beautiful musical moments you created

Subject: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Andy7
Date: 14 Jun 19 - 04:00 PM

From time to time, there occur those beautiful musical moments that really move the people who experience them, and that live in memory long afterwards.

They may happen at a concert watched by thousands; at a folk club with only a couple of dozen members present; or even in someone's home with one other person, or with no one else there.

Musicians are often modest about their own achievements; but sometimes it's good not to be!

So, it would be really interesting to hear about those beautiful musical moments that Mudcatters have made happen! I don't mean those that you've experienced, but those that you've actually created yourself.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Jun 19 - 10:08 PM

I didn't create the whole thing, but I just joined people at an early-music workshop where we played madrigals from Florence. Sixteenth century. We had a soprano, two recorders, two viols. I played alto recorder. Some were so-so, others were delightful.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 04:49 AM

Jan was a homeless man, probably in his thirties, whom I often passed by on the street, where he was begging. His body and face showed clearly the scars of a tragic life, which involved a lot of rejection, ill health, drug abuse and beatings. His own family and the one he had started had both disintegrated. I usually saw him sitting near Heumarkt in Koeln as I was either going in or out of work (either teaching or busking). Occasionally I could stop and chat to him for a few minutes or throw him a Euro. He spoke good English with a southern British accent. He would invariably ask me to play him a song. On rare occasions, I did. One time, I sang him the long ballad "Johnny Petto" which is about a young couple on the road in which the "hero" abandons his pregnant partner. Jan listened in rapt attention and then said, "That's a song about people like me, isn't it?" I have played that song at big concerts with Klaus der Geiger on fiddle, but I don't think I ever got a better audience than I had that day.
Jan is almost certainly no longer with us.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: alanabit
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 04:51 AM

"I threw him a Europe..." That should have course read "Euro". Mud elves, could you please correct it!

[done]

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 06:11 AM

When I've introduce "Country Life" on the tenor recorder and a packed pub of folkies has raised the roof with it.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Mo the caller
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 07:51 AM

Yes. People who raise the roof when you start a tune. Feels great at the time (even if the tune was the only one I could play and everyone else probably thought it had been done to death).

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 07:59 AM

You've called that a tad negative, Mo!

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: leeneia
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 03:21 PM

Hi, Mo. Thanks for the reference to Country Life. I've added the tune to my recorder book.

Hi, Walkabouts. Long time, no see.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jun 19 - 03:37 PM

Hi Leeneia - yes and too long since I've been to a folk club...but it was a good one: Sharp's Folk Club at the home of the EFDSS, when I was living in London; back where I was born in Manchester now.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Mo the caller
Date: 16 Jun 19 - 07:48 AM

"You've called that a tad negative, Mo! "

I suppose the point I was trying to make was that for me it's not just the music, it's being part of it - part of the music but also part of the community of musicians.

Then there is dance - 'music made visible'. In a crowd of experienced dancers, dancing something like John Tallis' Canon, when it all goes right it feels as if you are floating on the music.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Jun 19 - 08:06 AM

I agree, Mo, in a big folk chorus or around good dancers is a great atmosphere to be in.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: leeneia
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 11:19 AM

In the last few years I have taken to finding a secluded spot and playing recorder music for passers-by. I know people like it, because they come up to me later and give me compliments.

At the Office Depot I found a pack of 4 x 6 cards bound together with a spiral. I'm turning it into a musical notebook for recorder playing. For some songs which I know well, I only pencil in the first few measures. For newer works, I print the entire piece and paste it in.

There are a lot of people out there longing for melody.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Ged Fox
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 02:04 PM

Those moments are created not by the performer but by the God; Apollo, maybe, for choirs and orchestras, or Pan, for us folkies. I'm usually shaking when I get up to sing; perhaps three times in the last ten years I've heard the shadow of the echo of the twitching of Pan's grin, and sat down shaking too.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 03:13 PM

Which recorder(s) do you play Leeneia? And do you have any recordings on the web, please?

I like the tenor because, if I do get the fingering correct, it sounds close to how I should sing the tune...but a soprano is much easier to travel with, of course.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 04:29 PM

I once held a full hall entranced with my perfect rendition of "False knight on the road".

Then I woke up...

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 05:53 PM

...but, God knows, playing a concertina for Morris dancers ranks way above the likes of Mick Jagger or Elton John, e.g., devoting their lives to copying an aspect of American culture, with phoney American accents.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Gurney
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 06:26 PM

I once sang 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,' accompanying myself on English Concertina. It sounded perfect to me, and the audience applauded well, and even sang along.

It's been downhill from there. However, since I mostly sing cheerful songs nowadays, the Lachenal mostly stays in its box.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Deckman
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 07:15 PM

One hundred years ago, when I was younger, I was asked to sing at an outdoor wedding in Tacoma, Washington, USA. it was held at beautiful public park beside a beautiful lake.

As the bride and groom and minister got them ready, they asked me to start singing and herd the crowd into a shady area for the ceremony. As we sang and walked toward the tree, very close to the waters edge, a large group of ducks started swimming toward us and climbed onto the shore and surrounded me. They were obviously enjoying the music. the crowd stopped, and started laughing as the ducks refused to move until I finished the song.

When I did finish the song, they went quack quack, marched back into the lake and swam away.

I'll never forget that moment.   bob(deckman)nelson

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 08:27 PM

That's a real magic moment, Deckman!

For myself, there have been moments great and small in their complexity or not.

Going to Spain with our ceilidh band a few years back, and suggesting we might sing a few songs during each ceilidh, between dances. Open air performance on a swiftly erected temporary stage: six of us sang "The Eriskay Love Lilt" unaccompanied, but with harmony, which drifted over the sandy beach and out over the Mediterranean on a balmy warm evening. My husband had strayed away from the ceilidh down the beach, and though not generally lavish in his praise, did comment that it was "all right"!

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 09:01 PM

In 2004 I made my one and only harmonica album with the help of my friend Martin Cole, a fantastic guitar player and recording man, in his studio in Cornwall. We'd had a terrible frustrating day trying to record a set of jigs, to no avail. Just before giving up for the day, we had a bash at the Carolan tune Eleanor Plunkett, just for a laugh, just to wind down a bit. He'd already worked out the guitar chords with his students and I'd played it at home just for fun. Unrehearsed, we had a go. It's my favourite track on my CD. It was just one take, the one and only one, no mucking about, no dubbing, no editing, just us playing it through. I could have ornamented it a bit more than I did I suppose but I hadn't done any preparation. I think it might be played at me funeral. It may be online somewhere...

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 09:12 PM

Maybe on the harmonica.co.uk website...

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 09:43 PM

Beautiful? Will delightful do?

At our local sing (Wash DC area)... maybe 15 years ago, someone brought Tom Paley around. Most of us hadn't known he was even in town. When my turn came, I did "The Storms Are On the Ocean" on autoharp... after 2 verses, I looked up at Tom, who was sitting directly across from me, holding his fiddle and looking 'ready'... in about 2 seconds I both realized that he had recorded that song and I also had enough sense to nod and give him a fiddle break! He played, I smiled...everyone played and sang the last 2 verses.

Then.... I once cheered up an entire audience at an evening concert after an 'interesting' but WAY too long workshop.... by being totally silly. It was almost Halloween and we were encouraged to wear costumes that night. I wore... a pair of paisley overalls, a checked shirt of many colors which did not match the overalls and a pair of rare wool army arctic boots that made me look like I had size 14 feet.

   I had decided to do the silly song "Good Peanuts", and as I waited at the side I saw an almost empty peanut can on the table... so I took it with me and announced how nice it was they had left me a prop!

   So... the song has verses...each longer than the last... about peanuts, strawberries, soda crackers, wool pants, 'operatic plug hats'
and silver money... and lines are repeated. As I named each item, someone in the audience frantically searched for... and found... some example of each one and ran up and presented me with new props. I ended up with a bag of unshelled peanuts, some strawberries, a box of crackers, someone's jeans, 3-4 hats, and a handful of coins...
   The audience was laughing, pictures were taken... a few folks almost managed to sing along on several choruses and jollity ensued...

Not exactly 'beautiful', but memorable.................

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 17 Jun 19 - 10:29 PM

One year in Louisville, Kentucky back when I was playing with Margaret Nelson, we were at the Kentucky Music Weekend Festival. Sparky Rucker was there and doing a blues workshop on Saturday Morning. I mentioned to Sparky that I played two blues tunes regularly, he invited me to sit in, even with what I considered a limited amount that I could contribute, especially considering his knowledge and repertoire. Karen, I forget her last name, who played fiddle with the Reel World String Band asked if she could sit in as well. I played through the couple songs I halfway knew (Noted Rider and Tell Old Bill) when it was my turn. When my turn came around again, my partner, Margaret was passing by, I told her to come up and sing Dink's, since I knew she knew it. Well, she sang, I played, and Karen came in with a fiddle part that was unbelieveable, and Sparky did some harmonica. It was a very uplifting experience. I don't think it could be duplicated. If you had assembled everyone in a studio and tried to re-create the moment, I don't think it could be done.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Andy7
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 04:12 AM

It's amazing reading about such moving and such varied musical experiences; one can almost imagine oneself there at the time!

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jun 19 - 08:10 AM

I once played a slow air in a pub - it's not actually a lament, but you couldn't tell, and I play it slower than usual so it's even more like one. It was the best known tune by a present-day musician.

What I didn't know was:

- he'd died the week before
- his son was in the bar listening.

Fortunately I did a good job with it.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Felipa
Date: 20 Jun 19 - 02:05 PM

I wouldn't describe myself as the creator but I was part of the impromptu band:
At a hotel function room at night after a day working at the Gael Linn youth festival Slogadh, one of the Gael Linn staff organised us to fill empty drink bottles with water to different levels, so that among us we had a musical scale on our bottles. He then conducted us, indicating who should blow and when, so that we played recognizable tunes. It was a crazy spur of the moment performance with someone who had the skill to get it together.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: GUEST,Gallus Moll
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 08:14 AM

Loved the 'ducks at the wedding story...Duckman!!!

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 Jun 19 - 08:37 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItcBocS_x_M

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 24 Jun 19 - 11:56 AM

13 March 1992, I conducted three movements of Elgar's 'From the Bavarian Highlands' at London's Royal Albert Hall. Orchestra of 100+, choir of 2000, audience 6000+...terrifying, exhilarating...a beautiful moment? You'd have to ask the audience!

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 12:31 PM

Once in awhile at our usual Friday night music circle, magic happens.
Someone will start a tune or a song, one after another takes a break on it, there is coherence and a perfect adherence to the mood and the spirit... it may take a good 4 minutes before we finally slow it and stop. My curdled insides smooth out, and life - and the people in it- is beautiful.

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: olddude
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 04:49 PM

Daughters wedding performing the song I wrote for her
https://youtu.be/AuToMx_11Fk

Subject: RE: beautiful musical moments you created
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 25 Jun 19 - 06:46 PM

Ah yes: my son did the same for his bride: not a dry eye in the house! The reception took place in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirk, so he sang from the pulpit! (Ok, not one I created, but I did create him!)