Hey everyone...
Last night, we had the greatest honor, and the most fun personally I think I've had so far playing flutes. Fellow Portal member 4wind and I are in the same flute circle, and another member asked us a couple months ago if we would like to come to her retirement dinner and maybe play a few songs during dinner. A couple of us, including 4wind and myself said sure... but I didn't quite expect this... hehe... Our flute circle friend turns out to be a retiring Colonel from the Army, and last night we got to play at the officers club on MacDill Airforce base during her retirement dinner!!! It was actually a huge honor, and quite a blast!
There ended up being just 3 of us, myself, Eric (4wind) and another member of our Circle, Pat. Plus we had a young man playing along on guitar... I am embarassed to say I've forgotten his name, but I already sent off an e-mail to find out so I can include him into this. I don't think he's actually played with flute players before, but he got the hang of what we were doing pretty quick and made it even more fun.
We ended up playing just about an hour while everyone else was eating. What was great was we weren't really the center of attention... this was Carol's party, she was the center of attention and we were more like background dinner music... which made it much easier because people were happily eating and drinking and only half paying attention to us.
We had a big corner of the room to set up, so there was lots of room to move around... I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but last week I was told I was leading this little ensemble... I honestly didn't do any real kind of leading... as soon as I saw the atmosphere I told Eric and Pat we should just do this like a flute circle jam session, take turns playing whatever was on our minds... maybe do a duet or 2... just go back and forth and just play it by ear.
they both agreed and it worked out great! We had all sorts of fun, got all sorts of nice compliments... and Carol told me after she was loving just being able to sit there at her table drinking a glass of wine listening to the flutes... perfect!!!

I was so busy with the flutes I only got a couple pics, but here we all are:

Eric:
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Me:
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Pat & Eric and our guitar player (I'll get his name ASAP)
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And the best part...I have sound clips I can share!!! Woohoo!!!!!!!!
If you look closely at the pics you'll see something strapped to the mike stand just behind and below the microphone itself.... it's an Olympus voice recorder... a nice one. All mornong yesterday I went looking everywhere for something... anything... to record last night with, and we finally found this at radio shack. It's way better than I thought I'd find, recorded remarkably well with just the built in mikes, yet not so expensive as something like a Zoom. I'm going to write a review on it later. I don't have the wiring yet to main-line it, so instead I used a velcro strap, fastioned it to the mike stand, hit record and just left it.
And this morning was very pleasantly surprised to find it recorded just fine!
I got a good recording of the whole thing and seperated it into 15 tracks total, and I plan on making a CD to give to Carol at our next Circle. She's not a portal member (yet) that I'm aware of, so hopefully it'll be a surprise...
I'm not going to post the whole thing here... it would eat up a lot of server space... and I have't actually talked to Pat about this, so I'm not sure how she'd feel about me posting her on the internet. I'm not even sure if she was aware I was taping last night.
But I already talked to Eric and he's OK with it, so here are a few of the 2 of us. But you have to bear in mind two things listening to these. First you will hear people in the background. Again, this was not a performance, it was a dinner... they are supposed to be talking and enjoying themselves. But even with the talking in the background, because the recorder was so close to the flutes they cut right thru the noise with ease... it almost gives it a Pink Floyd "Welcome to the Machine" kind of feelling... know what I mean??? At the end with the chapaigne glasses and such???
Anyway, the other thing to remember is we are NOT professionals... hehe... and this was not a rehearsed performance. We were really winging it, so you're bound to hear all sorts of mistakes and such... We weren't trying to be perfect, just flute circle members having some fun.

These first two are Eric:

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These next two are me:
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This is Eric and I doing a mad sort of dueling flute kinda thing...
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And this is all of us playing along to Peter Dubner's "Oh Seven Oh Eight"
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So again, I can't tell you all how much fun this was... it was a great honor to be asked, and a wonderful time actually doing it... I'm not sure how to top this one...

The tone on that #14 solo flute sure is pretty. How nice for y'all to be able to do that for your friend. I'm sure she was very appreciative!

I never record or hear a playback of my playing. Thanks Jim for putting this together. I appreciate the work you put into posting the pics and sound clips.

That was a lot of fun and an honor to play for Carol's retirement.

I had a good time playing with Jim. The duel that Jim and I played we both had a B.


The flutes that I played:

Tsunami C#
Mountain Spirit Flute F#
Mountain Flute B

I try and video myself when I do a gig so I can go back and pick out the mistakes... I find all sorts of stuff I miss when I'm actually playing. But I've wanted an audio recorder for a long time to use instead, and this was the perfect excuse to finally go get one.

yeah, I had a lot of fun too. This was my first time doing a gig with other flute players... I like being able to switch back and forth and duet and such.. and Pat was great fun to play with as well.

Oh... the Guitar player is 1LT Chris Linzey! Big thanks to the Leutenant, he was great!!!

The flutes I used on my 3 tracks were
My Ceder branch "Bumblebee-minor" on the duet with Eric
A Ceder mid-A I finished a couple weeks ago on #14 (I think)
And I was trying out one of Pat's flutes on #11. It's a really sweet mid-A made by Utah Ferris. I ripped into something fast and fun and next thing I hear 1LT Linzey playing along behind me. I immediately turned and motioned him to get up with me and keep playing... it was a great spontaneous improv!!!

Aside from my then-6-year-old son's video (click here if you haven't seen it), I've never recorded myself either. "Clear notes" Bill Webb is going to video my performance coming up April 3rd. I'm less interested in my mistakes than in seeing how I look and sound from an audience perspective ... with an eye toward improving, of course.

Paul

Mistakes was a bad choice of words, I like how you put it better. I was quite surprised the first time I watched myself from the audience's point of view... and that's what I'm also interested in seeing. Looking for ways to make the next gig better...

The other really nice thing thing having some form of recorder is I do at least one improv during a gig... I make it a point so I can showcase to the audience just how easy it is to improvise on an NASF. So my 4th song, usually but not always on my very first flute, I do something spontaneous. And a few have been awesome... really fun little melodies that pop out of my head and turned into a wonderful song, something I would definitly use over an over for future gigs
... except it never fails that less than half hour after the gig I've totally forgotten it!!!
That drives me nuts...lol... and I really look forward to having a way now to save some of these improvs and maybe use them again in the future.

Awesome Jim ! always nice to know where the portal folks are playing.

I have a program, a list of titles that follow a storyline and a few basic concepts of how and what I want to express--but other than that it's all improv. Journey of the Dragonfly, as I call it, is meant to be a spontaneous meditation on the ever-shifting present moment and an attempt to connect my ongoing inner experience with the audience's most immediate outward reactions. Actually, my hope is to lose all sense of time and audience, like a whirling dervish in slow motion.

Sounds high-falutin , I know, but that's my goal ... call it an experiment, which is one reason I wanted Bill to videotape it.

These audio clips were inspiring to say the least. Wow!! What fun!
PJ

I like your approach... for the most part the only reason I stick to some sort of structure is because I am working with someone else. If it were just me playing I might do something similar. I always seem to do better, and have more fun, when I'm just playing something off the top of my head. Both the songs I posted of mine from Saturday were improvs... but as you can hear a lot of times when I'm improving I'm a whirling dervish at full speed... hehehe...

I'm too old for that ... I'd get dizzy and fall down

Ah Jim... if you do it over again, it's not an improvisation anymore!

Clear "No Repeating Improv. Songs" Notes,

It's like taking a snapshot of clouds and expecting them to stay that way. You gotta let go and enjoy each and every moment for what it is (not what it was). As Bobb Fantauzzo wrote on my flute case: Play like it is! B)

Greatest jazz guitar player I ever met, maybe ever heard, never recorded a single track. His music, he told me, exists only in the moment. You want the experience, you gotta see him live. Wish I could remember his name

Paul

hehehe... that's not what I meant! The problem is I keep forgetting them, so I can't repeat them over and over...

No seriously, take track 14, the solo I sort of took a coffee break on. I was totally making that up as I went along. And I think it came out kinda cool, if you like a faster style of playing. But where as before I would never be able to reproduce that, now I can go and listen to it again and maybe take parts of it and compose it into an actual song.

Paul, I understand, and more than half of what I do at a gig right now is totally improved. I like being able to go off and noodle around without having to try and remember what I am doing. Makes playing much easier.
But like I just wrote, I've improved some really cool pieces now and then, and I would love to be able to go back and maybe take lines or hooks or melodies from a particularly good one and use it to make a more complete song. I am not a good songwriter, I do not have the memory it takes to be able to play something and then write it down later... and honestly I end up sometimes playing so fast it would be near impossible to write down anyway. This has been something I've been really wrestling with the last few months.
I will never stop improving a song or 3 during a set... and yes Bill, it will be different each time... hehehe...
But I also see a huge opportunity using a recording of an improv as a potential song writing tool.

Oh, I'm also looking into a small gun microphone, so I can record thunderstorms and beaches and stuff for ambient backgrounds... Living on the Gulf of Mexico, there are a lot of really amazing places within driving distance I can go to record sounds. I just need a decient enough quality mic to pick them up.