Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Wow, what a weekend
Well, it's been slow posting here at the Boghadubh Blog. I've been mostly focusing my efforts on The Devil's Tailors (who have a blog now, if not yet a site). We've changed our lineup, are doing more songs, and are basically having a blast.
I've started teaching a lot over the summer, both bagpipes and fiddle, and did a few solo gigs, in addition to Celebrate Fairfax! with The Devil's Tailors. The Royal Mile jams have continued to be fun.
Musically, I'm stagnant - but I made the conscious decision a couple years back to concentrate on performance at the expense of repertoire and technique, and it's paid off a lot. I think this fall, I'll start going back to basic skills, begin expanding my repertoire again, and prepare for competition season next year.
The big news this last weekend was the Virginia Scottish Games. The Potomac Valley Scottish Fiddle Club put me in charge of the fiddle tent, and it was an almost unqualified success. I provided sound, booked the acts, secured the trophies, rounded up competitors, and performed, both in the Devil's Tailors and solo in the "open fiddle jam" (which was just me for most of the time, seeing as it was 9-11 AM on Sunday; eventually Scott Morrison and Susanne Bard joined me).
The only major hitch, I think, was when the generator ran out of gas in the middle of the fiddle club performance. We were gassed up and running again in 10 minutes or less, but I know now to get a spare gas can of our own!
If I come up with photos, I'll post them! Split/Second Photography has some good shots of me in the "jam" on Sunday morning, but I think they'd want me to get a commercial license to post them on this site - which is a tad pricy.
I've started teaching a lot over the summer, both bagpipes and fiddle, and did a few solo gigs, in addition to Celebrate Fairfax! with The Devil's Tailors. The Royal Mile jams have continued to be fun.
Musically, I'm stagnant - but I made the conscious decision a couple years back to concentrate on performance at the expense of repertoire and technique, and it's paid off a lot. I think this fall, I'll start going back to basic skills, begin expanding my repertoire again, and prepare for competition season next year.
The big news this last weekend was the Virginia Scottish Games. The Potomac Valley Scottish Fiddle Club put me in charge of the fiddle tent, and it was an almost unqualified success. I provided sound, booked the acts, secured the trophies, rounded up competitors, and performed, both in the Devil's Tailors and solo in the "open fiddle jam" (which was just me for most of the time, seeing as it was 9-11 AM on Sunday; eventually Scott Morrison and Susanne Bard joined me).
The only major hitch, I think, was when the generator ran out of gas in the middle of the fiddle club performance. We were gassed up and running again in 10 minutes or less, but I know now to get a spare gas can of our own!
If I come up with photos, I'll post them! Split/Second Photography has some good shots of me in the "jam" on Sunday morning, but I think they'd want me to get a commercial license to post them on this site - which is a tad pricy.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Devil's Tailors - Two New Shows
We're now confirmed to play June 7th at 6:30 PM on the Folk Stage at the Celebrate Fairfax! outdoor festival in Fairfax, VA. They're also trying to get us to play another time-slot the next day, Sunday, June 8th. It's a big festival, and should be loads of fun.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
On further review of the play...
I listened to the tape last night. Now, it's important to remember that the mixer tape out isn't necessarily what the audience heard.
But that said, the levels were all off, except on the pipes+fiddle sets. The vocals, bodhran, and cittern were way too high. The gain on some of the vocals was probably too high too, meaning distortion. The fiddles and guitars were too low; although if the cittern and bodhran came down, that might have no longer been an issue.
UPDATE:
The above is all kinda moot - apparently the sound wasn't recording from the mixer. I forgot to set the source to "line in". It was recording from the laptop's microphone! Oops! No wonder it sounded so bad. And that I could hear Andy real well when there was no mic anywhere near him (other than the laptop's). But the lessons learned are the same.
END UPDATE
The pipes+fiddle sets were almost just right. A bit more fiddle in them would have been nice (or rather, a tad less pipes).
Lessons learned:
1) The sound guy's job is very important. If I'm going to conscript people into the job, I need to train them (and get trained myself),
2) The sound check needs to be much more than "how do we sound in the monitors" (and even there we need to do it all instruments blazing),
3) If possible, the "front of house" mixer should actually be... well... in the front of the house, where the sound guy can hear what the audience hears.
It's always a learning experience.
But that said, the levels were all off, except on the pipes+fiddle sets. The vocals, bodhran, and cittern were way too high. The gain on some of the vocals was probably too high too, meaning distortion. The fiddles and guitars were too low; although if the cittern and bodhran came down, that might have no longer been an issue.
UPDATE:
The above is all kinda moot - apparently the sound wasn't recording from the mixer. I forgot to set the source to "line in". It was recording from the laptop's microphone! Oops! No wonder it sounded so bad. And that I could hear Andy real well when there was no mic anywhere near him (other than the laptop's). But the lessons learned are the same.
END UPDATE
The pipes+fiddle sets were almost just right. A bit more fiddle in them would have been nice (or rather, a tad less pipes).
Lessons learned:
1) The sound guy's job is very important. If I'm going to conscript people into the job, I need to train them (and get trained myself),
2) The sound check needs to be much more than "how do we sound in the monitors" (and even there we need to do it all instruments blazing),
3) If possible, the "front of house" mixer should actually be... well... in the front of the house, where the sound guy can hear what the audience hears.
It's always a learning experience.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Devil's Tailors - The Big Debut!
Well, it was officially our second outing under the name "The Devil's Tailors", but it felt more like our first real debut. This year, we had a full band and a nice long set.
I spent the morning setting up, and then played for the Alexandria branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society with Julie Gorka. Then it was time for us to get going. Rhianon had to cancel, because their singers all had an upper respiratory flu. So the stage manager (me!) awarded us all their time. We had prepared an hour and a half's worth of show, and we got to use every bit of it.
Andy worked sound for us with no experience and little training, and did well under the circumstances. Getting him further trained up will be very important for future gigs. I discovered that my fiddle's condenser picks up my voice too well, so I bought a stereo volume pedal to mute myself between sets. And we need to work out the monitor settings for vocals better, and possibly get a shotgun mic for the smallpipes (which were barely audible), or a clip-on pickup. Feedback was a problem, mostly for Jim's guitar, so I might recommend a volume pedal for him - or better for a lutenist like him, a rosette!
The most difficult moment was during The Devil's Reels - Lauren was doubling up with me on it, but she doesn't know The Dram Shell and only sort of knows Timour the Tartar. So part way through Devil in the Kitchen, three (three!) of my fiddle's pegs come loose and the strings un-spool. So I'm desperately trying to re-tune while Lauren carries on, told them to skip The Dram Shell, and came in a couple notes into Timour the Tartar to finish the set. Also, Chris (who was on bodhran) dropped his tipper! So though it all worked out okay in the end, we now have officially declared this our "cursed" set.
But that was the bad. The good was great. I was pretty happy on the songs, and most of the fiddle sets (except the first high note in Detroit Jig), but the pipes+fiddle sets sounded awesome. I listened to The Virgin Wedding off the tape we rolled, and was very happy with how it turned out! I'm going to turn whatever I can into a demo tape. We had an excellent reception, especially for the pipes+fiddle sets, and the St. Andrew's Society folks were very enthusiastic.
Hopefully someone will have pictures, which I will add. And I'll probably put up links to some MP3s of us.
A great debut!
I spent the morning setting up, and then played for the Alexandria branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society with Julie Gorka. Then it was time for us to get going. Rhianon had to cancel, because their singers all had an upper respiratory flu. So the stage manager (me!) awarded us all their time. We had prepared an hour and a half's worth of show, and we got to use every bit of it.
Andy worked sound for us with no experience and little training, and did well under the circumstances. Getting him further trained up will be very important for future gigs. I discovered that my fiddle's condenser picks up my voice too well, so I bought a stereo volume pedal to mute myself between sets. And we need to work out the monitor settings for vocals better, and possibly get a shotgun mic for the smallpipes (which were barely audible), or a clip-on pickup. Feedback was a problem, mostly for Jim's guitar, so I might recommend a volume pedal for him - or better for a lutenist like him, a rosette!
The most difficult moment was during The Devil's Reels - Lauren was doubling up with me on it, but she doesn't know The Dram Shell and only sort of knows Timour the Tartar. So part way through Devil in the Kitchen, three (three!) of my fiddle's pegs come loose and the strings un-spool. So I'm desperately trying to re-tune while Lauren carries on, told them to skip The Dram Shell, and came in a couple notes into Timour the Tartar to finish the set. Also, Chris (who was on bodhran) dropped his tipper! So though it all worked out okay in the end, we now have officially declared this our "cursed" set.
But that was the bad. The good was great. I was pretty happy on the songs, and most of the fiddle sets (except the first high note in Detroit Jig), but the pipes+fiddle sets sounded awesome. I listened to The Virgin Wedding off the tape we rolled, and was very happy with how it turned out! I'm going to turn whatever I can into a demo tape. We had an excellent reception, especially for the pipes+fiddle sets, and the St. Andrew's Society folks were very enthusiastic.
Hopefully someone will have pictures, which I will add. And I'll probably put up links to some MP3s of us.
A great debut!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Back on track
It looks like the Devil's Tailors is back on track here. I secured the National Tartan Day gig, and managed to put together a band for it.
Anders will be available again starting in May, but even with the distance small gigs might be out of his reach. So I've brought on board Jim Stimson, the lute player in my in-the-works Scottish early music ensemble. Jim will be positioned to fill in for either Anders or Chris, and we'll see if we can't expand his role should both be available. And it's looking like I might have Lauren Brenzo as the other fiddler for this gig.
So here's the lineup for this gig:
Pete Walker: Fiddle, Great Highland Bagpipe, Scottish smallpipes, lead and backing vocals, and possibly some whistles/flute
Chris Lindsay: Rhythm guitar (on songs & pipe sets), lead and backing vocals, bodhran, and hand percussion
Jim Stimson: Rhythm 12-string guitar (on fiddle sets), Baroque cittern
Lauren Brenzo: Fiddle, viola
Should be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to it. The lineup of two fiddlers is something I'm interested in seeing work out - I imagine it'll be a little like Halali on the fiddle sets and Clandestine on the pipe sets, and you can't go wrong either way.
Update:
And my 2x1200W power amp arrived yesterday. And fell on my foot at one point. Ouch! But we should be positioned well to get a boatload of sound out of the system this time around.
Anders will be available again starting in May, but even with the distance small gigs might be out of his reach. So I've brought on board Jim Stimson, the lute player in my in-the-works Scottish early music ensemble. Jim will be positioned to fill in for either Anders or Chris, and we'll see if we can't expand his role should both be available. And it's looking like I might have Lauren Brenzo as the other fiddler for this gig.
So here's the lineup for this gig:
Pete Walker: Fiddle, Great Highland Bagpipe, Scottish smallpipes, lead and backing vocals, and possibly some whistles/flute
Chris Lindsay: Rhythm guitar (on songs & pipe sets), lead and backing vocals, bodhran, and hand percussion
Jim Stimson: Rhythm 12-string guitar (on fiddle sets), Baroque cittern
Lauren Brenzo: Fiddle, viola
Should be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to it. The lineup of two fiddlers is something I'm interested in seeing work out - I imagine it'll be a little like Halali on the fiddle sets and Clandestine on the pipe sets, and you can't go wrong either way.
Update:
And my 2x1200W power amp arrived yesterday. And fell on my foot at one point. Ouch! But we should be positioned well to get a boatload of sound out of the system this time around.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Yes, I'm Still Here
Well, where to start?
My personal schedule has screwed with my practice in a terrible way, but I'm hoping to get back into it soon. So I'll break it down by topic:
Bands:
The Devil's Tailors has a new repertoire. Now I just need to track down its guitarists! Chris appears to be out of pocket, probably doing research in upstate NY, and Anders and I finally tagged up - it looks like he's going to be available after May for rehearsals. The early music ensemble has only had a couple rehearsals, but we're zeroing in on a repertoire. I expect us to start looking for gigs in a few months. And City of Alexandria is City of Alexandria. I got promoted to Lance Corporal Piper, and we're always short on drummers.
Fiddle:
I feel like I'm in a plateau here again. I guess I need to hunker down and do my scales and exercises. Elke and I have mostly worked on airs from Simon Fraser and bass lines from Robert Mackintosh recently, which have yielded a wealth of wonderful new tunes, though. Elke's taking the semester off, and I will likely do so as well, mainly for financial reasons. 'Tis the season to pay off debts. I'm also going to start prepping my competition sets soon for this year.
Pipes:
I'm getting excited over piobaireachd again. John's got me working on His Father's Lament for Donald MacKenzie, a lovely (and late) tune that appears to actually be in A major (as opposed to A mixolydian or G lydian, as most piobaireachds are). Once this tune is in hand, I'll have my competition sets for the year. I am getting frustrated with my smallpipes, mainly because I don't play them enough. The symptom is that I keep missing holes and jumping into the 2nd octave - not cool on this instrument. I have a bunch of wedding gigs lined up too. And I've been pricing a boxwood 1-drone gaita grileira, which will stand in for a 17th century lowland great pipe (in D!), and a new 440 Hz chanter from EJ Jones, to be made of Brazilian kingwood, which, if it isn't the wood my period pipes are made of, sure looks an awful lot like it.
Cittern & Flute:
Yep, cittern. I've been playing it a lot. I found that on capo 7 it makes a great octave mandolin with a high b-string and a smaller stretch than without a capo. And on capo 8 I can play a very credible version of Oswald's Divertimento V, a very lovely late baroque/early classical guittar piece (yes, two t's in that) in the same key Rob MacKillop plays in on his wonderful recording. No work on the guitarra portuguesa to convert it into a period instrument yet. I've been playing flute some as well, and have a pair of airs I'm pretty happy with on the baroque flute.
Reenacting:
Not much new here. I need to make some new hose and get started on my new jacket at some point soon (so I can give Gerry back his). After the jacket, I plan to redo the front of my waistcoat - and may try to do it in such a way as I can finish the new front before I have to unstitch the old one. I'm also going to try to finish up the leine soon, so I can get started on the ionar. The Mad Piper has billed me an installment for my broadsword and sporran, so at least my kit will improve in that area, and I can give Gerry back his sporran.
Gaelic:
I just completed my first 10-week course of Gaelic! The other students in the class had been through all the material before, so I was playing catch-up, but it was a lot of fun. I'm getting better fast. I think I'm going to be singing Flower of Scotland in Gaelic soon.
So there we have it. Time to bear down and get into competition form for this year, and get the bands finally going.
My personal schedule has screwed with my practice in a terrible way, but I'm hoping to get back into it soon. So I'll break it down by topic:
Bands:
The Devil's Tailors has a new repertoire. Now I just need to track down its guitarists! Chris appears to be out of pocket, probably doing research in upstate NY, and Anders and I finally tagged up - it looks like he's going to be available after May for rehearsals. The early music ensemble has only had a couple rehearsals, but we're zeroing in on a repertoire. I expect us to start looking for gigs in a few months. And City of Alexandria is City of Alexandria. I got promoted to Lance Corporal Piper, and we're always short on drummers.
Fiddle:
I feel like I'm in a plateau here again. I guess I need to hunker down and do my scales and exercises. Elke and I have mostly worked on airs from Simon Fraser and bass lines from Robert Mackintosh recently, which have yielded a wealth of wonderful new tunes, though. Elke's taking the semester off, and I will likely do so as well, mainly for financial reasons. 'Tis the season to pay off debts. I'm also going to start prepping my competition sets soon for this year.
Pipes:
I'm getting excited over piobaireachd again. John's got me working on His Father's Lament for Donald MacKenzie, a lovely (and late) tune that appears to actually be in A major (as opposed to A mixolydian or G lydian, as most piobaireachds are). Once this tune is in hand, I'll have my competition sets for the year. I am getting frustrated with my smallpipes, mainly because I don't play them enough. The symptom is that I keep missing holes and jumping into the 2nd octave - not cool on this instrument. I have a bunch of wedding gigs lined up too. And I've been pricing a boxwood 1-drone gaita grileira, which will stand in for a 17th century lowland great pipe (in D!), and a new 440 Hz chanter from EJ Jones, to be made of Brazilian kingwood, which, if it isn't the wood my period pipes are made of, sure looks an awful lot like it.
Cittern & Flute:
Yep, cittern. I've been playing it a lot. I found that on capo 7 it makes a great octave mandolin with a high b-string and a smaller stretch than without a capo. And on capo 8 I can play a very credible version of Oswald's Divertimento V, a very lovely late baroque/early classical guittar piece (yes, two t's in that) in the same key Rob MacKillop plays in on his wonderful recording. No work on the guitarra portuguesa to convert it into a period instrument yet. I've been playing flute some as well, and have a pair of airs I'm pretty happy with on the baroque flute.
Reenacting:
Not much new here. I need to make some new hose and get started on my new jacket at some point soon (so I can give Gerry back his). After the jacket, I plan to redo the front of my waistcoat - and may try to do it in such a way as I can finish the new front before I have to unstitch the old one. I'm also going to try to finish up the leine soon, so I can get started on the ionar. The Mad Piper has billed me an installment for my broadsword and sporran, so at least my kit will improve in that area, and I can give Gerry back his sporran.
Gaelic:
I just completed my first 10-week course of Gaelic! The other students in the class had been through all the material before, so I was playing catch-up, but it was a lot of fun. I'm getting better fast. I think I'm going to be singing Flower of Scotland in Gaelic soon.
So there we have it. Time to bear down and get into competition form for this year, and get the bands finally going.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Called to the Carpet
From the comment(s) on the previous post:
frustrated piper in hiatus who used to read your competition posts writes:
No updates lately?
You're right. I should get on that! New general update coming soon, maybe this afternoon - along with Xmas walk pics of my unit.
[Update: Okay, maybe this weekend. I'm behind on my session blog too, I'll try to get caught up across the board.]
I don't know if hearing a right proper piobaireachd during the Christmas Walk the other day was (A) the geekiest, or (B) the coolest thing I witnessed at the parade.
Coming close on the heels of an untuned Grade V looking guy mangling Jingle Bells and coming a little before a really poorly-tuned band... your performance was a breath of fresh air.
Well, thanks, glad to hear it. And it was probably pretty geeky, but then, I was reenacting.
The plan (for the last couple of years) has been that when I pipe with the reenactment group, I play period tunes. That means single reels, jigs, the occasional simple strathspey, ancient marches like Hey Tuti Tatey, and piobaireachd. The last two years I paraded with Black Donald's March. This year I wanted something with more forward motion, so I went with Glengarry's March. Both tunes are listed by the Piobaireachd Society as having a 6-6-4 bar structure, but as per Joseph MacDonald (1759), I recast them as 4-4-4-4. And they actually make more sense from a melodic and structural standpoint.
The problem with this is that it's all very repetitive. The Siubhal doubling variation of Glengarry's March, for example, can be summed up (without ornaments, lower case = connective note) as:
GdAb|GbAb|GdAb|GbAb|
GbAd|GbAA|GdAb|GbAb|
GbAb|GdAd|GbAd|GbAA|
GdAb|GbAb|GbAd|GbAA|
You can see the problem. It's really easy to get lost here. On top of that, as I just memorized it last week, this was the first time I ever played it in public, much less while walking and surrounded by distractions. So I got kind of turned around more than once. Ick.
On the other hand, with a tune like this, who's to know I screwed up but me?
More importantly, I made the mistake of arriving at 9:30 AM and warming up intermittently the whole time until we stepped off at around 11:45. Next year, I will park at 9:30 AM, and proceed to Murphy's for breakfast, and only start warming up the pipes at 11:15 or so. That way the reeds (all cane) won't be soggy and misbehaving. That said, by the end of the parade, my instrument had settled in and my fingers had warmed up, and I was way happier with my playing.
So I guess it went okay overall, though it could have gone better. At least I looked marvelous.
frustrated piper in hiatus who used to read your competition posts writes:
No updates lately?
You're right. I should get on that! New general update coming soon, maybe this afternoon - along with Xmas walk pics of my unit.
[Update: Okay, maybe this weekend. I'm behind on my session blog too, I'll try to get caught up across the board.]
I don't know if hearing a right proper piobaireachd during the Christmas Walk the other day was (A) the geekiest, or (B) the coolest thing I witnessed at the parade.
Coming close on the heels of an untuned Grade V looking guy mangling Jingle Bells and coming a little before a really poorly-tuned band... your performance was a breath of fresh air.
Well, thanks, glad to hear it. And it was probably pretty geeky, but then, I was reenacting.
The plan (for the last couple of years) has been that when I pipe with the reenactment group, I play period tunes. That means single reels, jigs, the occasional simple strathspey, ancient marches like Hey Tuti Tatey, and piobaireachd. The last two years I paraded with Black Donald's March. This year I wanted something with more forward motion, so I went with Glengarry's March. Both tunes are listed by the Piobaireachd Society as having a 6-6-4 bar structure, but as per Joseph MacDonald (1759), I recast them as 4-4-4-4. And they actually make more sense from a melodic and structural standpoint.
The problem with this is that it's all very repetitive. The Siubhal doubling variation of Glengarry's March, for example, can be summed up (without ornaments, lower case = connective note) as:
GdAb|GbAb|GdAb|GbAb|
GbAd|GbAA|GdAb|GbAb|
GbAb|GdAd|GbAd|GbAA|
GdAb|GbAb|GbAd|GbAA|
You can see the problem. It's really easy to get lost here. On top of that, as I just memorized it last week, this was the first time I ever played it in public, much less while walking and surrounded by distractions. So I got kind of turned around more than once. Ick.
On the other hand, with a tune like this, who's to know I screwed up but me?
More importantly, I made the mistake of arriving at 9:30 AM and warming up intermittently the whole time until we stepped off at around 11:45. Next year, I will park at 9:30 AM, and proceed to Murphy's for breakfast, and only start warming up the pipes at 11:15 or so. That way the reeds (all cane) won't be soggy and misbehaving. That said, by the end of the parade, my instrument had settled in and my fingers had warmed up, and I was way happier with my playing.
So I guess it went okay overall, though it could have gone better. At least I looked marvelous.
