Well, what are friends for? The answer right now seems to be to do with helping me fill that musical gap / void left when I stopped being a part of the Folk Fiddle group*. I rather despaired that I would ever play any music again with other people that is. In fact I had almost decided to stop trying to continue with playing music as a part of my retirement life.
Then along came the first friend. An old art college chum who stopped in at the Derbyshire cottage recently. Remarkable in that I had not seen him for months even years. He and his wife came to visit and he just happened to bring into the house his guitar. He said he didn’t want to leave it in the car in case it got stolen. Hmm, maybe, but it wasn’t long before he suggested we make a little music. Easy for him as he still performs on a regular basis. Difficult for me as I hadn’t played in many a long while.
Anyway we did it and for me, although I didn’t realise it at the time, this was something of a break-through. It didn’t sound too bad but as a regular occurrence it wasn’t a goer because he lives in Stafford and we don’t, but never mind it was a start.
The second set of friends, also strangely (is there a pattern here?) an old friend from art college, was our friends from New Zealand. I wrote about their last visit in a recent blog. Again we made a little music although I’d be hard-pressed to describe what kind of music. They’re coming again this afternoon so maybe that will become a little clearer. Then again maybe not but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the doing that counts for me at least.
And lastly with this theme in mind, we had a visit from another set of friends, yes, another. He’s been learning to play the violin for a while now and, to his credit, he was willing to play a few tunes so I could play along with my guitar. In that way it resembled my folk fiddle set-up. We used the book (see above, sorry about the glare) as the basis for our playing. I have now bought my own copy of this book. We bravely talked of playing together again in the future using technology to bring us together (they live in Newcastle).
So there was talk of using GarageBand (of which I know nothing – he told me his son will explain it all to me. Hmm, little does he know what an idiot he will be dealing with) or Zoom which I do know but don’t like in a musical context. But technology might be a next step for me.
After his visit I started to tinker with my recording equipment (see below) as an alternative. I’ve referred to this piece of equipment before but with my health troubles I’ve not touched it for months. It’s a complicated bit of kit and the worst thing a person can do is to stop using it for any period of time. So that’s what I’ve done. Which meant I had lost all the hard learning I’d achieved when I first got it and had to start from the very beginning, that’s what I’ve done. So last week I spent time each day relearning how to use it. The focus was on this rather than the music, that was incidental and would not have won any prizes, unless there’s a booby prize up for grabs. But first prize for effort.
*I watch this group and their practices on the internet, WhatsApp to be precise. Having vowed (to myself) I wouldn’t play with them any more I noticed that they had lost a guitarist. True they had a new guitar person but having watched him I can’t believe he’s a keeper. So maybe they’ll be begging me to rejoin. Stop right there, that way madness lies. Focus on your possible small steps, achievable plan of using tech to play with another person and give silent thanks for friends.
