JC Talent Show

A bit more than 2 weeks ago, I was lucky to come by the opportunity to play music for 15 minutes at a talent show that was part of a Brazilian Exchange Student connect at Jackson College... It was an amazing night, and my show was pretty good! I performed 3 original songs and a sappy cover along with rappers, dancers, Brazilian guitar players and a fantastic African drum ensemble.
Now, I had about a week to prepare for this show, and of course I put off writing it until the night before the show.  I ran into very big problems in filling up the 15 minutes because I didn't want to play covers, and only one original with lyrics came to my mind.  There were also extraneous matters of socio-political commentary flying around in my head at the prospect of 15 minutes influence on people...
What I came up with in the end was 4 songs, 2 of which I wrote the lyrics the night before.  I also prepared loose sketches of talking to the audience in between my songs.  I tried to make my entire performance tie together into a message of sorts, and I modestly say it came out 60% clearly.  This was due to lack of preparation and practice.
But on the Very Bright Side, this was the direction I was looking for to advance the creativity and originality of my shows.  I will follow this up with posts on HOW I'm going to script some kick ass shows...

Relative Minors

In the last performance, a magical scrap of knowledge was granted unto me by the heavens in the form of an unintentional accident!  It really was an exciting moment, contributing to a very exciting morning where I participated in a skit, met a girl from lake Michigan... and witnessed a really emotional sermon.  You see, it was communion Sunday, which is a monthly activity that really means a lot to people.  I got to play a traditional Spanish hymn, "una espiga" during the communion.  I was gently strumming chords, it was a low key, dreamy kind of lullaby hymn... and on the last chord of the phrase, I hit the wrong chord.  Every time this had previously happened to me, it was an awkward mistake, a deviation from the song.  But this time, my mistake sounded better than the original chord.
Was it holy intervention? I had just munched on the eternal body of Christ, but actually I had just mistakenly played the relative minor of the chord that was intended to end the phrase of musical melody.  A relative minor is a chord that is heard in a way that is synonymous with it's specific major chord.  The major chord that was written in the ending of that phrase was F major, also the keynote of this particular song.  When I reverted to D minor, the ending of that phrase was melodically intensified and unresolved.  I sang out that final note long in harmony with the D minor and then resolved and ended the song by exhaling the tension back on F.
So, I guess this scrap of information is just something that I can use for writing songs, or adding flavor to songs I already know.  More updates on performances very soon.

Redemption

Not too long ago, I re-tried to perform that song I played so terribly that day in church.  This time, it all went over just fine, though I realized afterwards that I may have been too serious about it.  I just practiced and played a traditional hymn 'in christ there is no east or west" with my own add-ons and renditions.  I'm not sure if people noticed that my version was any different, but either way it gave me satisfaction so overall a success.  Practice makes perfect, shwaaws

Sucess and Failure

When I am successful, I am meeting a variety of psychological needs through an intentional activity, a process in which I give time/effort and receive some sort of rewarding situation.  Once I made 1000 origami cranes.  That situation achieved me an extensive amount of positive social admiration and appreciation.  You see, I hung a good portion of them to fill up the ceiling of the coffee shop business I work at.  I did it for free, and it was a complete surprise to my post-modern art enthusiast boss.  Even his boss liked it.  Everyone liked it because when the customers walked in they were just amazed by the suspended sea of swaying origami, or some of them didn't look up at all.  Anyway, I just achieved this by doing.  My mind imagined the idea, visualized it's creation with every step, and then I simply did it.  

Right now I'm having failure in this blog project because I have been improperly visualizing and doing.  My plan for it's creation was to schedule shows, do my best to prepare, and then play and film the shows.  Since the project began I have performed 5 times, but I failed in the steps of preparing and filming.  The purpose of expending the effort within this practice was to establish the tools for great, enjoyable music playing for people around me.  I was going to perform, reflect and analyze, and direct the experience by revising and improving my practices.  

The more I fail, the more inclined I am to fail.  Obviously, I want to start succeeding.  So, at this point I will simply use what I have.  I will tell the story of every performance one post at a time.  I will recall them as accurately as possible and compare them to how close they are to my vision of the great, like able performance... which will follow into a method to move from where I am to there.