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slight OT: scary situation: 1st live performance at an open mic....
well, inspired by all the posts of people who talked about their live performance over
the last 5 yrs (yes, it took me 5 yrs), i decided to try an open mic night and attempt to play a few of my "singer-songwriter/folk" songs (sorry for slight OT).
even though i teach college art (drawing/pntg/art apprec) and have to lecture, i would not say that i'm a real outgoing individual, was very shy during most of my public school days, hated speeches in college...but then for some strange reason back in '98 started writing songs, etc....around 01-02 thought about trying to play them live, and practiced them and recorded them (ad infinitum, working on recording etc-endless problems), finally decided after so many yrs of worrying, fear,to just bite the bullet. that happened monday nite, 4-10 at the open mic at the mill restaurant in iowa city. i was nervous, but remembered being more nervous for speeches in college. i had practiced my stuff over the
last 2 weeks, got my rudimentary tools together.....
i even debated doing a bit of looping, brought my new digitech digitdelay, but in the end worried about all other things and being my 1st time, decided to not hook it up. played my 8 songs in 25 minutes, and thought i did ok-i figured everyone there would be too into their bar thing so no pressure. i definately learned a lot of things in that 25 min, like boy those 2 spot lights are HOT, and BRING WATER (my throat was killing me after the 3rd song). my wife asked me if i could tell people were watching/listening, and i would say: i don't know, i really couldn't see due to the spot lights (it is very weird) and i really couldn't hear what my guitar or voice sounded like due to my inexperience w/ monitors. the girl who played after me (who is on a national tour for an album) asked for the voice to be punched up in the monitors, and who i should add was very good. i should say that for the most part my
tools served me well. my 100$ hohner guitar stayed in tune and performed great (i had the cheapest guitar there by far), the seymour duncan single coil woody pu didn't do great, there was some hum, but the guitar did sound pretty good. since i have songs in 2 different tunings and was afraid of tuning onstage i brought my parker nitefly for the standard tuning stuff w/ its piezo (acoustic like sounds), i couldn't really hear it from the stage, and i made some mistakes of not playing it as much as i should have, and 9's are probably too thin for live stuff-strumming wise (i hit some klunkers). i listened to the live recording the guy who organizes the event made yesterday, and thought i sounded ok. the one thing i was proud of was i didn't forget any lyrics to any of my songs. could tell 1/2 way through i needed water. my timing was a bit rushed (& i will say my timing is for sh*t), but overall, i did ok, survived, and no one died.....sorry for the long
post....next time i do it, i will stick w/ my original intent and when i change tunings, will do a li'l loop thing to fill air/space...
just wanted to thank all for their live post reports that inspired me.....
s---
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