Travels with Plink and Flame: ConChord mini-report
It's been a good con. Colleen flaked out of the Dead Dog at about 10:30; I bailed at midnight. Colleen had me do QV before I left, in part because AJA hadn't heard the whole thing. Got a big smile of recognition on "Mirror, mirror". After Colleen left I played stunt guitar for a couple of songs that cflute and tibicina sang. Sang "Desolation, Oh, No!" in a sequence of self-referential songs, and "Keep the Dream Alive" as a follower to something Paul Estin sang. Probably one or two others..
Noticed, especially on QV, that I'm still not entirely comfortable with Flame even though I did most of my practicing on Ruby; there must be a slight difference in the neck. Was very glad I opted to perform with Plink; I was, apparently, much more relaxed once I made that decision during our Friday rehearsal.
Being Toastmaster keeps one very busy; I'm not sure I'll want to do that again. Probably not. One can't skip concerts to have conversations, the way I've been doing lately, or to squeeze in a last-minute run-through of something I'm not familiar with. Squeezed in a couple of rehearsals with tibicina so I could do "The Merryman and his Maid" in her set, and we pulled it off, but it was a near thing.
Set list for Saturday night's Toastmaster concert.
1 The World Inside the Crystal (Savitzky) the only song in the set from CC&S. 2 The River (Savitzky) 3 The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of (Savitzky) 4 Ferret Went A-Courtin' (Savitzky/Trad.) 5 The Owl and the Pussycat (Lear/Trad.) 6 Paper Wings (Savitzky) 7 Wheelin' (Savitzky) 8 The Toolmakers (Savitzky) 9 Millennium's Dawn (Savitzky) 10 Keep the Dream Alive (Savitzky) 11 Quiet Victories (Savitzky)
Dropped "Ship of Stone" then the planned time-check after "Millennium's Dawn" came up at -15 minutes, and finished within a minute of on time. Might have been a minute over, but at the end of QV who's going to notice.
A couple of flubs in QV - one substitution of the earlier "lovers" for "sisters" in the last chorus, and a couple of places where I went into the wrong part of the melody for the middle part of a verse. Still, it got the point across.
More serious problems with pitch and sync; a combination of monitor problems and not having had nearly enough rehearsals as a group. We hope to work on both of those over the course of the next few months. We're so damned close to sounding like a real group that it would be a shame not to go the rest of the distance.
Audio when I get home and have a chance to do the extraction.
8:50 ETA: Managed to leave our hot-water pot and tea chest in the con suite room last night, figuring I'd collect them this morning. (Besides, I was already in bed when I remembered.) But they were already reconfiguring the room when I got down at 8:40. We'll probably reconnect with them at Loscon, unless somebody made other arrangements.