Brim full of interesting experiences!!

[hais1273]

Last night saw the debut of our French/Breton dance trio, Pic-nic. There are some things you do in life that you never foresaw. Playing accordion in a trio for a trad French Bal was one of those... I'm pleased to say 3 of the four dances went well, Theme vannataise for an An-dro, the very nice Mazurka de Samatan, possibly a little quick as we may have been a bit excited, Branle de Rat, aka the Rats Brawle. A fun dance, a little despised by "seriarse" dancers. However, the 2 time bourree really was a bit "average", I lost a bar in the B music on the second repeat, best beloved playing diatonic accordion was now confused! :? So.....H stopped playing the left as it couldn't keep up, because it didn't know what was happening!!! I only play left hand when practicing on my own, so i was flummoxed by the lack of melodeonary bass noise and rhythm . The guitarist in turn was a then bit baffled by this unexpected incompetance! In quick time a state of complete confusion was reached, the dancers, bless 'em carried on for awhile while we sorted ourselves out. We re-started, but remained average throughout.... So 3 out of 4, a little annoying, but, generally we're doing the right thing at the righ timt, so,more training!

Anyone, else able to share a tale of incompetence real or imagined..

 

[Tom]

Ha ha ha! Congratulations anyway! Ok, my worst gigs are when no one else shows up and I have to sing.....

 

[Geoff de Limousin]

Would that name not be better as ' pique-nique' for a French /Breton dance band Hais1273 ?... congratulations anyway for picking yourselves up when it all fell apart.

 

[colinm]

We were playing as a trio at a parents evening at a private school.
They were twin sisters 17 years old, grade 8 on violin, me grade 3 or 4 ,on sccordion, 70ish playing first part, we had practiced montes czardas 3 or 4 times together, played it twice in public ,i had practiced probably 100 times alone,
We had discused what to do if i went wrong ,they said they would follow me
Half way through i fumbled a coupler change and lost my place, i couldn,t find which bar we were on, to me it sounded horrible , i just started playing again about ten bars in front, miraculously they picked me up immediately, when we finished i felt distraught, they said it was good that we kept going, nobody would have noticed, probably they were right

 

[hais1273]

Geoff, I should have written pic-nic as "pique-nique" a linguistic slip...
We occasionally play in a local pub, and on occaision we play as a trio. One of the local humourists sometimes refers to us as the three bears, after rejecting Trois Ours, ( 3 bears ) and Nou-nours,( teddy bears) I think it's spelt, we settled on pique-nicque, you can guess why I'm sure.
carrying on when a mistake is made is a skill that needs cultivating particularly when there are some people who insist on stopping at the error and analyzing it to death. Despite the averageness of Bourree de Aurore Sand, i want to do it again, but better! Thanks

 

[JerryPH]

Thats the spitit! It did look as if you made lemonaide from your lemon, so good for you! This is not an easy skill to claim, and comes mostly after many years of real world experience.

Well done!

 

[Anyanka]

Ian, I think you have been present when I've played mazurkas way too fast on the pipes, out of sheer excitement... that is so easily done! I love playing for dancers, but I still get nervous on the accordion (strangely not at all when playing whistle or bgpipes), forget to repeat or repeat too often, play the wrong chords and put myself off.

The best practice for that has been my Morris side: I've played those tunes so often that they're in my fingers, and if they do occasionally go wrong, the bells drown out the mistakes. The French tunes are more difficult, and the opportunities to play them are rarer, but I now have an enthusiastic trio as well. We're called Les Autres. I took the name from the famous quote by Jean Paul Sartre: L'enfer, c'est Les Autres.