Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 5:19
PM
Subject: 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---
Yahoo!
Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low
rates.
