Buskers night at The Bridge, Chester-le-Street

19th January 2008
I've played almost ten gigs on the internet now in Second Life, as Fyrm Fouroux. Lots of things went wrong and continue to do so but I think I'm starting not to panic quite so much when they do.I hope to focus more on the music in the coming week.

By way of contrast, I went out to play at a real life buskers event last night. It was a new venue at The Bridge pub in Chester-le-Street in the North East of England. Tommy was running the night and a bunch of the singers who play at the Smugglers turned up to help him get his first night off the ground. It was my turn to drive, so I drove my mate Terry out there and we met Colin, Neil and Sue when we arrived. Everyone played well and the evening seemed to go just fine. A young local lad also played and he did very well, especially for a first time up.

I definitely felt more relaxed playing out in a rl pub situation than I have done so far performing on the internet in SL. I guess it felt like more like my home territory. Still, I am optimistic that this will change over the next few weeks as I become accustomed to streaming the sound up into cyberspace. Actually, thinking about SL, Sue who played last night is a young woman who sings mainly her own songs, and she reminded me a little of Fabs Sinatra in Second Life. Of course, Fabs is a Brit. Anyway, I feel that the the songs delivered in the Chester-le-Streeet pub would not have been out of place at a Hummingbird Cafe open mic night in SL in terms of the quality of the music performance. The main difference was that there were no North American musicians in Chester-le-Street on this occasion (and it is unlikely that there will be in the future, too).

In rl, I am getting back into the swing of some piano practice. I want to do a keyboard accompaniment in my SL performance sometime in the next few weeks. I'm also very much into some intense guitar practice and am enjoying that a lot. This week I'm going to meet up with my mate Terry with an eye to working up a few songs that we can play together when we go out. I'd really like to offer a little acoustic guitar lead behind some of his songs, although not the ones where he has a good picking arrangement already worked out. It will be interesting to see how that develops.
So, until the next time I remain....
Your very own,
Enigmatic Pencil

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