to play more softly. I do seem to get quite carried away. It's all Great Big Sea's fault, I'm tellin' ya. ;)
"By My Side" -- A song from Godspell that Mimi came up with, done by her, Cyn, and Patrick. Patrick did some lovely arpeggios on his guitar, and Mimi and Cyn blended so well together on the harmony for this all throughout the rehearsals this past week that their voices have been haunting me.
"Old Brown's Daughter" -- This also came out pretty fabulous. Paul, who was sitting near us in the audience, told us that this song seemed to go over really well, too. Because of the whole Monica's maiden name being Brown and all.
"Serenade" -- my last flute solo, another classical ditty (let's hear it for Haydn, ladies and gentlemen) which was the Seating of the Mothers piece. Monica's mom had come over just prior to our rehearsing to ask us about musical cues, and after Mimi and I had talked to her I'd planned to play this one just straight through without the repeats, but even that turned out to be too long. I kept looking up to check on the progress of what was going on and wound up completely improvising an ending. I hope Mr. Haydn won't spin too heavily in his grave.
"Si Bheag Si Mhor" -- well, really, this should more be called the instrumental version of "Judas Cart", since that is in fact what we were playing. I apparently have in fact gotten comfy enough with the mandolin part I have worked out for "Judas Cart", even the slightly more complicated third verse, that I managed not to screw up significantly anywhere in the piece. Cyn playing the melody on her violin and Mimi playing the harmony I'd written (originally for singing along with Mr. Crowe) on my flute worked splendidly. Very good processional piece. Didn't seem too long either.
Mimi had a flute of her own, though she wound up borrowing mine simply because it became obvious during our rehearsals this past week that her instrument was significantly inferior to mine. She'd been having some issues trying to play F sharp on the thing, and she was amazed at how much easier it was to do it on my instrument; she'd half thought that she'd just simply deteriorated as a flute player, but no, her instrument just sucks. ;) Plus, loaning her mine made for one less instrument we had to carry with us.
The wedding sermon talked about Paul and the Corinthians, and went through the whole "Love is not boastful or arrogant" passage that seems to be a staple at weddings these days. Monica and Ren had obviously written their own vows as well. I didn't really watch much; I couldn't really see much, truth be told, from my seat over there in the musician's semi-circle. But I listened, and wound up mostly just trying to quietly smooth some of the dust off my mandolin without making my strings go 'twang'.
It was pretty short as weddings go since once the party actually came out and things got underway, nothing happened to interrupt it. We didn't have any music during the wedding, and the preacher (a woman preacher, it must be noted) just did the one sermon, then the rings were exchanged, and, yay married.
Up then to "Dancing With Mrs. White". Which we didn't have to play as long as we thought we would -- we just played it straight through like unto how Great Big Sea does it, and although I flubbed some notes here and there I didn't screw up too terribly much. From where I was sitting though it did make it tough for me to hear Dar's bamboo piccolo echoing back her parts at me after I did my parts.
We actually got a little bit of applause after doing this, from lingering members of the audience. Go us. :)
"Mari-Mac" -- we had a bit of a flub here too as Cyn spazzed a bit on where she was, but she managed to pull something plausible back together and we all finished more or less together anyway. Yay!
"Old Black Rum" -- The amusing part of doing this for me was that an older gentleman by Paul after I did this song wanted to know if this was trad. We called over that no, it wasn't, but it's sort of now 'nouveau trad'. I wasn't too thrilled about the sound of my voice on some of those notes, but well hey, I made it all the way through.
"You Woke Up My Neighborhood" -- I'd been a bit worried on this one since I've been having issues all week following Mimi on the tempo on this thing. I just had to remember to watch her, though, and try to keep the rhythm going. It helped that I could hear her on the bodhran but I really couldn't hear much of Fred or Patrick over there on the dulcimer and guitar. And I wasn't as able to do as much backup singing as I generally like to do on this song. We'll have to practice it more if we ever want to think about doing this again.
"Jolly Butcher" -- I said something to the effect of "Last song, make it good" just before we did this one, and then managed to squeak my way all over my part. OH THE IRONY! However, the really hairy bits of the bridge, i.e., my high G's and the notes just under them, I still managed to get out credibly.
After that, everybody was more or less gone, so we packed up our stuff and moved it out to the vehicles. As we did, one lady wandered by Mimi and told us we'd sounded really good, and said something about how we ought to play at "her wedding". I'm mostly hoping she wasn't serious. Mostly. ;)
Once we got in and got some food, we finally found Dana. Who was also armed with a camera, and who wanted to take pictures of us so that she could take them and show them to her mother, which we happily let her do.
The food -- all very tasty, lovely salmon and pasta and veggie and fruit sort of spread. But we all wound up hanging out more or less together, sort of in the We're the Musicians Herd, since we didn't know anybody there but Monica. And we made it through the toast and the cake, but then hugged Monica a bunch and told her we all needed to take off and go home and fall over.
As we did, we heard music coming up from the DJ getting started for the reception downstairs. Great Big Sea's "Ordinary Day".
Which was highly appropriate, in all sorts of fashions, and a nice way to close out our first public performance.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-17 10:40 am (UTC)