There is no doubt that Covid 19 has had some unexpected side effects. On me at least. For example if, 4 months ago you had asked me what the three main pillars of my retirement were, excepting family and pets and health of course, I would have replied without hesitation – this blog, our vineyard and my music.
Of those three the one that has been the most affected over the last few months has definitely been my music. You might have noticed that I haven’t written a blog about my musical experiences for a long time. The reason is very simple. I haven’t been playing any music so there’s nothing to write about.
You might have expected that, at a time of lockdown, a person might retreat to his or her basic enthusiasms. Sort of take refuge in what one knows and what has given proven pleasure in the past. You might think that from a musical point of view lockdown would provide a perfect opportunity to practice and improve one’s skills. Or to explore genres of music previously untapped.
Not only has this not happened but I haven’t even fallen back on what I know. I haven’t taken comfort from my existing skills. In fact I realised this morning (Tuesday) that I have lost skills rather than gained them. The source of this sad realisation was me trying to play along accompanied by iReel, to the tune, I’ve got rhythm.
Why this, you ask? Well it’s the third summer-school tune we’re supposed to be working on in a digital fashion. Summer-school this year has been via four weekly video lessons. I knew before I joined up I wasn’t going to enjoy it but felt compelled by loyalty to our hard-working organiser, to support the venture. So I paid £200 and waited to see how it went.
Badly I think it’s fair to say. As might have been predicted, the rhythm section got very little attention and the horns got plenty. It was ever thus but with this approach it was more thus than previously thus.
The Zoom session only made things worse. I think I mentioned Zoom in a previous retirement blog. Zoom might work well for certain ventures (even Mrs Summerhouse is thinking of running Zoom yoga sessions if her live classes don’t start in September which looks unlikely) but not for music in my opinion.
Between the technical difficulties (despite our new Sky server) and conversations between the horn players I did not feel a part of what was going on or ‘down’ as we musicians say. I had a similar experience with my Folk Fiddle Zoom group and gave that up several weeks ago.
I’d pretty much resigned myself to having no involvement at all in this jazz group. Never mind, my financial contribution has undoubtedly been for a good cause. I might dabble with the four songs at my own pace over the next few weeks. After all there doesn’t seem much likelihood of these actual classes starting again any time soon.
So I just need to be at peace with my decision to reduce, almost completely to zero, my third retirement plank – music that is. I’ve still got the blog and the vineyard (although that’s not exactly a source of great comfort at the moment). So that should keep me busy. A simplified retirement you might even argue (as in a recent retirement blog).
But you know God (or whoever it is) is with these things, you’ve no sooner made your peace with the new world and s/he changes the rules right from under you, no that’s a carpet isn’t it, but you know what I mean. And how did s/he do that?
By posting an audio clip on the summer-school website from my nemesis playing along to said I’ve got rhythm. Hence prodding my ego into action and perhaps my musical motivations to boot. I’ve written in past retirement blogs about my ‘musical nemesis’. He’s a guitarist so part of the rhythm section like me (and the drummer and bass) and that makes a difference. If a member of the wind section had posted an audio clip it wouldn’t have interested me very much but this was a rhythm player and, to repeat myself, my nemesis into the bargain. No coincidence I think.
I wouldn’t say I’m a very competitive person, but there’s definitely a streak of it buried not too deep. You know that same ego that has taken a little bit of a battering as a retired person, was poked with a stick by this guy. To cut a long story short I heard his clip, which wasn’t bad by the way, and I thought I could, no, should be doing that.
And so for the last two days I’ve been struggling to emulate his efforts. It has not been easy. First the technicalities have been problematic. I won’t bore you (maybe I already have?) but briefly trying to get Mrs Summerhouse’s iPad to play the backing track to I’ve got rhythm while recording my playing on that little, but highly complicated, BOSS machine I featured some while back, doesn’t sound complicated but I’ve had trouble getting the balance right between the two. If I don’t manage this in the next couple of days there won’t be any offering from me on this retirement blog.
But there’s a bigger problem than the technical side of things. That’s the talent / skill aspect. I seem through this largely musically inactive period to have lost whatever skills I had. When I did get the technical side in some kind of order my playing was shit. Yep, no use dressing it up, I was poor.
I have never been a ‘practiser’, I really don’t like playing the same tune over and over until it’s perfect. I didn’t take up jazz to be perfect and I get the damn tune stuck in my head. So no real practice but for me it’s close. But is it enough? Is there an audio file attached below, if not then, no.
At this point I really couldn’t predict the outcome.
Now it’s tomorrow and well it’s here. Against all the odds. Mrs SH says I should ‘get it out there’. It’s pretty rough in parts, most parts, but I’ve tried. Thing is in a band setting there’s no way I’d have all this time to solo, be lucky to get 8 bars to crash about as opposed to the 90 or whatever this is. Also the balance isn’t right but I hadn’t time to mess with this, so here it is, a rare offering on this retirement blog. Yes, I know, I should have retired from this as well.