Performance by jotur - Cathy Turner from Recital #12 - 2008-11-15
- Performer: jotur - Cathy Turner
- Location: Santa Fe, NM
- Experience: 2 years of lessons in my mid-teens, 30+ years off, playing for dancing since 1995
- Composer:
- Piece: Stone's Rag
- Duration: 139
- Music Link: click to play
- Video Link:
- Music Source: Fiddler's Fakebook
- Instrument: Casio Privia PX-100
- Recording Method: keyboard to PC, audacity
- Info: The band I'm in played for a weekend-long contra dance camp a couple of weeks ago, and we needed everything we had ever learned and then some in order to have enough sets to not bore everyone with a bunch of repeats. One of our older sets included this rag, but we didn't really, as a group, get it back up to speed. So, anticipating that we'd need it anyway, I revived it as a piano rag, like we had played it a couple of years ago. I made up enough variations of the first rag to be able to play it 6 times thru, and then did 4 variations of Stone's, and the fiddles did a couple. We ended up not using the set for a contra, but used the other rag, slowed down and swung, for an impromptu swing workshop, and this one, slowed down, for a choreographed shottish workshop :D So it all payed off. And - I got a recital piece thrown in, sort of free. For a week after the camp my fingers were rubber, and they're really not quite back yet, and I'm pretty burnt out on this, but here it is, 4 variations at 116, sort of. Pretend like you're contra dancing, and there are also guitars, mandolins, and bodhrans going, and you won't hear the mistakes :D
This also shows my beginning attempts to be able to improvise. None of this is actually improvised - it's all carefully rehearsed bits that I can mix and match. But I find, if I'm playing it a lot, that the mix and match comes at non-planned times, so it's varied subconsciously, or maybe unconsciously. So my hope is that maybe someday I'll have enough variations inside me that I can actually begin, at slower speeds, to be able to alter things on the fly. It's a thought -