Day Two: Open Stage
On this day I would have my master class. I did not know who was going to teach me yet, I did not state a preference when I filled in my registration form for the festival. A bit of a surprise it would be.
Like yesterday, I arrived by private taxi, before ten I was in Theatre Concordia. It was nice and quiet over there, besides the organisers there were a few people somnolently enjoying a cup of coffee.
The open stage gave me a glad eye. I decided to take the opportunity, folded out my music stand and foot stool and stationed myself and my guitar on the relatively tight spot which was reserved for all who wanted to play some in public.
It was so nice and quiet, that I could play without amplification. ;-) An additional advantage of this small audience was, that I did not attract too much attention, a nice thought against stage fright!
I had studied a few Renaissance lute pieces for my master class, which I got out reasonably. This programme was not that extended, so I experienced the advantage of my musical collection, called Classical Vademecum and just played some tunes from the sheets. If you want the pieces from the Classical Vademecum, just take a look in the Solo’s section of the DOS Amigos department of this website.
While time passed, the crowd entered Theatre Concordia. So Paul came in, set up the microphones and switched on the amplifier. All that equipment took a bit of space, so I noticed another disadvantage of playing from the score, I got cramped between music and microphone stands. Never mind, this was all the space I got. A matter of moving up a bit and trying not to hit the microphones with the guitar.
Amplification provides a quite different perception of your own play: I could hear the loudspeakers about two meters away much better than the direct sound from my guitar. Anyway, for some tones, apparently the characteristics of the microphones played an important role here. I did not particularly like this effect, your play becomes a bit desultory, as if the notes you hear get a noticeable delay with reference to the notes you think you play. I almost lost synchronisation at times.