srshea -> RE: Accompanying a Dance Class!?! God, Help Me. (Dec. 8 2008 0:32:18)
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Well, I survived, and overall I’d say it went “alright”. We started off with bulerias, which I had told the instructor was not my strongest suit, so I guess it was a bit of a trial by fire. Moved on to tangos which went much smoother, and we spent much of the rest of the class on that. Finished up with some sevillanas which I made a total hash of due to my right hand being wiped out from repeating the same tangos compas over and over for fifteen/twenty minutes. So, there were some rough spots to be sure, and I felt like I was way over my head and totally faking it more than once, but in the end I felt pretty good about it and encouraged about doing it again in the future. Wasn’t a whole lot in the way of concrete, tangible lessons learned, but the experience of feeling things out and getting a vaguely intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t and how and why was a good, healthy start, I think. One tangible take-away was learning to what extent I can just focus on knocking out a solid rhythm and not worry about certain other things. It hadn’t occurred to me that all the stomping and clomping would drown out some of the minor, non rhythmic, imperfections in my playing. So, realizing that no one was really going to notice I if I didn’t finger each and every chord perfectly and cleanly really took a lot of pressure off and allowed me to forget about my left hand and just concentrate on strumming and trying to project a good, solid compas, hitting the accents, etc. We met a second time on Saturday, which was, again, an episode of hit and miss, trial and error experimentation, but ultimately another nudge in the right direction. The instructor doesn’t actually have a lot of experience working with a live guitar player, so I think I’m going to be largely on my own in terms of working out what to play and when, without much guidance. So, I’ve got my work cut out for me. The situation has its ups and downs: I’m able to strum basic stuff over and over, which allows them to work on basic steps for long stretches of time in a way that working with recorded music doesn’t. But, by that same token, they’re used to dancing to music infinitely tighter and more sophisticated than my rudimentary fiddling, so….. When I showed up for the first class the instructor played me a professional, high-level, modern, syncopated bulerias that they had been working with, which had little to no relation to my own bargain-basement, entry-level bulerias, and asked if I could play something like that. Yikes. So, got another one coming up Thursday. I think the plan of action ‘til then is to duct tape the metronome to the side of my head and then work out the simplest possible, but still useable, stuff to play, stuff with some “space” in it, that’s not too busy and is easier to play for long stretches. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions pop in the coming weeks, so, in the meantime, thanks again for all the preliminary advice and words of encouragement. It really is appreciated. Adam
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