The Lindsays

Today marks the last day of 365 days of practice. I've been expecting that something magical would have happened by now. As it turns out, no angels sang from on high this morning, but I know that if there are angels, they're smiling.

What we've got here is a girl who's got family in town and who's been sick for three days and so hasn't practiced, coming in on the final stretch. Somehow I lost count, because according to my last entry, today should be day 356. That's a lot of days to miscount on, but alas, today has to be day 365 because we started last July 1.

Well, folks, it's not over 'til the fat lady sings, and based on my steady consumption of the five bags of cider donuts my sister bought at Atkins Farm in Amherst last week, you might think that day is coming soon. But it's not. We shall continue. Are you with me?

All year, I expected that today would include a meaningful, moving recap of the last year. What you're getting instead is real life: the ten-minute recap, written quickly knowing that Soul Fry will be awake any minute now.

1. Consistency is everything. Picking a regular time to practice, always the same time, always the same place, has made a huge difference. For me, if it doesn't happen at that time, then it doesn't happen. We got lucky, because sometime in this year, Soul Papa built a soundproof Irish bar in the basement. We call it a practice room. And it is.

2. Family first. When you have a family, it simply may not be possible to practice every day. But practicing most days is a really good thing.

3. Having concrete goals are very important. But when you don't meet them, just keep trying. I still haven't managed to fit daily sax practice in with daily flute practice. That's my goal for the next year: play both, every time. (Maybe not every day, but every time. Or almost every time.)

4. Structure is very helpful. I have a basic plan of what I do every time I practice, and it makes it much easier. Practice goes best when I have a big show coming up; I work specifically on those tunes and feel good about it. When there isn't a specific concert, a recording, etc etc, then practice gets a little more squirrely, and I end up sitting down with a Catherine McEvoy recording and playing along.

5. Being accountable helps. Boy, it's made a big difference for me to know that at least two of you (you know who you are) are out there, practicing along every day. As far as I know, both of you have done every single day. You beat me! Sometimes I feel badly that I haven't been able to do every day, but then I have to remember that I've still got Soul Fry here in the house. She gets to be first. Second in line is making a living, and sometimes work deadlines require that I'm at the computer in the morning instead of the practice room. So be it. The roof over our heads is also important.

6. Sometimes by looking for one thing, one discovers something else. I discovered, much to my dismay, really, that I am as much a writer as a musician... As soon as I figured that out, I got writer's block for the first time in my life. But it lasted only a couple weeks, then it was over.

7. I need to disconnect the blog from my website. During the year, I read a blogger's comment on his own blog, and he said that more important than anything else in a blog is complete honestly. Well, I've had to sugarcoat the truth a few times, because this blog is connected to our website, and thus, I don't always tell the full story. This year look for the blog to be less prominently connected to our site. (This is a boring discovery only relevant to me; pardon my navel gazing.)

8. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Some blog entries are great, some are personal and self-serving (as above). Likewise, some performances are wonderful and others are uninspired. Some practice sessions are productive, others are just going through the motions. Whatever. Keep going.

Throughout the year, I've been reading books on Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese fung shui, as well as deep and inspiring American novels, and a little bit of beach trash. All except the latter tend to underline the fact that every single issue identified in my numbered list above is simply native to human existence.

The Buddhist philosophers would most definitely advise us all to stop counting the days, and just keep on practicing. As soon as we grasp on to what we're doing and start expecting some result, we predetermine ourselves for disappointment, disruption, or simply torture ourselves with an overexamined life. It was Socrates who said "An unexamined life is not worth living." Not sure if I agree with him.

Here's the big discovery:

Starting today, I'll keep on writing but I'm going to stop counting. It's really not about how many days one does it; it's about simply doing it, with focus, with intention, and with balance. As often as possible.

T. S. Eliot was more poetic, but I must adjust his quote. "Not with a bang, but a shrug."

"The human heart is a frail craft on which we wish to reach the stars." - Giotto

This quote came on an email forwarded to me from an artist friend. My heart goes out to her -- if we envision our hearts as frail craft, are we dooming ourselves to a tortured journey?

So many of us confuse what we do with who we are. And so, too many of those who lose their job, botch their performance, receive a heavily marked manuscript back from their editor, or get well-meaning feedback on their paintings or page designs, take it personally. It's not personal. It's just the world telling you to keep trying.

The real journey is not to reach the stars, but rather to fortify the heart, let loose the ballast, and launch.

That's enough.

See this lovely shot? Isn't the road inviting? Ignore it. It's NOT an invitation. See that big orange sign to the right? It says, "This is mine. Don't fish here. Don't hunt here. Don't trap here. Don't stop by the side of the road and take pictures here. In fact, I'd rather you not even LOOK here, okay? That's why I picked bright orange. Because I don't want you to look."

Just in case you missed that sign, the owner of this gorgeous road that winds between two luscious horse pastures has also put two white signs on either side of the gate, just where the fence ends, just to remind you. In case you missed it, like.

We didn't miss it.

"MINE!"

Just got a call from a dear friend who's just lost his low-paying, menial job. He didn't love the job, but it's a job and he has a family. See, he was told, he wasn't paying attention to directions, work wasn't up to snuff. By the way, this fellow who just lost his job just happens to have a head injury that makes it impossible to follow directions. Of course, he told his bosses that when he got the job. But alas, he lost the job, where he was tending gardens for people who live behind big white gates in a private community whose entrance is marked by a gate and guarded by a little "MINE" booth right at the entrance, with someone in it to tell you to turn right around just in case you thought you might like to see what they have. Lucky people, those people. They still have their jobs, lots of them.

The MINE people have sent most of the boring jobs to China. For the other jobs that they just can't send away ("Who will mulch for me? Who will sweep my floor? Who will paint my house trim?"), they hire illegal immigrants because they work cheaper. But you can't blame them, of course; everyone else charges too much. Or so everyone seems to say.

That's fine. We understand. But has anyone figured out what will happen to people who have head injuries and can't follow directions given to them by the "MINE" people? What do they do to have just a little of "mine" for themselves?

That's not a crack to fall between. That's a fissure.

Despite hours of meditative long tones on the flute for the last 350 days, I discover that I am not sufficiently spiritually advanced for placid pea picking. Still, I can joyfully weed the heck out of my own garden when there's nothing else to do. The latter (having nothing else to do) happens only at 7 a.m. on June 24, 2010, when I lock myself out of the house after a morning bike ride.

In other words: Once. Like ever, in forever. Musicians always have something to do. We can always practice, at least when we can get to our instruments. Which brings us to why I haven't practiced yet: The cat ate my house key.

Hopefully, the cat will also like peas, because we have a lot of them. Yesterday was CSA pickup day at Plato's Harvest, and it was summery hot. Just the day to step away from time and find peace via peas in the organic fields. Or, curse every pea as it came off the vine, wondering how many thousands of peas it takes to get to two pounds. It takes about ten thousand.

The Organic Farmer's Wife wonders if I even like vegetables. Oh, I do. When Denya the Fabulous cooks them, for example. All other times, I'll defer to the bread from Artisan Kitchen in Rochester, Mass., because all you have to do is unravel the tie wrap, sit down with a snappy friend, break off a few chunks, and you're good to go. Right, Sasha?

Now Hiring: Private Chef with Knack for Locally Grown Organic Peas.

I'll be downstairs practicing; call me when dinner's ready.

We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake... Let us use it before it is too late! —Marie Beyon Ray

We're sad to learn of the loss of a great musician, poet, artist, and character in the Boston scene, Dublin-native David O'Docherty. O'Docherty passed away while swimming in Martha's Vineyard. According to the Vineyard Gazette, he had gone to the Vineyard to play tin whistle at the annual Bloomsday celebration in Vineyard Haven, as he does every year. (Bloomsday is June 16, the day the James Joyce's Leopold Bloom character, of Ulysses, set off on his exploits throughout Dublin.) He had gone swimming on Sunday, June 21 at 10 am, and never returned, apparently suffering a heart attack or some other medical event while swimming. He was 75.

It was sad news to the crowd of musicians and friends who gathered here at our house last night to ring in the solstice with Irish music. But, no doubt, O'Docherty would have approved. Just as solstice is a time to celebrate the light that comes out of darkness, so the loss of a friend can remind us of the life we must embrace while we have it. O'Docherty was a real inspiration, and it is only mildly comforting to know that he passed on to the Great Seisiun in the Sky while enjoying the world around him.

For a lovely tribute to O'Docherty, visit today's article in the Vineyard Gazette.

Oh my great people, I have gone Native. Henceforth, I shall be called She-Who-Spots-Deer-Standing-Near-Highway-Onramp-at-Midnight.

Not just one midnight, but now two midnights in a row. Last night, at the Bourne Rotary, after a Stage Door Canteen gig. Tonight, on the onramp to I-95 exit 13B in Canton, after a session at the Irish Cultural Center.

Of course, I did the only logical thing one does when one spots a deer standing by the side of the road at midnight. I called a friend.

Not just any friend, mind you. I called the Great Rudini, a musician, unmarried, and likely to be wide awake at midnight. He was awake, as it turns out, and my call interrupted him while he was photographing his friend's cat and saving it as the wallpaper on her phone. (I'm quite sure that there is no cause/effect relationship between these last two conditions.)

The Great Rudini is a college buddy, a dear friend, and for nearly fifteen years now, we have played together in a band called Einstein's Little Homunculus, a Celtic/Klezmer concatenation that specializes in children's songs for grown-ups. ("Daddy, what does Kooky Floozy mean?") In the band's heyday, we traveled together all over the folkin' place en route to coffeehouses and contra dances, and it was on these journeys in the Great Rudini's old Volvo wagon that I earned the nickname "Secretary of the Interior," for my great skill in spotting roadside wildlife attractions. Deer, moose, foxes, groundhog, beaver, hawks... if they were there, I saw them. And pointed it out.

Tonight, the Great Rudini was mildly impressed with my consecutive sightings, and asked me only one favor: If I should ever—"God forbid"—strike a deer with my car, please call him immediately. "There's good eatin' in them deer," he said.

On my mysterious roadside doe, however, he had no sage observation. Oh Great People of Blog Spirit, how can it be that I saw the same deer in two places, miles away from each other, on two consecutive nights? Both at midnight? It can only be one of three things:

1) Mother Earth is sending me an important message.

2) Deer act suspiciously as summer solstice nears.

3) I'm way super extra wicked overtired. There was no deer.

Should you have any insight on this matter, I implore you to write your thoughts on the back of a peyote root and send it to me at my home address. I shall await your message.

In the meantime, I shall sit here drinking tea with jam and bread....which, I have on very good authority, will bring us back to Doe.

~~~~~~~

For further insight on Native American deer symbolism, do visit the highly scientific, peer reviewed, and academic Web site of extensive international acclaim, www.whats-your-sign.com. Actually, do. I think I know the deer of which she speaks.

Sometimes at bedtime, Soul Fry and I go over the events of the day and pick out our favorite part. I'm thinking about yesterday, one of those days when 343 days of practice paid off. Two gigs, totalling seven hours of playing, and twelve hours of the day.

The musical day began at the Farmer's Market in Plymouth, with ten children heralding in the start of the season with tambourines, shakers, and plastic instruments, and ended eight hours later with a 14-piece big band at Liam Maguire's in Falmouth playing "Brown Eyed Girl," the universal over-40 siren song for barroom dancers.

A riddle:

Q: How many bar bands does it take to play "Brown Eyed Girl?"

A: Apparently all of them.

But back to our story. Thank you farmers of Plymouth for bringing your goods to Steven's Field, a place that we who grew up in town associate with tennis and swim lessons (yes, we all swam there til someone spotted toilet paper floating by), steamed hot dogs, a can of Pepsi, and a chocolate bar, purchased from Chet Downie with our weekly 50-cent allowance.

Now the concession stand, run by Side Dish, is all about organic energy bars and hibiscus iced tea. Oh, then there's the oven baked pizza at the Market, done by the man in the straw porkpie hat, while you wait.

My favorite part? Mighta been Sasha's hug. Also mighta been the awesome under-5 crowd at the Farmer's Market, especially Lana, who shook her little patootie for nearly three hours straight, dancing while we played. That's what life is about, my friends.

Thank you, you cool moms and dads, for bringing your kids right to the music and letting them let themselves free for as long as they wanted to, not rushing them off anywhere, but just letting them play and dance.

You are some seriously cool people. Maybe I'm a little biased, and I certainly am no expert, but I really like the track you're on.

Here's a recipe from the Lord's most low maintenance chef.

An ideal drink to celebrate finding your lost flute. Five minutes to prepare, unless you insist on washing your fruit first. (Finicky, finicky you.)

-1 carton of Stonyfield fat-free blueberry yogurt that's been in the fridge for over two months because I hate fruit yogurt

-About 7 about-to-go-bad strawberries

-Half a package of fresh raspberries, also on the verge of saying bye-bye. I know because I had to pick out a few moldy ones. (Do you eat blue cheese? Then stop with the being grossed out thing.)

-A big handful of blueberries, still fresh. Miracle!

-Another big plop of fat-free vanilla yogurt... also Stonyfield. (Hey, they went to my alma mater, I have to buy their products.)

-A capful of "Mother's" brand toasted wheat germ. (Something to make you feel virtuous, even if you don't know what it's for.)

-Half a mug of tap water (I said low maintenance!)

-Half a mug of crushed ice

Run it through the blender for about a minute, and oh my goodness... You'll be set up for the morning.

This morning, conditions seemed right for an inspired day. The morning bike ride, the coffee, the return home with poetic thoughts in mind... Then I lost my flute. Or, to be specific, the cat ate it. We don't have a cat, but I'm pretty sure it was a cat that did it, because I understand that cats eat most lost things.

But, this is one of those times when apparent misfortune comes to our aid. You may recall that a couple weeks ago, I discovered that my flute needs repair, so I contacted its maker in Scotland, and arranged for my flute's European summer holiday... then contacted a friend to borrow a flute. This friend doesn't procrastinate, so it just so happens that I have an extra flute in the house. The cat didn't eat that one. Yet.

This is very fortunate, because the next several days are rather busy.

Note:

Today, June 17. Lettuce, Lindsays, and Love. We're playing opening day at the Plymouth Farmer's Market. Catch local music, local food, and local color (you can always count on the latter) at Steven's Field today from 2:30 to 6:30. For more info, visit their Web site, http://plymouthfarmersmarket.org/

Tonight, June 17. I'll be playing my baritone saxophone (much to big for a small cat to eat) with Stage Door Canteen at Liam Maguire's in Falmouth.

Tomorrow, June 18. I'll be joining Bill Black for the Irish session from 9-11 pm at the Irish Cultural Center of New England, 200 New Boston Drive, Canton, Massachusetts, 02021.

Next up is June 30, a free outdoor concert at the Windmill in Eastham, Mass. with the Lindsays, and special guests Sean Farias on acoustic bass and Salil Sachdev on percussion.

In the meantime... if anyone sees a cat wandering around with a squarish looking belly, please note his license plate number and call the police. And me. I'd really like my flute back.

After a short foray into organica, I'm back to what it's all about... the tunes!

Folks, if you haven't done it yet, do buy Comhaltas' session books. What a great selection of frequently played and widely known tunes. In prep for a session I'm guesting at on Friday, June 18 (Bill Black's session at the Irish Cultural Center of New England), I spent this morning's practice session dusting off the books and just playing through a ton of common session tunes.

Musician Moms don't have a lot of leeway to get out to sessions; the ones that still play are mostly just focusing on the tunes they're recording or performing. I know this is fact because there are only two of us, and we just talked yesterday.

So... such fun to be had with Foinn Seisiún 1. Yes, I know, it's much more real to be playing through these tunes with real people. Even better when those real people happen to be real friends. But see paragraph 3, sentence 2.

If you really want to get authentic (highly recommended), don't buy the book, but instead go to CDBaby and buy a copy of the CD that comes with it and play along with that massive session sound. (Oh, I have the CD somewhere... I beg you to again refer to paragraph 3, sentence 2.)

Long live the tunes!

Let me begin by stating that yesterday's lunch was a hot dog and Kraft mac & cheese in Sponge Bob Square Pants shapes. With Tostitos.

Now, let me tell you about dinner. Organic chard sauteed with extra virgin olive oil and chopped garlic scapes. Panko chicken (Nature's Promise, of course, rolled in yolk from one little tiny blue egg from a free-range chicken). Mashed potatoes. Organic baby carrots (bought them at BJs). Be still my bleatin' heart. Thanks to Plato's Harvest Organic Farm, suddenly, dinner is fun again.

Wednesday was the official opening day at Plato's Harvest CSA. That's Community Supported Agriculture, and that means an end to a Dark Winter of Hot Dogs. Plato's Harvest is an organic farm in Middleboro, and it's a CSA where I and 100 or so other food freaks pay in advance for 20 weeks of locally grown organic vegetables. They plant, they weed, they pick. We show up once a week and take home fifty bags of lettuce.

But oh my goodness, yummy lettuce. And this week, we also took home 1 lb of gorgeous spinach, 1 lb of arugula, 2 large heads lettuce, 4 small heads lettuce, 3 kohlrabi (what the hell is that, anyway?), 3 white and 3 red salad turnips (sauteed 'em with garlic scapes and mushrooms... ooh la la), 50 garlic scapes (I think actually it's more like 10 million), 1 bunch chard, and pick your own herbs. I didn't pick. I took my leaves and ran. Ran home to Google recipes for vegetables that I didn't even know existed.

Please understand. I also run like hell whenever someone uses the word "organic" more than three times in a sentence. I roll my eyes when someone asks me if I BBQ'ed the veggie burgers on a separate part of the grill. I have been known to eat a whole bag of Doritos in one sitting. I like hot dogs.

But I also like fresh made pesto. Last night, at Farmer Dave's suggestion, I made it with garlic scapes, basil (some of which was from my own pathetic garden), fresh grated parmesan, the juice of one lemon, and a dash of salt. Together with the fresh loaf of ciabatta from Artisan's Kitchen--also part of my weekly CSA share--and the six-pack of IPA you bring when you stop by next, we've got a party.

Thanks, Farmer Dave and Farmer's Wife Sasha. You know what? You can't beat the flavor of your homegrown. Plus you're way more fun to talk to than the checkout lady at Wal-Mart.

Next week, another 20 bags of lettuce? Bring it on!

This morning, it was cool and sunny on Old Sandwich Road. The long rays of the morning sun sparkled through the dewy grasses of Chiltonville, the oldest, preserved rural part of Plymouth. Mist rose off the pond and wrapped a swan in nature's tulle. Horses flicked their tails, and nearby a gang of wild turkeys leaned against a building smoking cigarettes in their usual spot. They ignored us, but I know that some day they're going to mug us and steal our sweet rides.

Why doesn't everyone wake up at 6 a.m. to go bike riding? Well, thank God they don't because it means that me and Design Diva (not her real name) can talk shop in relative peace. See, together, we're reliving the old days that we didn't share, when we were both bike snobs. The rides we used to do. The way we used to check out every single bike we passed on the road. (We still do, actually.) We launched a three-day-a-week regimen last week, meeting at 6 a.m. and riding for an hour. We started in sweatpants; after a week on the bike, the old school gear is getting dusted off, the 2-oz. racing bikes are back out, the silly shoes are on, the painful racing saddles are attached, and we're starting to feel like cycling hipsters. Out-of-shape hipsters, but as it turns out, no one's looking. We're old broads. And I don't know about the Design Diva, but me... I feel whole.

I did come home and practice. That was nice. My girl is sleeping, and that's nice. Soul Fry and I went food shopping last night when respectable parents already had their kids in bed, and we had a blast. Soul Papa and I are raising a kid who's fun to food shop with after 8 at night. That's really nice. Spent yesterday afternoon with a great friend, hanging with the kids and making smores and pinatas. Now I'm about to make the morning coffee, and get ready for a day of work, doing exactly the thing that I love doing. That's wicked nice.

Sorry to gush, but things are looking damn good today. The best part of it is, it's not luck. All of this came because we asked.

June 3, 2010

Dear Soul Fry:

Today you are 4. You're sleeping, but you'll be awake soon and you'll come downstairs to a kitchen decorated with streamers and balloons. There are colorfully wrapped presents waiting on the table, and we're planning chocolate toast for breakfast. Or whatever you want. We can't wait to see your face!

See, you haven't yet figured out what all kids figure out eventually: your parents are completely and totally crazy. It's 8 a.m, and your mother has already gone for an hour-long bike ride and practiced for an hour. Your father was up 'til God-knows-what-hour organizing his workshop and working on his practice room in the basement. Some people might find this kind of wee-hour ambition a little distasteful, but guess what?

Nothing is difficult when you're doing what you love most.

If there's any wisdom we can impart to you today, it is this: Always follow your passion, and the rest will follow. We'll be here to support you all the way.

Happy Birthday, Small Fry!

Love,
Soul Mama and Papa

You would think that a person could run out of things to say about the musical process. And it would be true, except that we human beings continually forget what we've learned, and then we get to relearn and re-encounter ourselves, over and over.

I've had to remind myself of a few things lately; thought it might help you too:

-Clean out your instrument regularly... yes, even you whistle players. Remember to regularly get the gook out of the mouthpiece and to swab out the inside of the whistle when you're done playing, to prevent corroded little bits that will interrupt smooth airflow and make you wonder why you ever thought music would be a good idea.

-Get your instrument looked at by a pro once a year, whether you think it needs it or not. Just like cleaning the fridge.

-Remember to practice playing quietly, with good tone. Most of the time in sessions, we lowly wind players are just trying to play loud enough to hear ourselves over the banjo. And we love those banjos! Sessions are good places to practice playing loudly. Practice rooms are good places to practice playing quietly. (Your cohabitants will thank you.)

-Record yourself every now and then. You're never as good as you wish you were, but often you're better than you think you are.

-Slow down. Set the metronome and play something much slower than you need to, and work on good timing.

-Sit up. Keep reminding yourself to sit up straight for good airflow.

-Stay awhile. Quality over quantity. Pick a tune or two and just sit with them and play them for a half hour sometime, rather than doing bits of this and bits of that. See what happens. (I keep telling myself to do this, and haven't yet!)

-Remember music? It's easy to get in the habit of playing tune after tune at one tempo, at once volume, at one feel. How about putting a little feeling into it? Experiment with dynamics... maybe playing an A part quietly, then a B part more loudly... that sort of thing. It helps drive the music. Get Martin Hayes-ey every now and then.

There's nothing like spending the first hour of the day in a bar with a Frenchman.

Don't get too excited. The one I'm talking about has been dead since 1984. And it wasn't really a bar; it was our basement practice room. And, we weren't alone. There was also an ant wandering around til I got all Joan of Arc-y on him with the back of a checkbook.

Marcel Moyse was born in 1889 in France, a famous flute player who pioneered the French sound that those post Romantic guys like Debussy were looking for when they wrote their ultrafamous flute solos like Syrinx and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

This morning I started working with Moyse's book, De La Sonorité: Art et Technique, which all real flute players know about. You know all about it, don't you? Of course you do, which proves to me that all flute players actually are crazy.

This book offers 25 pages of longtone exercises, for developing tone and control over your sound. Early exercises have the player focus on simply moving from one note to the next, chromatically, and to really listen, to ensure sameness of tone and color between them.

It's a little like asking a construction worker to work on his form by lifting his shovel and moving it toward the ground. Then, without ever touching the ground, stop, then do it again. And again, for like 20 minutes a day. Just to work on form, you know? I know a lot of construction workers who do that, actually. They dig really nice holes.

Just to be one of the guys, like, I gave it a try this morning. Played long notes and listened to them. I do this every day anyway, to start my practice session, but this time I did it with a beret on and a croissant nearby. Voilá! Sonorité instante!

People. Long tones are not as fun as ripping off a ton of reels with the metronome set to 115 BPM.

But they work. Je suis contente.

Yesterday brought two shocking events:

1) I cleaned my fridge. It's not that it needed it; I only did it because the CDC had left a note on my door about it.

2) I discovered that I don't suck. (Sorry for the truck driver language, but on the scale from BRAT to Mack, that term is really only a 2WD Ford Ranger.)

What precipitated this remarkable discovery? I took another lesson, this time from a wonderful classical flutist named Matthew Cross, who is the principal flutist for the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and also owner of Cohasset Music Shop, a sales, rental and lessons music shop on route 3A. If you must know.

I scheduled this particular session because I've been working too hard to still feel like the flute isn't sounding the way I want it to. Thought it should feel more free, more easy, more in control. Shannon Heaton did suggest that it may be time to upgrade the flute, and I don't disagree, but I also thought that perhaps a little old-fashioned classical tone exercises would be of help.

It took us about a half hour of playing and exchanging flutes for Matt to realize that it wasn't a technique problem so much as a technical problem. The shocker: The flute needs repair!!!

Two keys are leaking, which interferes with a nice clean sound and also affects intonation. A repairman about five years ago had replaced all my cork pads with leather...but apparently most classical wooden woodwinds use cork, and cork most likely will make those notes really "pop." Matt suggests that wooden woodwind instruments have had cork pads for hundreds of years; maybe they're onto something. Call your flute maker and find out, he instructs.

And then, there's maintenance. This is the gross part, but... I haven't been cleaning out the headjoint due to a very strange old world superstition or perhaps voodoo tradition. (See paragraph 1, above. There may be a connection.) As a result the tone hole has about five years of stuff on it... and the tone hole is the edge that makes the sound... It needs help. And that may be the key to much of the problem. And, there's corrosion inside the headjoint, which would also interrupt smooth airflow.

We got a start on cleaning the tone hole, then he put some brackets on the leaky keys so it looked a little bionic...et voilá... a good sounding flute. Still much work to do, particularly on richening up the lower end, but that means hours of long tones with a classic Marcel Moyse flute technique book over the coming months. Matt lent me his well-loved copy. Here's Matt, with his repairman hat on, and the flute all clamped up:

Sure glad I brought the flute for repair the day AFTER I finished my parts on our CD. Well, not so much.

This proves and amends one of my favorite teaching adages: Just when you think you suck the most, it can mean one of two things: 1) you're on the verge of a breakthrough, or 2) you need a new instrument. Now, I add a third item.

3) Your instrument needs repair. Go see Matt.

I love practicing, but you all know that there are days when a cup of tea and the kitchen table seems more appealing than the musty basement practice room. (Musty, but very cool, mind you.)

So, today I'm rewarding myself with a break day, at least from morning practice.

What I'm celebrating: Last night I was back in the studio, finishing my parts (for the second time). I went back in because my centerpiece on the CD, three tunes written by Brendan Tonra, were just not happening the way I was playing them.

Can we talk? I've been practicing these tunes for over a year, in prep for this recording. I've wanted them to rock... because they're cool tunes, because I love Brendan, and because ... um. Because.

Last night, I finished them. The track will sound great.

But easy or hard to play perfectly under pressure?

Take a guess.

Today, I am thankful for digital recording technology.

Last week I didn't write too much because the Lindsays were away, visiting friends in Vermont. It was a vacation for the female 2/3, and a work trip for the other 1/3... Soul Papa is officially launching a carpentry and restoration business. We told a friend this, she had work, et voilá, vacation. For us.

Now, this is just by the by. The real reason for writing is just plain old Mother's Pride. Really, every day brings an occasion for mom pride, but I promised you that this blog is about music, right? So I don't really tell you about these examples of what makes me proud: Soul Fry (née Mini Me) wakes up cheery and stays that way. Soul Fry shares the coveted swing with a friend. Soul Fry looks irresistibly cute in a dress. Soul Fry says thank you to someone on her own, without a reminder. Soul Fry wants to give a friend a gift, so selects one from her own toy collection, asks for wrapping supplies, and wraps it herself. Soul Fry invents new lyrics to one of Daddy's songs on the upcoming CD, because it's funny. Soul Fry uses Irish colloquialisms in her casual sentences. Soul Fry uses "overjoyed" in a sentence. "Ah! Stop!" you say. Enough with the Sprog Blog banter.

But this photo from our Vermont trip? I'm sorry, but I can't resist. Perfect form! Perfect bow grip! Great posture! Thanks Nikki Engstrom, fiddler and teacher extraordinaire, and also Auntie Hen (Helen Kisiel) for giving her the fiddle for Christmas. Thanks, Suzy Knapp for the photo, and thanks Joey for joining the band that day!

Now, if we could only figure out how to get Soul Fry to practice....

Yesterday, I took a lesson. I like to check in with a more accomplished musician from time to time, for coaching and outside input on style, technique, to correct any errors that I am not seeing/hearing, and for creative input on tunes that I've been playing. Me, I've been studying with Shannon Heaton off and on for eight years or more. When I still lived in Boston, we did nearly weekly lessons, but more recently, once or twice a year. And it's always incredibly helpful.

Shannon is a fabulous teacher and I recommend her to everyone.

Here's what I got from my own lesson... my own things to work on:

Putting A cuts in the right places. For a long time, I had trouble doing good A cuts, so had developed a habit of simply not using them in lots of places where they really belong. Cuts often work well in the 2s + 4s of a tune to accentuate the upbeat and drive the tune forward. This, of course, depends on the tune, so it's not a hard and fast rule, just a tendency.

Not tonguing quite so much, using more "throat" stops for Double-D notes. Over the last few months, I've noticed that I've been developing a specific articulation style to accentuate phrasing, and that's okay sometimes... but often, using a cut is a better way to articulate a phrase in Irish traditional playing. And, because I came from a classical and jazz background, I tongue notes. But... please, Soul Mama, don't use so much tonguing in Irish flute.

Breathing before you run out of air. Breathing more often in tunes varies the phrasing and it makes all of the notes more solid because your air is supporting them. In flute playing, typically you breathe in place of a note. However, you really have to know the tune to be able to land in the right place when you leave out a note to breathe. Practice breathing in more places than you may even need, to get used to a variety of phrasing possibilities.

Slowing it down, being more deliberate. This makes for a more confident sound, but it also allows you time to pay attention to the tune, and not to anything else, while playing.

Refining my cran. The cran must follow a specific rhythmic pattern, and I knew that. Yet, for the last year or so, I've been practicing my own brand of cran nearly every day, and guess what? That cran doesn't work. I knew it didn't work but couldn't bear to open up Grey Larsen's book (I have it only because someone bequeathed it to me) and read technical text about it. Not my thang. In my mind, I had to learn it from a real person. So, I did, and now I understand.

And finally, perhaps you will also find inspiration from a few good reminders:

Good reminder 1: You can't just "do things your own way" when playing traditional music; there are a certain number of stylistic conventions in the music that you must master, and from a firm foundation in traditional style, you certainly may venture... but as always, if you stray too far from traditional Irish ornamentation, you are no longer playing traditional Irish music. First, master the style and from that foundation, you can refine a personal playing style.

Good reminder 2: Get with people who can play, better than you. Learn traditional music from a PERSON not a book.

Good reminder 3: No one can see or hear all their own mistakes. Find a teacher you really like and who's supportive. You'll feel all warm and snuggly inside, and you'll learn something.

Good reminder 4: Everyone plays it "much better at home," and flubs it up in lessons. That's part of the Law of Musician's Evolution. The second Law of Musician's Evolution is that eventually, this won't happen anymore. If you decide to work on it.

Good reminder 5: Listen to as much great recorded music as you can.

Good reminder 6: Don't get worried if you make mistakes while you're playing. If you're playing a tune and you flub up a few notes, just watch them go by and keep moving forward. If you let those mistakes get to you, your focus won't be on the music. It will be on your mistakes.

We've been talking about this Lindsays studio CD for some time. Since October, to be exact. Seems like a long time, doesn't it? Several people have asked: What is taking so long? Here's what goes into the making of a CD.

As soon as our first CD came out, we started thinking about this one. After deciding on what material to record (which took us about a year!), we book studio time at Sounds Interesting Studios and follow what has become standard practice. Some folks record their whole CD live, all at the same time, in the same room. Our first CD was live. But this time around, we wanted a different feel, one closer to the "perfect" sounding CD that people have come to expect. Live, one can get away with a few wrong notes, an out of tune instrument, a mixed up vocal line. But a recording must stand up to repeated listening, and those little mix-ups can become like the proverbial pea for the princess...

So, to take care of all us audio princesses out there, here's how we've been doing it:

Guitar tracks: It took the equivalent of about three days to do all 12 songs. Some of the time gets sucked into just getting a good sound. Then, there's finalizing the arrangement, tuning between every take, deciding on a good tempo (that can take a while!) and then playing with a click track to get the rhythm rock solid... and then the take and retake and retake, because it's not easy to play perfectly when you HAVE to.

Scratch tracks: Once we have solid guitar tracks, we spend time recording "scratch tracks" of vocals and sax/flute. Scratch tracks are not final; they are just placeholders for all other instrumentalists to work with when they do their own tracks. Steve sings all his songs with the guitar track, and I play all my flute and sax parts, but none of these are considered final because the idea is that once the full band is present on the recording, the feel will be different, and thus the way we sing or play with also be different, and theoretically more impassioned.

Then, we bring in all our friends, most of whom we paid either directly or with barter time:

Percussion: Most tracks have percussion, and that has meant studio time with a variety of percussionists, including Salil Sachdev on water drums, dumbek, and cajon; Brian Haley on conga/dumbek; Peter Smith on bodhran; Rob Rudin on bones and washboard. Several hours per drummer, per track.

Lead guitar: Tom Rohde joined us to put gorgeous background lines on "This Is the Day."

Bass: Sean Farias came along to put upright bass on most tracks. One full day.

Accordion: Evan Harlan appears on several tracks. Half a day.

Fiddle: Nikki Engstrom on several tracks. Half a day.

Piano: Ian Hudson, a former student of mine at Bridgewater, came in for a few hours to record piano on one track.

That brought us from October up to last week.

Sue's stuff: Final sax and flute, the equivalent of about a day and a half. These are now final tracks, so the time comes in simply getting the playing just right, creating solos and lines that work.

Between each studio date, we take copies of the tracks home, decide what we like and what we don't, what the track needs, what we want to fix. Fixes happen on the next studio date, which for us can be weeks apart from each other, because we have to coordinate our own schedules with the studio's available time. In a perfect world, we would have just scheduled a week solid in the studio but that wasn't possible, so we just do it little bits at a time...

Next up:

Next up: Chris Barret is coming in on Thursday to put some keyboard tracks on one song, and I'm also going to re-record one set of reels that so far just hasn't gelled for us, despite the fact that I've been playing it almost daily now for a year. No explanation... it just hasn't worked yet.

THEN, finally, Steve will go in, and hopefully in one night, do all the vocals. Then, I go back in to put harmony parts in. We do these separately, mostly so that we can adjust tuning. It's easy for me, as an untrained singer, to go out of tune... recording separately allows me to fix those spots that are a little out.

So, it looks like about two more full days of recording and we're done. But next is all the production work. Our engineer Rob Pemberton will spend about one full day mixing EACH track, which is about 12 days of work. After mixing is mastering, which means the engineer listens to each track and ensures consistency in volume and sound between each track so that the overall record sounds smooth. That's usually another full day. On major productions, mastering is often done by a dedicated "mastering house," but I think Rob does it all, in our case.

In the meantime, Soul Mama writes the liner notes, then we work with a photographer and designer on the CD design, which is also several days of work and lots of back and forth. Then, finally, we take the final graphics and the fully mastered CD to a duplication house. Lots of people use Disk Makers these days, and we most likely will, too.

How much will all this cost? Please don't ask. Suffice it to say, a lot less than it would've in the '70s and '80s, when studio time was running up to $300 an hour... Nowadays, a pro audio engineer alone costs from $50 to $75 an hour. Thanks to digital recording, however, lots of folks are recording at home. Prices AND costs have come down, and for the professional audio engineer, supply and demand has made a major dent in what used to be a lucrative career. Still, a great professional audio engineer can still make a living.

...If, of course, people keep making CDs, which relies on other people to keep buying CDs. This is why it's so hard for music professionals these days to make a living. Most of us think nothing of just "making a copy" of a CD and sharing it with friends. So, fewer and fewer people are actually buying music, making all this effort and expense feel ALMOST futile... except that it's not. Everyone expects pro musicians to have great recordings, and a top-notch recording is a calling card for any professional.

These days, musicians are trying to find ways to spend less on their recordings, and many are recording themselves at home. And lots of these CDs sound great. But the reality is that quality costs money and you just can't compare the skills of engineers like Rob Pemberton, who have spent their entire lives refining their professional skills, to Joe Schmoe (or Joe Lindsay), who bought professional recording software and are just learning to use it. Not to mention that the pro audio engineer has all the finest microphones, some of which are worth far more than my car (which isn't saying much), and the quality of the sound is really the next best thing to being there.

Buying a paint brush doesn't make you an artist. At the same time, an expensive canvas doesn't make a better painting. But for the artists who want a great painting AND great materials that will stand the test of time, some expenses are just worth it.

And hopefully you'll agree when you hear the result. Coming this summer.... please buy it for yourself and all your friends, and even a few enemies. The baby's gotta eat.