Three Saras

Well, this was fun. And when I say "fun," what I really mean is it was an extreme exercise of shooting, playing, and editing that took most of a day. I'm sure there's an app that will do it all much more easily, but I don't have it. For me it involves getting the lights right - yeah, I'm too old (and vain) to allow every wrinkle and bag to show up; exposure and settings on the EOS R (I've said it before, but sometimes I think flying a jet plane would be easier than operating the new cameras with the many layers of menus and customizable functions) - and that's the easy part, because the next thing that has to happen is I have to create an acceptable initial track - in this case it was the fiddle melody - and the word acceptable, for me anyway, means perfect, which means doing it over and over and over, and still never really being happy with the result. Next, it goes into my video editor on my computer and I save it as an mp4 that I can watch on my phone and play along to which is not as easy as it sounds. When playing with real people there's a subtle micro-adjusting to each other that is going on constantly. When playing with one's self, the adjustment is one-way. After I've recorded everything to my reasonable satisfaction, I layer all the tracks in my video editor on my computer. The most time-consuming part of the process is syncing all of the audio waves, both visually and sound-wise (the clap at the beginning of each track is key). The more advanced video editors can auto-sync; mine does not, and involves lots of manual sliding of tracks, matching the audio wave as close as possible. And while I did a decent job of syncing the tracks here, you can still hear where my playing got off track from myself, at least I can. Then there's the trimming, adding transitions, cropping, and arranging. Oh yeah, and usually some time-wasting tech issue along the way. By the end of the day, I am totally sick of looking at myself (and I usually end up with a hair cut the next day), and I don't ever want to hear or play that tune again.

All of that is a long way of saying "Here is three of me playing Da Slockit Light on (L-R) fiddle, bouzouki, and mandolin." (This is in lieu of my being in Ennis, Co. Clare, where I was scheduled to be at this very moment, playing music with my friends.)