catsittingstill (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
catsittingstill) wrote2022-10-26 09:31 pm
catsittingstill) wrote2022-10-26 09:31 pm
Entry tags:
Getting ready for OVFF
So the Ohio Valley Filk Festival is this weekend. For those who joined us recently, filk is mostly songs by and for science fiction fans, about science fiction subjects or other things that interest us like science and cats.
A friend of mine got nominated for a Pegasus award, and asked me to play along in the Pegasus concert, where all the nominated songs are performed, before the final voting by the OVFF attendees (and anyone else who cares to; there is also an online form for filk fans.) He is much more comfortable with dissonance than I am and takes pleasure in, (and is sometimes inspired by) weird chords and key changes, but he provided me with the chords well ahead of time, so I could work out melodies on the mandolin that fit with the chords.
Then he changed the ending, and got me the new chords, uh, Tuesday night I think? But I think I have something worked out for that and I've been practicing it up and will hopefully be ready to perform it onstage by Friday, though I will need my music.
And another friend asked me to perform a song with her in the filk circles, so I worked out a mandolin harmony for that also, and have been practicing it faithfully and it's ready to go, provided she hasn't changed the way she performs the song since she made the mp3 I practiced to.
I have a copy of Finale (sheet music program) and I so I ended up entering the music for last year's Chamberfilk rather at the last minute (Chamberfilk is OVFF event where we take all comers with orchestral instruments that don't often make an appearance in filk and practice together a couple of times and do a performance on Sunday.) So this year I asked several months in advance if I should do that, and the answer was yes, and it turns out if you're the one making the sheet music you get a lot of say over what the program will be. I proposed Wild Rose (by me), Banks of Sicily (folk song) Morning Has Broken (the words are under copyright but the tune is a much older folk song) and Ship of Stone by Don Simpson. When I asked who all was interested Chamberfilk, Robin Baylor, one of our Interfilk guests, piped up (among several others), and it turns out she is very accustomed to arranging things. So she wrote harmonies for three of the songs and sent them to me and I entered those and I wrote a harmony for Wild Rose, and I sent out those sheet musics to everyone who had spoken up, um, a couple of weeks ago I think. I have been practicing both melodies and harmonies for all of those fairly assiduously, especially after the Bean Supper when I no longer had to practice 45 minutes worth of old time tunes.
I waited until last week to run them past my violin teacher; if I'd been thinking ahead more thoroughly I would have done a lot of this earlier to run it past him several months in advance, because many of the things he suggested are just not things I can learn to do reliably in a week. But I am using more pinky notes, and I'm very proud of myself, because my pinky notes aren't everything I wish but they are so much better than they were last year! I flip back and forth between thinking my playing is terrible and admiring how much better I have gotten since the last time I tried to do this.
In other news, Summer's lute has had a bridge shave to fix the action and has had the little dots replaced on the fingerboard, and I squeaked some time in today to make a trip to the music store to outfit it with a tuner and a strap. A lute desperately needs a strap; it is so round it is basically impossible to pin it to your body with your picking/strumming arm the way you can with a guitar. So now it has one.
And I went to the KSO Q-series (alternating quartets and quintets) that my violin teacher plays in, and heard lots of fun chamber music; it was great.
A friend of mine got nominated for a Pegasus award, and asked me to play along in the Pegasus concert, where all the nominated songs are performed, before the final voting by the OVFF attendees (and anyone else who cares to; there is also an online form for filk fans.) He is much more comfortable with dissonance than I am and takes pleasure in, (and is sometimes inspired by) weird chords and key changes, but he provided me with the chords well ahead of time, so I could work out melodies on the mandolin that fit with the chords.
Then he changed the ending, and got me the new chords, uh, Tuesday night I think? But I think I have something worked out for that and I've been practicing it up and will hopefully be ready to perform it onstage by Friday, though I will need my music.
And another friend asked me to perform a song with her in the filk circles, so I worked out a mandolin harmony for that also, and have been practicing it faithfully and it's ready to go, provided she hasn't changed the way she performs the song since she made the mp3 I practiced to.
I have a copy of Finale (sheet music program) and I so I ended up entering the music for last year's Chamberfilk rather at the last minute (Chamberfilk is OVFF event where we take all comers with orchestral instruments that don't often make an appearance in filk and practice together a couple of times and do a performance on Sunday.) So this year I asked several months in advance if I should do that, and the answer was yes, and it turns out if you're the one making the sheet music you get a lot of say over what the program will be. I proposed Wild Rose (by me), Banks of Sicily (folk song) Morning Has Broken (the words are under copyright but the tune is a much older folk song) and Ship of Stone by Don Simpson. When I asked who all was interested Chamberfilk, Robin Baylor, one of our Interfilk guests, piped up (among several others), and it turns out she is very accustomed to arranging things. So she wrote harmonies for three of the songs and sent them to me and I entered those and I wrote a harmony for Wild Rose, and I sent out those sheet musics to everyone who had spoken up, um, a couple of weeks ago I think. I have been practicing both melodies and harmonies for all of those fairly assiduously, especially after the Bean Supper when I no longer had to practice 45 minutes worth of old time tunes.
I waited until last week to run them past my violin teacher; if I'd been thinking ahead more thoroughly I would have done a lot of this earlier to run it past him several months in advance, because many of the things he suggested are just not things I can learn to do reliably in a week. But I am using more pinky notes, and I'm very proud of myself, because my pinky notes aren't everything I wish but they are so much better than they were last year! I flip back and forth between thinking my playing is terrible and admiring how much better I have gotten since the last time I tried to do this.
In other news, Summer's lute has had a bridge shave to fix the action and has had the little dots replaced on the fingerboard, and I squeaked some time in today to make a trip to the music store to outfit it with a tuner and a strap. A lute desperately needs a strap; it is so round it is basically impossible to pin it to your body with your picking/strumming arm the way you can with a guitar. So now it has one.
And I went to the KSO Q-series (alternating quartets and quintets) that my violin teacher plays in, and heard lots of fun chamber music; it was great.