The Mandelbear's Musings

... or was that down the rabbit hole? So yesterday I gave my first livestreamed concert, which you can find here on YouTube. It consisted of the two songs I'd been scheduled to sing in the Listeners' Choice concert at Consonance, plus a few extras in between. The songs were:

1. Daddy's World
2. The World Inside the Crystal
3. Ship of Stone
4. Bells of Norwich
5. The Mary Ellen Carter

(Links are to the corresponding s4s pages. Start times can be found in the YouTube comments, thanks to Rocketsong.)

I don't think it was all that successful, partly because I didn't get links posted soon enough, but I'm going to declare it okay for a first attempt. I probably didn't spend enough time rehearsing, but I did run through it once on Thursday afternoon to make sure that the setup actually worked. And spent the morning using Audacity to try different mic setups and adjust levels. (My hearing is not the best anymore, and I'm no good at picking up subtle problems like channel balance, or even not-so-subtle things like clipping. Audacity's meters and waveform display let me see those things.)

What I ended up with was my two Behringer C2 mics, normally used as a stereo pair, with one pointed at my mouth and the other pointed at my guitar. I had some trouble tracking down mic stand fittings and accessories; some were still in boxes in the garage after the last move.

I could, of course, have used a music stand and couple of mic stands in a more conventional layout, but I wanted easy access to the laptop, and had this crazy idea of using my 24" monitor to display two songbook pages side-by-side. That worked perfectly, using a shell one-liner to put up a series of PDF-viewer windows which Xmonad obligingly laid out in separate tabs. (I note in passing that a 12" laptop screen is almost big enough; it would work if the lyrics were re-formatted with smaller pages and no margins.)

The only thing that went seriously wrong was forgetting to turn on my recorder; fortunately Harold Groot was recording video. That and the week-long series of screw-ups over the time. (Side note to non filk-con filk-track planners: if the FGOH is a filker, make their concert a separately-scheduled event so that it can go on the program as a single item rather than being lumped into a two-hour block with the other filkers.) (Side note to convention planners in general: if there are two people sharing a guest slot, don't schedule them for separate program items at the same time unless they specifically request it. Which they shouldn't and almost certainly won't)

The timing worked out perfectly; I'd had "Millennium's Dawn" in reserve, but didn't need it; the rest fit the "adventure" theme pretty well, at least using Bilbo's definition of stuff that's uncomfortable, dangerous, and makes you late for dinner. It was all stuff I know well, so I was even able to look at the audience a little. There were a couple of people there who obviously hadn't heard my stuff before, or at least my new material; I think I did well.

I was told later in the circle that the intro I gave for Rambling Silver Rose would have fit "Bound for Hacker's Heaven" even better. Kinda wish I'd thought of it.

Except for the afternoon filk concerts I spent pretty much all day Saturday talking with people. Mainly the lovely Moira Stern (who should comment to tell me whether I should use her LJ ID, real name, or both interchangably), whose concert came after mine. With a concert harp and three kids, she certainly needed help gear-wrangling, and it made a good excuse to talk.

Had dinner with the Rubins, after which I hooked up with Moira again (we were at the same restaurant in the hotel). After that I party-hopped, which made for a couple more good conversations and a fair amount of tasty stuff containing ethanol. Trying to be gluten-free is annoying.

The concert went well; the Wolfling was trailing the beat a little -- we need to work on that -- but I was mostly on. It was all stuff I've been singing recently, so I was actually able to look at the audience a little. Tearful hug from Moira by way of a review. We really should have swapped sets; she needed time to tune the harp. And it's really hard to follow QV, or start one's set after one has been crying.

No, I'm not sorry about that.

My setlist, cobbled together mere minutes before the concert, consisted of:

Side note on gear: I took my notebook up on stage, which let me jam my watch fob into one of the rings where I could see it. Very useful. I found myself wishing that I'd taken one of the cup-holders, though.

I find the fact that I spent essentially the entire con as the Middle-Sized Bear to be deeply odd. I have noticed that I've been spending more time talking to people, and much less time in programming. And I've noticed a tendency recently to spend a lot of my time talking to one person during a con, usually somebody I want to know better. (It was cflute at Baycon, for example, and joecoustic at OVFF.) I love it, but it does mean that I get to meet fewer new people. (On the gripping hand, I've always had trouble meeting new people.)

On the whole, I'd rather spend my time deepening old friendships and making new ones than sitting around in a circle waiting for a good opening to slip a song into. Swapping songs with a small number of people is a lot of fun, though; I'm not sure how to find a good balance there.

The Tres Gique concert from last Friday at Baycon can be found, in a rather unsatisfactory and preliminary form, here. It has ogg and mp3 files, but essentially nothing else. More this evening after I've had a few more hours to jump up and down on it.

Here's the setlist for last night's Tres Gique concert:

1. The World Inside the Crystal
2. Bugs
3. Daddy's World
4. Keep the Dream Alive
5. The Mushroom Song
6. I Wanna Be a Webmaster
7. Guilty Pleasures
8. The Rambling Silver Rose
9. The Owl and the Pussycat
10. Ship of Stone

It was after AJA's concert, which ran late: I don't think we started until 11:15 or so. Bailed on "TEOTW" and "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" when it started getting late, and wrapped up a few minutes before midnight. Sold two album preorders after the concert, which was good.

For this concert Tres Gique consisted of me, Joyce, Jordan, and chaoswolf, so I picked songs that Kat knew the choruses for, and that didn't require cflute's voice. Kathy Mar told me later that Kat has the makings of a great singing voice: good breathing and volume, and plenty of enthusiasm. All she needs is little ear training to help her sing exactly what she's hearing. She's about where I was at that age, in other words. I still can't carry a tune in a paper bag without an instrument to back it up.

Some actual recording: Replacement vocals for "TEOTW", a tambourine track for "I Wanna Be a Webmaster" -- as far as I know that's the last of it, except for "Guilty Pleasures" and "Bugs", which I need other people for.

Also, put down scratch tracks for what I think are the only two songs on the tentative setlist for Baycon that weren't up on the web yet: "The Cap and Bells" and "The Owl and the Pussycat". (Waves at cflute, who is also encouraged to make suggestions. This is a group concert, after all. The tune for "The Owl and the Pussycat" is public domain, BTW, so it should be possible to track down sheet music for a 3-part arrangement. 5:29 Also note that the songs on the list are in no particular order.)

Now that I'm home with my software running on a real computer, I can post my setlist for Loscon:

Set list: Loscon-2006

1. Ta(l)king Preorders
2. Silk and Steel
3. The Last Train
4. Cicero in the Twenty First Century
5. Guilty Pleasures
6. The Mushroom Song
7. The World Inside the Crystal

You'll note that it's pretty short -- total about 20 minutes. It was a 30 minute slot, but I spent some time at the beginning fussing with my new recording gear. That probably ate 5 minutes, and the other 5 went into patter and a little too much audience interaction. The chairs were all arranged in a circle, so people in the audience apparently felt free to talk among themselves between songs the way they would in a chaos circle. There were only about a dozen people in the audience.

Note to self: make sure concert seating is appropriate; rearrange chairs if necessary.

I don't think most of the recording I made will be of much use except for reference, though the sound quality appears, on a brief listen, to be excellent. There were a number of places where I simply got distracted and the chords went off into the twilight zone, and of course "Ta(l)king Preorders" was only two days old and still pretty rough. I sang it several more times in circles.

Waltzing With Bears
Jabberwocky
I Am the Walrus
When I was a Lad
The World Inside the Crystal
High Barratry
Silk and Steel
Desolation Row
Desolation --- Oh, No!

Very little publicity (mentioned only on the second page of the daily zine, and not even with the rest of the program items) and not much signage, so the audience varied between 4 and 6 or 8 people. Went well. I only had a 30 minute set prepared, but as it turned out there was an hour to the next set; I filled in with patter, conversation, and the long version (Dylan's, then my two verses) of Desolation Row. Would have run a little longer if I'd remembered to pull "Cicero in the Twenty-First Century", which I'd intended to do. As it was, there was about a 15 minute gap, which I used to run my guitar up to the room.

I'm not sure whether the problem was in the programming, the pubs, or somewhere in between; this con seems a little less well-run than previous Loscons. It's still coming off a bit better than last year; that may be due to the hotel having gotten used to us.