The Christmas Gigs

There was a  moment in time at one of our Christmas Gigs last weekend. Christine looked up at the audience during Down in Yon Forest, and saw some of those there were visibly moved by the song. There were tears in their eyes, and it occurred to her that it is no coincidence that the songs which moved them are the songs we need to be "in the zone" to perform. Are we "in the zone" to perform all of the songs? Well in a way, but it's different for each and every song and part of the process of preparing for a performance is finding what we think the feel of each one is. And by doing three gigs in a row we found we both, independently and together, relaxed into the feel for each song and became more and more immersed. 

We take care when creating set lists to vary the feel pace and textures. And so in our Christmas Gig the singing of The Holly and the Ivy to two different tunes at the same time gives us all a giggle or two, in fact sometimes literally! We spend a lot of time working to listen intently to each other and make the music the best we can. Having given ourselves the task of singing this carol to two tunes simultaneously, one in 3/4 and one in 6/8 time, at first we found the only way to manage it was to sing back to back so we couldn't see each other and could just listen to how the two tunes fitted together. Happily we don't need to perform them back to back. Always a sense of triumph at the end for both us and the audience! One more Christmas Gig to go until next year. 

Anna & Elizabeth

Last Sunday evening, Fiddle and Faff played on Radio Kent's Folk Show which goes out every Sunday evening at 9pm.  We were delighted to meet the presenter, Doug Welch, and to play four of our songs.  The evening also involved a chat with Doug about Fiddle and Faff, and the experience of doing this really made us think about our work and how we approach creating a performance which engages people.  Doug asked us about our influences, and we talked about the gig by Anna & Elizabeth at The Bower House in Maidstone which we'd attended earlier in the year.  Anna & Elizabeth are singers and instrumentalists whose sparse and atmospheric arrangements of traditional Appalachian mountain ballads have brought them international acclaim.  

When we heard them we were captivated by the way their performances draw the audience into their world.  Their singing is truthful and they tell the story from right inside the song. Check them out for yourselves........./http://www.annaandelizabeth.com/

Playing in the Present Moment

It's a funny thing playing music. It's just music, and yet we want to play in the best way we can. We hear other people play and are inspired, but we don't want to play like them, we want to play like us. We want to find our own voice.
And learning the art of improvisation in music is a way in which players can find their voice, their vocabulary and tease out little technical issues which could do with some attention.
Last week I was fortunate to spend 4 days with a small group of fiddle players learning the art of improvisation with Peter Knight. Peter played for many years with Steeleye Span and currently tours with his trio Gigspanner. His own journey in music was significantly altered when he met and played with master of improvisation, saxophonist Trevor Watts. Improvisation has changed the way Peter plays and creates. His courses are an opportunity for other musicians to give attention to their own relationship with music and learn the valuable art of responding in the moment to what other people are playing. Such a valuable thing to learn which then informs everything else they play.
From time to time we hear people say they want to learn to live in the present moment, and being in a room with four fiddle players making music that is based on nothing other than what each of them play there and then, is for me a way of doing just that.

Christine

Finding Flow

I think it's very interesting that for many of us there are all sorts of blockages that prevent the natural flow of creativity from emerging.....for singers in singing workshops there may be long-held beliefs about the validity of their own voices, for example which prevents them from releasing their natural voice and sharing it with others.  And for me, there is an interesting moment that happens when we are working on a new arrangement after we have identified a 'feel' and found our way into a song a bit, and then we start to use the material to work an instrumental section.  It's a moment when there is a blockage between the flow that has happened in the vocal bits and the desire to translate that into an instrumental passage......and I have found that the way to unblock the blockage is to gently give it time and attention trusting that the deeper forces at work will allow the instrumental to emerge.  This notion of the flow in creativity is a very physical thing - our whole bodies are involved in our music-making - and by actively working to develop a greater physical fluidity I think we can hugely assist in the flow of music from within us.  One way of developing this fluidity is the practice of Medau - which I usually describe as a sort of danced yoga.  The quality of movement is paramount in Medau which encourages participants to literally breathe life and movement into their bodies.  The learning from Medau helps us translate this physical flow in to the musical flow both in our own playing and in playing and singing with others.
Lissie

Amazing Maisery!

A little trip down to Sussex for Fiddle & Faff last weekend, when we went to a vocal harmony workshop led by the amazing 'Lady Maisery' at Lewes Saturday Folk Club.  Lady Maisery is a trio of musicians Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans & Hazel Askew whose music has been nominated for the Folk Awards.  Their vocal harmony is particularly skillful and appealing and so we were very excited by the prospect of a day working with them.

Listening to them we are drawn into their sound world and we really enjoyed their generosity in sharing how they work with the workshop participants.  By the end of the day, those who attended had ways into making their own arrangements at their fingertips. On our journey home we discussed how to further develop our own singing days and look forward to putting this into practice in November. 

The evening concert was a delight.  Their distinctive vocal harmony together with the instruments they play (accordion, fiddle, harp, concertina, banjo), gave us a feast of songs and tunes.  One of their hallmarks is vocalising or 'diddling' to various carefully chosen syllables resulting in rhythmic exciting renditions of  tunes.  This was something that we had explored together in the workshop and it was a joy to hear them performed expertly in the evening.
www.ladymaisery.com

Inspiring Improvisations

It was a  privilege to spend last Saturday with musicians, some very accomplished, some describing themselves as beginners, making music simply because we can. With no agenda other than to enjoy creating, we spent some time making music from the simplest elements of pulse and rhythm and from our favourite sounds on our instruments. There were some extraordinary moments of being in the music together, when communication flowed and the sense of the music being greater than the sum of the parts. was very present. It is remarkable how musicians, whatever their technical ability, can express themselves in the way in which they play. Open strings on violins played with such variety and panache, beautiful melodies created out of a few notes on the recorder, stunning riffs on cello and double bass giving flight to melodies that people didn't know they had the ability to play. At times there were conversations about the meanings of words that describe elements of music. And, helpful as words can be at times, definitions are not necessary to be in the same place at the same time with others who we have not met before and play music together. An experience to be repeated before too long. 

Stunning Sounds!

Stunning sounds made by those who attended our latest Singing Workshop last Saturday. As part of our warm up we were all invited to sing any note, and when we needed to take a breath, choose a different note to add to the mix. A truly remarkable sound, which drew the ear, perhaps because each of the singers found they were listening so intently. It has been remarked by people listening to our gigs and CD that they find our music has a healing quality.  In the freedom offered by not having to 'get it right' to start with, and then immersing ourselves in the melee of sounds, there was a real healing quality to this gentle warm-up too.  At the start of the morning, we had asked our singers just to tell us their name and perhaps something about themselves.  The responses ranged from those who felt they were quite confident singers to those who said that they only sing in the bath and had very little confidence in their own voices.  Hopefully by the end of this beautiful warm-up everyone felt that they could not only contribute very meaningfully, but that their confidence was raised for everything else that followed.  And so from there we went on to explore several songs in arrangements new and old with a bit of improvising thrown in for good measure. 

A great place to sing, the Garden Room at The Blackthorn Trust lends itself to such a workshop. Given the scrumptious lunch improvised by Andy in the Blackthorn Cafe we all felt thoroughly spoilt.  Here's to the next one - we appear to have someone signed up already who in conversation yesterday said, "I can't sing." To which Lissie, with certainty, gently replied, " Yes you can."

Creative Conversations

Welcome to the very first post on our blog!  And the first thing we'd like to share with you is all about stained glass making!  Not quite what you expected, I should think, but bear with us and you'll find out how it has impacted our music-making just lately.  

So, our latest little adventure started with a surprise birthday outing for Lissie that Christine had arranged.  It was only on the day itself that Lissie discovered that Christine had booked a lesson in making stained glass for us both with the delightful Catherine Briggs in Norfolk.  Lissie has always loved stained glass; the beautiful interplay of light and colour that casts patterns beyond the glass itself and probably communicated this to Christine when we were leading a singing workshop at The Blackthorn Trust in Maidstone, where they have examples of the stained glass made there.  And so she was just delighted that we were to have a go at making it ourselves.

We had Catherine all to ourselves for the day, and she proved to be an excellent teacher, allowing us to develop our own designs as well as equipping us with the skills that we needed.  We really enjoyed chatting to her during the day about the creative process and the similarities between how she finds a starting point for her designs and how we find a starting point for our songs.  We found common ground in taking inspiration from first-hand experience - for her the beach is a rich source of objects and ideas, and for us it may be a word or a specific image - and seeing where it takes us.  
















And talking of words......whilst chatting to Catherine, we discovered two words that we hadn't come across before - maybe they are peculiar to Norfolk?  Catherine told us that we must have been 'jiffling' because our work mats were 'ruckled'!  We loved the sound and imagery of those words and on our return home they have become embryos of tunes and so our creative process continues!

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