I’ve been sitting out on the front porch every morning, practicing the slow session’s tune of the month on the mandolin. Last week, the kids who just moved in across the street heard me and wound up sitting in the lawn and just listening. That was a cool moment :)
Last night was the full session. Brought my mandolin this time, and, yes, confirmed, I can just about keep up with all the weird tunues they’re playing. Hopping around to A major and E major, good greif. No wonder I couldn’t keep up on the bagpipes.
This marks the halfway point between slow sessions, so it’s time to switch to the uilleann pipes (indoors). The kids across the street were enchanted, I felt kind of bad having to fart around learning where all the notes were. I played them a slow aire as a compensation prize. Then I grabbed the bouzouki and spent a couple minutes going over a reel I learned last night, and the young boy flew out the front door doing his best notion of what a jig looks like.
This landed particularly well after listening to the first episode of the Session Etiquette podcast, where the singer from Altan mentioned that children won’t hold back if they like or dislike something.`