16th November 2008

I was musing on the fortunes of sessions recently because of two events.

The first was our mixed lumpy session on Thursdays at the Bear in Faversham where the week before last, the musicians outnumbered the audience. I swear there were 16 musicians there or possibly more. Well, there were at least 16 bodies in musician's corner bearing instruments. And a singer or two.

There is a problem with sessions that get quite big and that is that they get mushy - the sound that is. It gets harder to play against the background. It's not that there are too many melody instruments, it's often that there are too many accompanists (including cutlery). Still I would rather see too many than too few. Oh, and the variety of tunings increases of course with the number of instruments. Sometimes it gets difficult to play because some instruments are 'not quite in'. Now I know it's not the boxes because they're static (although I have come across more than one concertina in the 'old' tuning). So it's the strings and woodwind. I know my stringed instruments change with the temperature and humidity levels throughout an evening.

The second event was our last Irish session on Wednesday in The Anchor at Wingham (or 'The Spoonerism' as we call it). There were just 4 of us - and 3 were banjos. The fourth was a flute. He is an explosives expert in real life - I keep thinking Blaster Bates for some reason. So 3 banjos - normally a daunting prospect but we enjoyed ourselves and didn't drown the flute at all.

One way to be less unpopular with a banjo is to take two instruments - a melody instrument (banjo) and a chord maker (guitar, bouzouki etc). Two of us regularly alternate banjo and bouzouki so that it does not get too imbalanced. Oh and the Irish session does have a tune-up - even if the pipes only stay in for one set! :-) Overall, the Irish sessions are just more fastidious about tuning which makes the music better. Much better.

Let's see what this week brings ................