The restrictions in England have been relaxed a little and we are allowed to meet up with one person from outside our household. My partner in , Danielle, lives alone and has been feeling very isolated. We have been communicating on-line and taking part in some Zoom open mic sessions, but you cannot play together remotely due to delay issues. We decided to meet up, whilst maintaining physical distance. Letchworth is convenient and so we cycled there with our musical gear. I took my cheap little soprano ukulele and Danielle brought one of her clarinets.
We ended up on Norton Common, which is a lovely area of woodland in the town. We found a bench in an avenue of trees. It was a memorial bench to someone who died very young and there were fresh flowers tied to it. We sat at opposite ends and minimised any contact. Danielle even wiped down her tablet with gel so I could use it for chord charts.
We played there for over an hour. It is just great to play together again after all this time.
This is Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt.
This was our last tune. We did a few that I sang on to refresh our memories. There quite a lot of people around and many of them seemed to enjoy the music. We would have played even if nobody was around. Some took pictures or video and we got some nice comments. It may be the first live music many of them have heard in months. One lady asked if we were professionals, so I will take that as praise.
It was a lovely day to be out and I was glad of some shade or I may have got burnt. Just after we sat down a jay landed just next to us. That is the best view I have ever had of this bird. It just seemed to be a good day for nature.
I really hope we can do more sessions like this. We play for fun and I have missed collaborating.
I hope everyone is doing okay and that life resumes some sort of normality soon. It just looks like it will not be like before for a while yet. There is not much chance of jamming lots of bodies into a small venue for gigs, but open air music like this ought to be possible.
Rock on!
Update: Here are a couple more videos. These were doing with a little Zoom camera. Unfortunately the sound balance is not great. We need more closer to the mic. Danielle forgot to put in the memory card, so we used the one from my phone, but that did not have space for much.