Improvisation with an ensemble (part 3) 3.3 and 3.4

Our group was performing this week.  I had practiced the awkward corners of the heads (definitely not fiddle friendly) during the week.  There is a section that jumps across two strings and doesn't lie under the fingers well at all. But by the performance I had it OK. 

We spent the first half hour running the Bb blues a few times and working out an intro and outdo.  Getting in and out is as important as the rest. We decided that Sam would play us in with four bars.  Then Keiran and I would play the heads.  We were then going to do question and answer improvisation all the way through and then back to the heads to finish. It went fine in rehearsal. 

 Keiran and I were soloing with Sam on piano chords and Dean on bass notes.  

How did the performance feel?  Given we had only been playing as an ensemble for a few hours it went OK.  Rehearsal felt relaxed and everyone worked as a team.  We felt we had a soild plan.

The actual performance felt OK from the perspective of soloing.  The bass seemed to go a bit out of synch with the chords.  Its probably quite difficult to hear from one side of the stage to the other (where they both sat).  Kieran and I were in the middle. We kept soloing to the correct chords - it was quite difficult though with different chords going at the same time. 

We ran through the soloing one more time than we had originally planned - really because to took a while for the band to tighten up.  Then Kieran and I were on the heads again together.  I was reasonably pleased with my soloing although I will keep working to improve riffs and fluency. I did manage to avoid landing on the root most of the time.

I quite enjoyed it. But it wasn't as good as rehearsals.  Ah well - things happen live on stage and you just have to improvise - literally! I think if we were to play again I would arrange for the bass and piano players to  be closer to each other. perhaps that would have helped.