02020-05-29 | Performance, Santa Fe
What I learned last night:
- the software did not crash… a few days ago it crashed multiple times during testing, so this was a relief
- I was told the guitar sounded good… there is nothing more important to me that this
- when I spoke it wasn’t picked up well, because I relied on the guitar microphone… I am looking for an unobtrusive microphone with a silent on/off switch that I can use for my voice. In concerts I use a Shure handheld mic for this purpose but it would be nice to fid something smaller. (((the reason for the switch is that if the mic was left on the entire time it would pick up some of the guitar and muddy the sound)))
- it was interesting not to get immediate feedback because a live-stream audience is silent. I didn’t mind this because a live-stream should be different from a concert and will never replace the feeling of a concert
So what’s next? I want to do two performances next week, one midday (((evening in Europe))) and one in the evening. I need to inform the folks on my mailing list and add a donation box to my Twitch page. I am eying the roof of my house for a future sunset performance. It would require carrying a lot of stuff up a ladder, but it could be fun – IF we have one of our glorious Santa Fe sunsets that evening.
This is the simple setup I used last night:
The set list was:
- Bombay
- Indigo
- Butterfly Dream
- Twitch
- Shadow
I hadn’t played Bombay, from The Hours Between Night + Day, in ages. Really enjoyed playing that piece again. Indigo is from last year’s album Fete. Fete is now available for streaming from Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and many others.
02009-03-16 | Letters to a Young Musician
Dear Friend,
There is practicing and there is performing and they are two very different sides of a coin. Practice is a solitary act while performance involves an audience, large or small. Having an audience changes everything.
Practice is something you will get used to doing every day, like eating, drinking, sleeping. Few artists perform every single day.
The truth is, you can’t practice performing. You practice to practice and you can practice to get ready to perform, but performing is so very different…
You can practice landing, rolling and catching your fall, but you can’t practice parachuting – unless you jump out of a plane. You can train your body to run a long distance, but you can’t train running a marathon race in a large pack of runners – unless you run many marathons.
So that’s how you practice performing – by performing. It’s as simple as that. The more you perform, the better you become at performing. The more you perform the more at ease with performing will you become. True, some people are natural performers, but I find that they are rare exceptions. Most people grow into themselves on stage over time.
After we returned from our first tour in 1990, we did a benefit concert in Santa Fe. Everyone in the band had lots of friends in the audience and we were excited and nervous. As a result we raced through 90 minutes of material in about an hour. Now, many years later the band seems to settle into a certain tempo for a song and that tempo doesn’t change much from performance to performance.
And remember: practicing is practicing and performing is performing. Do both!
