A Challenging Day of Playing Music

     I usually have to wait around for a Tuesday night to get my fix of playing music.  Tuesday is when our Jam meets.  However, I was able to get an extra musical fix on Sunday, when I was invited to the 90th Birthday party for Art, one of the longtime musicians who plays in the long established old-time music group in the neighboring Village of Valemount.   Their members include a few ninety year olds, and they have been playing together for scores of years.  

    While I had never heard them play, I certainly had heard about them.  Like our Jam, they meet weekly to make music.  The were said to be a really tight band, and that sure seemed to be the case.  At our jam we have made a song book with lyrics and chords of the songs we play.  We go around the group and in turn each member picks a song, which we then play.  In Valemount, they seem to play mostly instrumentals:  Old waltzes, reels, polkas, and that sort of thing.  They have no books, one member just starts doodling out the start of a melody on their instrument, and the others join in.

    Needless to say I spent a good part of Sunday afternoon flailing and lost.  Five members of our Jam were there at the event.   Luckily, Gordon from the Valemount group, usually looked over at me, took pity on my ineptness, and shouted out what key the song was in.  Even then, a lot of the songs had unexpected chords that went beyond the simple three chord progression.  It was a real struggle for me.  I wasn’t used to having to do so much thinking on my feet.  

    There were fifteen musicians present and 10 different instruments.  Since there wasn’t a mandolin, I mostly played that instead of guitar, unless the chords in the song were in a difficult key for my ability on the mandolin.  Since most of their songs were unfamiliar to me, I had to keep my eyes peeled on one of the guitar players to see what chords he was playing.  That wasn’t always obvious, so I was often a beat behind, before I figured things out.  

    The job of identifying the chord became a whole lot more difficult when I was playing the mandolin.  Again, I had to watch a guitar player to see which chord he was fingering, but after I identified it,
“Oh, that is a D chord.”  I had to erase that image of the guitar D chord from my brain and then remember how a D chord was played on a mandolin.  That made my playing mentally exhausting.

    Nevertheless, the gathering was very enjoyable, I met a lot of people I didn’t know and others that I hadn’t seen for a long time.  Michelle, who hosted the event, had organized a potluck dinner, with food that was varied and enjoyable.  I was very glad I had gone.

    I am still looking forward to our Jam tonight.  It will be a lot easier, more satisfying, and confidence-building to be able to look in our song book and see the chords and lyrics to the song we are playing.  That is very reassuring to someone like me who is always forgetting lyrics and which chords to play.

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