Well a couple weeks in the making but today was at a new venue Brookdale Sr Living. Will alternate every other week between this location and The Lodge. At least that is the plan through April and will reassess if it’s working for all parties.
Much smaller venue I would say the dining room is about 1/3 the size of The Lodge so I’m using a preset on the Everse 8 that I use at home for practice and then tested it on a couple of residents while I was setting up and got their consensus I had a good mix and rolled with it.
Got the drum volume right this time vs another post where I had a clip of this song with too much drum. This is the full version of John Denver’s My Sweet Lady.
Had about 9 residents today but they are very engaged and super attentive. I went 30 minutes with 8 songs and they wanted me to play for another 45 minutes! I couldn’t make that work time wise so I played 3 more songs and told them I would be back in two weeks😁. That seemed to satisfy them.
I’m thinking this is a better strategy than what I’ve been doing at the Lodge which was most every week and trying to recycle previously played songs while adding at least two new ones. That was getting tough to sustain. This way the same set of 7-9 songs (about 30mins) can be used for two different audiences leaving me two weeks to work up a new set vs the 1 week. Will try this schedule over April and see how it goes.
As always any views or comments are appreciated……Rod
What great progress Rod, you’re a touring musician now!!
This sounded really good in terms of balance with all elements through the everse.
I thought the performance itself was spot on, really nice finger picking with nice dynamics through it, accentuated higher notes and some interesting embellishments and twiddles to keep it interesting. Your vocals have always been great to listen to and this was no exception.
Smiling for you brother seeing how far you’ve come!
That was a real enjoyable listen Rod!
Them old folks are lucky to have such good entertainment imho.
To me, them old folks homes are pretty depressing and anything that can uplift them folks is real good for them.
I really liked your finger picking of that song. You were very precise in your picking it seemed to me. Very good.
I’m kinda leaning towards that type of music myself. Personally, my days of power chords seem to be in the rear view mirror.
You also seem to have your gear down good for what your wanting to do. Your guitar sounded great + you sing good and can do both at the same time. That’s a great skill in itself.
Really well played and sung Rod and the sound balance sounded spot on to me. Well done to you for taking your music out and about.
Clearly you’re making an impression out there. I see you’ve even had to put up a sign to keep your adoring fans back.
Very enjoyable Rod. I very much enjoy reading about your journey.
I remember you coming into the JG community some time back, and look at you now man!
You’ve developed some great guitar skills, musical prowess, and you’ve always had a great voice from the get go. And now sharing it with others.
Sounds like you are really revelling in the whole journey too. You are doing a very good thing here Rod, and for those who are too often dismissed and forgotten. Hats off.
Hi Rod, so nice to read and update of your performing journey.
Having two venues now to perform at, giving you more time to work on new songs, was a great idea. I’m happy to hear, that your new audience was very pleased to have you there and wanting you to play more songs .
You can be really proud of you. Such a wonderful way to share your passion for the guitar .
Well may be a residency at two locations! Thanks for the kind words and following along bud!
Thanks but I think I get way more out of it than they do.
I’m sure the entertainment value varies but these are always super helpful for creating and then honing live skills.
Ha! I didn’t even notice that sign. FOCUSED!
2 years and almost 3 months and the JG method and this community have fueled a desire that I’ve wanted to explore for many years. You and MANY others here have been a huge part of it. I carry no thoughts of great skill for any of this but when I started Grade 1 I could not play 1 chord, at all. Today, I can get through a song reasonably well (always some kind of mistake but I’m getting better at recovery skills) and sometimes I even like my own voice! Appreciate the comments but I’m the one really winning here. These folks are so great to let me practice and experiment in public!
This group even though smaller is way more engaged and chatty . But I’m sure that’s true of different folk at different places. Plus, even though my other group is more reserved as a group it doesn’t mean they are less appreciative they just display it differently. After all, at either venue its easy to be somewhere else than in the dining room listening to the bearded guy so I appreciate them all no matter what they do or don’t!..Rod
No, it’s just keeping in mind every source I have, (guitar, drums, vocal) has a volume control. It’s not good enough to run the amp on a preset and go. Each device ( probably control my voice the best ) needs to be checked before the performance to be sure we are good to go. Case in point, at the Lodge this week I sound check and No guitar sound coming from the amp. Check amp settings all good. About to change 9 volt battery and notice the onboard volume control on the Taylor is way off. Turns out it was on 0. Somehow moving the guitar in and out of the case I dialed it off! Got the onboard drum volume setting check in my brain now I need to add the guitar. Just a work in progress! In ears are a birthday present so not until June for those . Thanks for watching!
Thanks much! I think I’ve figured out in the 10 months I’ve been doing live performances that no set I’m ever going to do is going to go mistake free. The trick is just keep going and stay on time. I’m getting much better at that. But I continue to think I’m getting way more out of this than the residents are😀. Thanks for coming along!..…Rod
Can someone else raise his/her hand on this statement?
Thanks Rod, it’s very reassuring to know I’m not alone in this! The people who are there to listen to music will not even realise about most of those little mistakes but will connect to the music and to the vibe of it…the people who are there to judge…oh such a pity for them, with their objectivity they’re loosing a good chance to listen to live music. Sure when we decide to go live it’s because we’ve practiced a lot and we’re pretty sure our best is enough to share it!
I love your playing live project Rod.
And I wholly endorse your realisation that trying to learn all new songs for a regular weekly performance is too large an undertaking.
That may seem to run contra to my mantra … but even with quick-win simple-strummer-songs, you need to have some time to learn, practice and live with any song before it is at the standard you want to play it live.
Keep on keeping on.
Thanks for the encouragement @Richard_close2u ! To clarify when I started this back in May of last year I had about 15-20 songs I could play through entirely. Depending on the song mix, a 30 min set was between 6-8 songs. I ran through all that by week 3. My plan was to introduce at least 2 new songs each week and recycle the other 4-6. Even though I had some travel here and there, holidays, etc. I pretty much kept that routine through Christmas. Most of the time my intro of a new song was just the stripped down basic structure (campfire if you will) with the intent to not only play it better next time it got in the set but begin to introduce riffs, tags, embellishments, etc. Even that plan was a busy one. When the Beat Buddy drum pedal came in Christmas I was now recycling songs with a drummer added to the previously played songs and then also bringing in new stuff with the drummer. That’s when I think I reached my limit to sustain that load. There were definitely some songs that needed more work before their debut. I had been toying with another venue opportunity right after the first of the year but didn’t try to lock it down until recently and honestly the song prep change I outline below was a bit of an afterthought. Some ideas are are my own and some come from @Richard_close2u and @LievenDV guitar clubs!
My current prep looks like this now. Brookdale has become my debut set with new and old (although they haven’t heard all my stuff yet but I just started with them anyway) the next week at the Lodge will be the same set. I’ll call this the performance set. That set gets practiced every 2-3 days until I’m within 3 days of performing it and I practice it all 3 days prior to live. In parallel, I have what I call a working set. That has a mix of 10-12 songs that are either brand new or old ones that I’m building up with tags, riffs, etc. I’ll try to play at least some of them daily as I have a week plus to decide on the next performing set. About 5 or so days before live I’ll pull out the 6-8 ones I think I can have ready for live and they go in the new performing set and I start steadily practicing the hard ones and then all-of them daily 3 days before live. All the while I’m replenishing the working set with either more previously played basic songs that need embellishment or completely new songs to learn the basic structure but I now pretty much do these with drums. I have found I can learn a basic song with drums and get it to sound pretty good far quicker than I can learn a new song with all its fancy stuff. I’ll add some or all of the fancy stuff over time as it cycles back to get included in another performance set down the road. Rinse and repeat.
To be fair I’m 2 weeks into the above flow and it seems to be working but will see how this goes. It certainly feels less stressful and I’m feeling like when I come back around to a basic song to add to I really can see how these sound better not just because of the embellishments (which does help) but just generally get played better the 3rd time around .
I counted my song list in my scores app ( I use Digital Score) and I have played over 50 songs live since May of last year. I’ll confess I played some of them better than others .
When Justin had Joe Robinson on for the live finger style lesson this past February, I remember him saying he needs to play a song at least 8 times live before he gets comfortable with it. That really helped me since I had been questioning “am I ever going to feel really comfortable with any of these songs live?”. I have a few that Ive played 8 times and do feel comfortable but in my quest to add new stuff weekly it made it take longer to get a song cycled through 8 times live so most every song in every set I felt some level of anxiety and I’m sure that was performance affecting. Some of it you can cover and quite frankly some of it shows up live. Another reason that I call what I’m doing “practicing in public”.
Anyway, this seems at least on paper to be much more sustainable. Always appreciative to the Community for letting me share my journey.
Whatever way anybody approaches their guitar journey I just hope you play as much or as little in whatever way resonates with you! Just play….Rod
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Thanks for the kind words and following along bud!
. Thanks for watching!
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