other music

[a non-amos]

The recording equipment arrived, but I had not had the time to delve into it until this weekend.  On Saturday I discovered an untold number of ways not to make a recording.  Many attempts resulted in no sound at all, others resulted in various other major problems.  Toward the end of the evening I was able to reliably record a track with good sound quality, but by then my hands were so tired I could not play well.

No worries.  The rest of the band would not show up until Sunday afternoon.  I could get some sleep and lay down a track in the morning when I am well rested.

This worked to an extent, but not entirely.  We had some problems in when the guitarist was supposed to come in.  It sounds rather ameteurish if the guitar comes in a bar late.  I need to modify the lead-in (normally deleted from the finished music) to help other musicians get the feel for the tempo and spirit of the music BEFORE they start playing.

The music we recorded today had some jaw-dropping good moments, but we need to clean up the rest of it.  This means everything we did this weekend will probably be erased and replaced.

This is not bad news.  We made some highly listenable music in our first day of recording.  We do need to clean it up a bit, but we have the means to do that.

 

[a non-amos]

Yes, this recording stuff is harder than it looks.

We are taking a short break from that, and perfoming more in front of real people.

We introduced quite a bit of new music last weekend at Pop's Ice Cream Parlor, always a hotbed of local music (no, I am not kidding), and we will be performing for the NPS (National Park Service) a week from Saturday.

There were some strings attached (pun intended).  I also need to talk about the fact that although US is a meltingpot, much of the old Appalachian music stems from the (older) Celtic music.  Twist my arm.  Egads.  I might be in Heaven.

Among the tunes we have practiced, I have specific examples of tunes that crossed the Atlantic (more or less) untouched, and would be equally at home in a Scottish or Irish Ceilidh or an Appalachian Jamboree.  I have other examples to show the evolution of styles that came about with other influences.

Wish us luck!

[birdy]

I'll wish you good luck, but I suspect that your success will come more from hard work and practice than luck!

[a non-amos]

What's this about hard work?  This is fun!

Last night I could not sleep, so I was rattling around the house and had an idea.  This was incredibly obvious in retrospect, but guarranteed to work.

We are requested not only to play the music, but also to talk about its history and to show the linkage between Celtic music and American.  What better example than "Jonny we hardly knew ye"?

This was an anti-war anti-enlistment tune from County Kildare that we stole (and renamed) and made into a marching tune for both sides in the American Civil War.

I had done this tune with the bagpipe band; it will be somewhat different on the hammered dulcimer.

[a non-amos]

This made my day, after a really horrendous week.

We played a very hostile crowd on St. Patrick's Day.  They cut the sound on the basketball game, and I turned up the amp and announced the name of the band.  This was greeted by a few people standing up and shouting "shut the f* up".

This evening I met up with one of the shouters.  Tonight he had some further comments.  The performance was on St. Patrick's Day, and he had heard what they had at other venues, so he thought he heard all of Irish music.

We started out playing some cheerful and lively music, and he felt cheerul and lively instead of wanting to slit our throats.  We played some teasing and salacious music, and the party was in full swing.  We played a sad tune, and that was the saddest thing he had ever heard (major "boo hoo" moment).  We merged that into a proud tune.  Grab a napkin, dry the tears, and raise a toast to what could have been.  I took a few moments to describe the dances that go along with the next tune, and this guy saw the ghosts of dancers skittering across the floor.

He was "just" a local redneck who came in to watch the game.  This evening he told me he never knew that music could do that.  I told him we owe it all to the lyrics (we play only instrumental).

[birdy]

"Music has charms..." - you may have earned a fan, in spite of the initial attitude.

[cb]

Am I the only one here anxiously awaiting the news of the "Live Album" of A non-amos & friends becoming available from a download site, sometime soon?

[a non-amos]

We are in the process of learning that performing and recording are two very different arts.

Give us a crowd, and we will have them in the palms of our hands.  Give us microphones in a studio, and we will find every conceivable way to play poorly.  Been there, done that.

Maybe we need to put the recording on a back burner for the time being?

[a non-amos]

Our local pub is in trouble.  Without additional funds, they are in danger of folding.

Roanoke has an event (Dickens of a Christmas) that draws many thousands of people on the first three Fridays in December.  There is a huge crowd walking past the pub, but the problem is that they walk past it.  There is nothing to draw them in.

When I knocked on his door the owner had his head in his hands, trying to think of some way to draw in more people.  I told him we would like to help him, that we could play some live music to draw in more people.

You could have seen the light bulb over his head.  His face brightened, and he had hope.  Of course, he had not yet fathomed the need for publicity, but that is a given.  He has not yet figured that out.

Long story made short, we have old music and new music.  I hope it works.

[a non-amos]

Much to catch up . . .

Yes, we played for the NPS.  They were delighted; they told us this was the best turnout they had for any band, new or established.  This was part of the Harvest Festival at the Peaks of Otter.  That was last year.

Several weeks ago all schedules came together, and Sue and I made a road trip to the back of beyond to make some music with a fiddler.  Sue had been trying to arrange this for over a year.  Long story short, it looks like our band has a third member.

This will be the first weekend I have had off of work for quite some time.  Our plans are for Mrs. A and I to hit a bicycling trail on Saturday and to host the new trio on Sunday.  Mrs. A has not yet heard the trio.

Preliminary info indicates that there might not be a Harvest Festival this year.  Something about cutbacks and sequesters and stupidity in general.  Plans are for us to play anyway, with or without a festival.

[a non-amos]

Yes, this is an old thread.  It suits the current topic.

We got together on Sunday to play some music in public.  It's been too long since we had a real gig, and public performance is an art unto itself.  We should not lose that skill.

We played in a picnic shelter on a greenway.  It was a good 3 hour set.  It was about 3 hours and it was good.

We played many Irish tunes and much more non-Irish, and we were able to play every request from the crowd.  The strangest request was to play the tune from that John Wayne movie.

- A

[guiltypleasure]

Was that "I'll Take You Home again Kathleen"?  I love that tune....

Linda

[a non-amos]

Although that is a beautiful and dramatic song, it's not the one he was trying to request.

It had been a good 20 or 30 minutes since we had played anything Irish, so he wanted a specific tune from "The Quiet Man."  The tune he wanted was "Saint Patrick's Day," which was a recurring theme throughout the movie.

This had been one of our standard tunes, but we had not played it in a longish while.  It took some noodling around to remember how to play it.  I remembered the key, and a few bits and snippets, and the others played along in the general spirit of what I was playing with.  After a little bit it all came back to me in a flood and I launched into it and the others took my lead without missing a beat.  From that point we played it spotlessly.

The audience thought we had given it a prelude.  We had them hanging in suspense to hear the tune it would resolve into.  I wish I could remember the "prelude."

[a non-amos]

This evening I met a friend and offered to play a very recent recording of a new tune we have been working on.

I told her this is a dance tune from back in the 80's.  The 1680's.

She told me that music from the 1600's really sucked (her word, not mine).  I told her this one is really pretty, and she let me play the recording (holding my cell phone to her ear).

She was enraptured by the first half (which is a very nice tune) and then the second half ascended to a more ethereal octave.  That's when I volunteered to take my phone away from her ear, since she did not like music from the 17th century.  She told me that if I took my phone away she would hurt me.

This tune is not ready for prime time, not by any means.  We need to do much work on it. 

It felt good to open her eyes, if only for a moment, then the moment's gone.