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Housefilk at Larry and Deborah's
Mar. 20th, 2016 05:29 pmI just got back from Deborah's Birthday Housefilk at Larry and Deborah's house.
Lauren and I drove up together through the beautiful Smokey Mountains along I-40 to I-26. It is a beautiful area and the redbuds and pear trees were just blossoming out at the time. Saturday was a lovely sunny day, and Sunday was nice and cool and spring-damp, with the rain keeping the pollen out of the air. The Kirby house is out in a very rural area, surrounded by pine woods with a huge blossoming tree next to a porch that hosts a wealth of tiny brown birds that rustle and chirp at the birdfeeder.
There were ten or twelve people there for the housefilk, and I am beginning to learn people's names (I am extremely slow at this) so I felt even more at home than previous times. Moss came from my neck of the woods, and Myra and Harry came from the Atlanta area, and Terry and Barbara were there, and a couple of people I should know but whose names I can't remember and one quiet woman with long hair who did some cool songs about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly.
I was a bit worried I wouldn't have anything in good shape to do, but I had been working hard on Dr. Faber's Medicine Show (the song), because my new book of Mandolin Exercises made me think that perhaps what was wrong with it before was that I hadn't been using the proper pick direction for everything.
When someone is slow, like me, one secret to playing mandolin pieces faster is to work out the proper pick direction for every note. I think the secret is to playing on-beat notes on a downstroke and off-beat notes on an up stroke, even if you have to skip over a string or two to do it. That way your picking hand swings up and down at the same rate all the time and you don't have to start and stop.
So anyway I had printed out the music for the mandolin part for that song, which I had always found extremely difficult to play at the speed I heard it in my head, and I wrote out above the notes which were down strokes and which up strokes and then spent a couple of days of dedicated practice trying to do it the right way.
And whether it is the two days of dedicated practice or whether it is untangling the up and down strokes, I did a much better job on it in the circle than I would have done a few days before. Also the filk I wrote of Cindy Cindy went over well, and at various times when the turn came around to me I did The Silver Snail and Hydrogen And Time (I got asked if that one was on a CD yet) and Lauren requested Neil Armstrong and I debuted Pyrtanian Love Song, and Lauren and I did The Golden Door.
Lauren did her McGonnagle and Umbrage song and her song about Steven Moffat and a song she had written on the way up about her cat, Titan (which is so beautiful and sad), and we did Ten Penny Bit together, and she and I finished with a duet on The Parting Glass. She was a big hit; I am looking forward to introducing her to FilkOntario--heads up Canadian Filk; you've got yet another new filker incoming!
And I have decided that I must learn A Chat With Your Mother for the Pick And Grin because I think they would love it. And there was another that song that went by that evening which I think would also go over very well there and now I can't remember what it was, dang it.
And we trailed off to bed about 1am, and about 8:30am I woke up and chatted with Terry and Barbara and Deborah and Larry until about 11:20 at which point I woke Lauren up (this took some doing) and we packed up (with a certain amount of tetrising) and left. And Lauren wrote another filk on the way home, which was wetter than the drive out but beautiful in a foggy way instead of a sunny one.
Lauren and I drove up together through the beautiful Smokey Mountains along I-40 to I-26. It is a beautiful area and the redbuds and pear trees were just blossoming out at the time. Saturday was a lovely sunny day, and Sunday was nice and cool and spring-damp, with the rain keeping the pollen out of the air. The Kirby house is out in a very rural area, surrounded by pine woods with a huge blossoming tree next to a porch that hosts a wealth of tiny brown birds that rustle and chirp at the birdfeeder.
There were ten or twelve people there for the housefilk, and I am beginning to learn people's names (I am extremely slow at this) so I felt even more at home than previous times. Moss came from my neck of the woods, and Myra and Harry came from the Atlanta area, and Terry and Barbara were there, and a couple of people I should know but whose names I can't remember and one quiet woman with long hair who did some cool songs about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly.
I was a bit worried I wouldn't have anything in good shape to do, but I had been working hard on Dr. Faber's Medicine Show (the song), because my new book of Mandolin Exercises made me think that perhaps what was wrong with it before was that I hadn't been using the proper pick direction for everything.
When someone is slow, like me, one secret to playing mandolin pieces faster is to work out the proper pick direction for every note. I think the secret is to playing on-beat notes on a downstroke and off-beat notes on an up stroke, even if you have to skip over a string or two to do it. That way your picking hand swings up and down at the same rate all the time and you don't have to start and stop.
So anyway I had printed out the music for the mandolin part for that song, which I had always found extremely difficult to play at the speed I heard it in my head, and I wrote out above the notes which were down strokes and which up strokes and then spent a couple of days of dedicated practice trying to do it the right way.
And whether it is the two days of dedicated practice or whether it is untangling the up and down strokes, I did a much better job on it in the circle than I would have done a few days before. Also the filk I wrote of Cindy Cindy went over well, and at various times when the turn came around to me I did The Silver Snail and Hydrogen And Time (I got asked if that one was on a CD yet) and Lauren requested Neil Armstrong and I debuted Pyrtanian Love Song, and Lauren and I did The Golden Door.
Lauren did her McGonnagle and Umbrage song and her song about Steven Moffat and a song she had written on the way up about her cat, Titan (which is so beautiful and sad), and we did Ten Penny Bit together, and she and I finished with a duet on The Parting Glass. She was a big hit; I am looking forward to introducing her to FilkOntario--heads up Canadian Filk; you've got yet another new filker incoming!
And I have decided that I must learn A Chat With Your Mother for the Pick And Grin because I think they would love it. And there was another that song that went by that evening which I think would also go over very well there and now I can't remember what it was, dang it.
And we trailed off to bed about 1am, and about 8:30am I woke up and chatted with Terry and Barbara and Deborah and Larry until about 11:20 at which point I woke Lauren up (this took some doing) and we packed up (with a certain amount of tetrising) and left. And Lauren wrote another filk on the way home, which was wetter than the drive out but beautiful in a foggy way instead of a sunny one.
