Posted by fiddlepogo on Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Very often, the push to get ready for a big gig gets me burned out. And sometimes, I don't want to play that style of tune for a while!!! I was wondering how this would pan out for Irish this time. Would I be heartily sick of Irish tunes, and neglect them for a couple of months?
The answer seems to be NO-
I am not burned out on Irish Trad as a whole!
I am however kind of burned out on practicing them so intensely, and specifically many of the ones I used for the gig.
Rakish Paddy, Drowsy Maggie, Musical and Kitty's Wedding seem to have survived well among the reels.
Garrett Barry's, and The Frost is All Over still seem interesting among the jigs-
actually Irish Washerwoman too, since I started playing it with more left hand rolls.
Byrne's Hornpipe is a keeper, but I'll probably give Chief O'Neills and Off To California a rest for a while... partly because I'm not happy with the way the ornamentation is going with them. Funny... on Old Time tunes it's the bowing not working that causes me to back-burner a tune, with Irish Trad, it's the ornamentation not working.
This morning, I messed around with Ships are Sailing (a reel) and the Kesh jig, neither of which were in the running for my St. Paddy's Day set list.
Other post gig stuff:
One night less than a week before the gig, I felt a twinge in my index finger... NOT a good sign.
I've had problems with the index before from playing steel string acoustic for too many hours straight, and I had been intending to use my steel string acoustic for St. Paddy's Day. So I switched to nylon string for the songs.... actually I haven't touched the steel string since. It's slowly getting better- part of it seems to be that the muscles seem cramped, and part of it may be bursitis or arthritis as well.
Long walks have been helping, and just playing less.
I first used a monitor with my present sound system for the St. Paddy's Day gig.
As a part of the ongoing experimentation, I used two Radio Shack bookshelf speakers- and a small Radio Shack stereo amp instead of the recording monitor- the speakers are black, rugged, and look the part- but the amp doesn't.
But they worked quite well for a low power gig!
Now if I can just find a better looking way of mounting them!
1 comment on “St. Paddy's Gig Aftermath”
fiddleiphile Says:
Thursday, March 24, 2011 @4:31:01 AM
Musician's Gear makes some very nice collapsable tri-pod stands at a reasonable price. You might try watching Musicians Friends site for thier Stupid Deal of the Day. These stands come up freaquently at a HUGE discount.
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