Musical collaborations.....

[poltr1]

Had lunch with maedbh7 yesterday. One of the many things we talked about was how the filk community is oriented toward solo musicians. Ensemble players such as her and myself don't often get a chance to perform.

Years ago, there used to be instabands -- groups of filkers who would get together, rehearse, and perform a song during a convention. I think the only impromptu ensemble in filk these days is Philip Textor's Chamberfilk, which I've been a part of.

So, how can we get this ball started? Who else would be interested in such a project?

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

As a listener, I really love the results when people play together and it works, but it requires a certain combination of chops and practice, and when people try to play together without enough work together, they can really mess each other up.

As a performer, I am certainly one who is likely to need more practice rather than less before it will be a good thing that I'm not playing alone.

My perception is that the reason instabands fell out of favor is that they take so much time from the people who participate that they have to miss the rest of the con, and most people that you'd like to have involved just aren't willing to commit so much. I imagine that if I were assigned to an instaband with four other people at about my level of ability, we'd need hours of practice to take a song that we all knew, make it ours, and make it not suck. And if I imagine this happening at a con like OVFF, I just wouldn't be willing to take all that time out. So, as much as I think it would be fun for me to listen to the results if other people did it, I can hardly fault them for not being willing to sign up.

Perhaps there's a way to organize the teams in advance and have people work on their parts at home, where time isn't quite as precious as it is at the con. People who have the net access/hardware/software/skillz could probably work out enough that they could meet for one half hour practice session at con and have something more than a train wreck for the conert.

InstaBands....

[hms42]

At Conflikt, one of the scheduled items is "Hat Bands" which are names drawn from a hat and they are to perform a song on Sunday afternoon. They are insta-bands and its fun seeing what they decide to cover.

Also, last year at OVFF, the largest example of an impromptu ensemble was MEW's concert. They formed the band on Friday evening and performed Saturday afternoon. There were 14 people on stage at once. The music was amazing from that concert and they really jelled together on the last few songs. (I wish they were not time restricted by the awards banquet following them.)

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

Two OVFFs ago, we used lj to pre-arrange a quartet to sing "Down to the Filksing to Play," which was a takeoff on the "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" piece, "Down to the River to Pray." (Which, BTW, was itself a takeoff of "Down in the Valley to Pray.")

And quite a few Marcons ago, I played mandolin on a pickup band that we put together with a runthrough on Saturday and debuted on Sunday. ("Chelsea__, what'ya gonna do? Boys run__like deer away from you, For a while, maybe longer for Term Two___.")