Performing (Page 1 of 2)

A couple of belts always helps me!

Practice around friends and in your practice area with a mic in your face.

I perform weekends at my neighbourhood pub, occasionally with a few sit ins, but mostly solo. I've learned that when you make a mistake, ie a crappy chord change, etc, just carry on, odds are highly in your favour that no-one will notice, at all.

I make about a dozen mistakes a night, minimum, either chord changes or singing a verse out of order, but I carry on and so far, no one has noticed, not even my wife, who hears me play extremely often.

BTW - I'm a newbie on the boards, but have been a lurker for awhile now.

Cheers all, I practice all my songs, a lot, am recording & performing almost weekly, can play them 100 times without music.........but stage tends to give me the wobbles. Am learning to turn my ears off to the strumming partner, which has helped, he must follow!! Stopped boozing 16 years ago, doing it sober is a massive hurdle.

The more you play in front of strangers, the more it will become second nature.  Busking is a great way to build your professionalism and chops.  You get a lot of one-on-one contact with people and it helps you understand how you relate to others as a musician.

Here ya go selso

Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places for money. People engaging in this practice are called street performers, buskers, street musicians, minstrels, or troubadours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_performance

It's the dude at the park with his case open for tips playing until you pay him to stop

Jimmy Buffet is big around here. His satellite radio station "Radio Margaritaville" plays his tunes 24/7.
I left a verse that I do not like out of Buffet's "A Pirate looks at 40" song and had an irate bar patron call me out on it. I did not explain. I merely apologized. A rare event to be sure.
As whitewater 55 posted, most of these boo boos are not noticed by audience members.

No, sir. It's the one about younger women, living with several wives. I don't like the part where he runs them off and they still come back.
I further dislike his comparing them with profanity. it's disrespectful.
toots

Actually, I am. I used to guide canoe-trips professionally, and started to get a lot of repeat customers when I started packing a cheap classical throw-away guitar for campfire singalongs. I don't get to go into the backwoods that often any more, at least not as often as I'd like, but I still do the spring Little White River high-water run. Pack a wetsuit, the water is cccccold! 100 kms of whitewater, with a few pools, and great speckled trout fishing! My younger brother and I make the run every May, when the water becomes liquid again.

Easy enough to learn,though, just stream hydraulics. Where do you paddle? Not sure which state you're in. I grew up paddling in a little town called Hawk Junction, near Wawa Ontario, Canada. I'm pushing 60, so my endurance has waned somewhat, if not my enthusiasm for canoe tripping. Only get to go on a real trip about twice a year, now. When I was guiding, I would make about 15-20, 3 to 8 day trips a year, but I stopped guiding 10 years ago.

Hey whitewater55, nice to see another paddler/picker on the site.  I've spent a little time on moving water myself, and have ran into Zurf several times at fishing/paddling/picking get-togethers.  Although I canoed some when I was young, it was the mid 70's before I really got the whitewater bug, Bought my first raft and started running some class IV rivers in TN and WV, then got into kayaking around '79.  Yakked a lot in the southeastern US - Chattooga in GA, Big South Fork, Emory-Obed, Ocoee, French Broad, Nolichucky in TN, Youghigheny in PA, Cheat Canyon, Upper and Lower Gauley, New River Gorge in WV. (Over 200 runs on the Gorge).  Although I also guided near 100 raft trips and was offered jobs by outfitters on the New and Gauley, I already had good jobs and didn't need the extra money - preferring to do my own trips on my own time - taking friends down the river. Being married and having 4 youngsters at home limited me to 50-60 days a year on the water, so I've never built up the experience you have.

I admire good canoe paddlers like yourself.  Although I tried running big water several times I could never get the hang of rolling a canoe, so my trips were generally limited to class III in open boats.  I've only managed about one long (1-3 week) canoe trip a year, mostly on flat water in Quetico Park in Ontario (been there 21 times), although week-long trips on the Missouri Breaks in Montana and a week-long solo float on the New through VA were highlites I still fondly remember.  Paddled a canoe well enough to earn two first-place medals at the USCA races at the 1982 Worlds Fair in TN though.

28 kayaks, 12 canoes and 5 rafts later, I an now in my 60's and have limited my floats to mostly fishing trips on class III streams. I still manage to get out a week or so on bigger water each year, but now its just in my raft.  Operations on my knees and shoulders made me realize that my big-water yakking days ended about 15 years ago.

My guitar playing and songwriting began because of a love for river-running and I've done a lot of picking on riverbanks over the years.  Hopefully the arthritis in my fingers will hold off and allow me to enjoy those pleasure for many more years.

Sorry for stealing your thread Christaincastell - my wife says I get pretty long-winded when the subject of paddling come up .....................

DE