I had a worrying
moment prior to Thursday’s Mostly Comedy, when I couldn’t remember a chord to the song Glyn and I were performing that night.
This wouldn’t usually be a problem, as my musical ability is such that I’d normally be able to plug the mental gap (*smug face*), but the fact I was accompanying myself on the ukulele instead of a guitar or piano and am less familiar with its shapes, plus I'm severely out of practice, made it harder to retrieve the missing chord from the dim, dark recesses of my brain.
The bizarre thing was, I'd remembered the song perfectly when I'd rattled through it the previous day. Then something about the stress of the set-up meant that when it came to doing a sound-check, the second chord vanished from my memory; the more I tried to remember it, the further it wriggled from my grasp. This made me panic, as I was the one who wrote the song; if I'd forgotten it, there was nobody to turn to: it would be gone forever.
My first port of call was the internet. I looked the song up on YouTube - there’s an old video of me playing it - but despite a lot of squinting, I couldn’t make out the fingering. Then, suddenly without warning, the missing chord came back; thank God for musical mercies. From now on, I won’t leave the house without some manuscript paper, a photographer and a scribe.
This wouldn’t usually be a problem, as my musical ability is such that I’d normally be able to plug the mental gap (*smug face*), but the fact I was accompanying myself on the ukulele instead of a guitar or piano and am less familiar with its shapes, plus I'm severely out of practice, made it harder to retrieve the missing chord from the dim, dark recesses of my brain.
The bizarre thing was, I'd remembered the song perfectly when I'd rattled through it the previous day. Then something about the stress of the set-up meant that when it came to doing a sound-check, the second chord vanished from my memory; the more I tried to remember it, the further it wriggled from my grasp. This made me panic, as I was the one who wrote the song; if I'd forgotten it, there was nobody to turn to: it would be gone forever.
My first port of call was the internet. I looked the song up on YouTube - there’s an old video of me playing it - but despite a lot of squinting, I couldn’t make out the fingering. Then, suddenly without warning, the missing chord came back; thank God for musical mercies. From now on, I won’t leave the house without some manuscript paper, a photographer and a scribe.
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