Chiff and Fipple Forums

Hey Folks:
I've wondered this a long time but ever asked you until today. Dp you ever play in a public space because you have time and the desire? Details.
Regis

I used to, but only enjoyed it if I was playing with others.

My wife does not drive. She is active in several retiree and community groups. When I drive her to her meetings I will sometimes seek out a library courtyard or similar space at community centers to run through some tunes on whistle or flute.
I was quite chagrinned the first time someone tried to press some cash onto me. . .I was not trying to busk
The other side of that coin; I´ve been run off from some spaces for that very reason Again, not busking, just whiling away some time.

Bob

A gentleman never tells......
(For any of you here long enough
what else did you think I’d say?)

Thanks for the replies.
I started playing harmonica while I pumped gas back in President George W. Bush's Administration because I was distracting myself from the $1.49/gallon because I thought that was a crazy price!

I'll play anywhere if I have to wait for someone, usually in parking lots. I haven't played in the grocery store check out line in a long while. (My walking cane is a flute too.)

Sean "I was quite chagrinned the first time someone tried to press some cash onto me. . .I was not trying to busk"

I had the same happen while metal detecting on a beach once. Two children ran up and offered me a note, and I had to try to explain that detecting was a pastime. I felt ungrateful for refusing them.

For busking I was never hassled at all, though that was in the early 90's. There were no drugs either, nor seen nor offered amongst the different crowds of people living at street level I was with. I expect it would not be such a straightforward picture nowadays in some countries. In Spain busking is with licence only now, for example...there was a video clip of an old flower seller in my hometown getting stopped and fined for not having a permit that caught a lot of attention. Historically, all this sort of activity was part of the life of the place, and it wasn't supervised or restricted.

OP

We would sit on the sidewall of the promenade in Spain and play guitar sometimes. Other times a friend who had a bar with stage encouraged performance there, though I never took the stage, we would often be playing away in a corner. Local (I mean really local) flamenco would be very informal also, usually in a bar or restaurant. I suppose both of those equate to session playing a bit.

If you just go and start playing somewhere, often you get people wondering what you are about, it depends if you are playing with (towards) another, or more openly. Though I haven't done so for a long time, I have quietly watched how that is for others. Some passers by appreciate, others look down on it, others ignore. I think if I were to play in public at all for the sake of it, it would be while at a table on a terrace of a restaurant or similar. If not, somewhere quiet and relatively secluded. Also, in a town hearing neighbours playing music is nice, when they are playing at home, it just adds a touch to the evenings, but that is more for warmer climate probably, where people are outside or windows left open and so on.

I used to take the pipes (C flat set) and a stool and go sit on the sidewalk where it follows the exit stream from a local park's lake:

The sound off the concrete and water has its own amplifying effect, and it stays cool there in the middle of the summer heat.

dave boling

At church-- if we're talking about "playing deliberately in public as a performance."

My practice of both whistle and recorder is usually in a local park because there's no way I can practice ethically in my apartment with the very thin walls (yeah, I could mute the whistle significantly, and sometimes do, but it's also not desirable to me to play without the proper tone all the time). I'm not fond of it, because it also doesn't feel polite to other people in the park and surrounding houses; nobody wants to have to listen to me (especially as I'm very bad at recorder, or when I'm working on something new), but still better than right on the other side of the wall, I suppose. And having other people around is highly-uncomfortable to me as sometimes fascinated kids will wander over, or people will want to ask me about it, or will even think they have to walk over and applaud, and I'm not there meaning to give a performance or be an ambassador, I just want to play my instrument on my own but unfortunately I'm not acquainted with any soundproof rooms and am nowhere near any unpopulated areas (or I'd prefer to utilize those). (In winter, I just don't get practice.)

At the beginning of the pandemic, a music friend and I played whistle out on her (condo) porch a couple times (briefly. It was March or April in Michigan, remember). None of her neighbors threw rotten tomatoes but, like the people whose houses abut the parks in which I play, for all I know they were plotting all the elaborate ways they wanted to murder us but didn't want to cause a scene by saying anything. In that case, it was short enough and we played a variety of tunes (rather than the same thing over and over and over and oVeR and OvEr and...) so it maybe wasn't so bad.

Katharine wrote: ↑Sun Oct 02, 2022 5:28 pm

My practice of both whistle and recorder is usually in a local park because there's no way I can practice ethically in my apartment with the very thin walls...

https://electricscotland.com/humour/h14.htm

I often play my whistle on breaks. Because of where I work I often am playing where a whole lunch group of elementary kids could see (and hear) me. Just last week I received a letter delivered by the 3rd grade teacher from a student, telling me they liked my playing, lol.

Now for the real answer. In my misspent youth
when I lived in Boston in the early 1980’s,
I made part of my living by busking in the
subway at Park St. Station playing my
uilleann practice set and tin whistle
and flute.
The Green Line platform was a lot quieter
to play on but downstairs on the Red Line
you’d make quite a bit more money.
One evening on the Green Line platform I
had the good fortune of meeting John Fleagle
who was one of the most extraordinary musicians
I’ve ever played with. We started talking and out of
his backpack he produced a rebec and tenor cornetto.
We played a bunch of Tielman Susato and
Michael Praetorius dance tunes, some Irish,
Scottish and Breton tunes and some of Playfords tunes that evening.
After that whenever we played together he had his fiddle
and hummelchen which blended beautifully with my
practice set.

Another place was the foyer of the Harvard Coop
at Harvard Square. It was a great place to play
as you were out of the elements and with the tile
floor and glass of the windows it always sounded
great and projected out onto the street.

In the mid to late 80’s after I moved back behind
the Anthracite Curtain, I would go to NYC to play
at various sessions. When I played at or started the
session at the Eagle Tavern on 14th St., I’d go
into Manhattan around 4 pm take the subway to
Greenwich Village and play on the steps of the bank
on the Southeast corner of 7th Ave. and 4th St.
on the 4th St. side which had a atm machine on either side of the steps.
Nothing like a captive audience with cash in their hands.
Speaking of John Fleagle again, as I said, he was a truly
remarkable musician. In addition to the rebec, fiddle,
cornetto and hummelchen he also played the bass guitar and upright bass,
the lute, the oud, the bombard and a medieval harp and hurdy gurdy
that he constructed himself. As a singer of early music, he had no parallel.

https://youtu.be/43OmbCfAwZE
https://youtu.be/X2wlOgSc_bg

oleorezinator wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 6:43 pm... and play on the steps of the bank ...
which had a atm machine on either side of the steps.
Nothing like a captive audience with cash in their hands.

And that, friends, is acumen.

Katharine wrote: ↑Sun Oct 02, 2022 5:28 pm At church-- if we're talking about "playing deliberately in public as a performance."

My practice of both whistle and recorder is usually in a local park because there's no way I can practice ethically in my apartment with the very thin walls (yeah, I could mute the whistle significantly, and sometimes do, but it's also not desirable to me to play without the proper tone all the time). I'm not fond of it, because it also doesn't feel polite to other people in the park and surrounding houses; nobody wants to have to listen to me (especially as I'm very bad at recorder, or when I'm working on something new), but still better than right on the other side of the wall, I suppose. And having other people around is highly-uncomfortable to me as sometimes fascinated kids will wander over, or people will want to ask me about it, or will even think they have to walk over and applaud, and I'm not there meaning to give a performance or be an ambassador, I just want to play my instrument on my own but unfortunately I'm not acquainted with any soundproof rooms and am nowhere near any unpopulated areas (or I'd prefer to utilize those). (In winter, I just don't get practice.)

At the beginning of the pandemic, a music friend and I played whistle out on her (condo) porch a couple times (briefly. It was March or April in Michigan, remember). None of her neighbors threw rotten tomatoes but, like the people whose houses abut the parks in which I play, for all I know they were plotting all the elaborate ways they wanted to murder us but didn't want to cause a scene by saying anything. In that case, it was short enough and we played a variety of tunes (rather than the same thing over and over and over and over and OvEr and...) so it maybe wasn't so bad.

During Covid I was really frustrated because I could not practice flute in the house without driving my family crazy. When weather allowed I would sneak out to relatively isolated public spaces and practice, or practice in the car. I got a "WARBL" midi whistle to practice tunes silently on headphones. The whole thing was very frustrating

Only if you count playing in workshops in outdoor festivals.

Wow, what a great set of stories here.

Way back when I first started in 2004, I worked at BCBSFL in Jacksonville, and that huge corporate campus has a lake (complete with geese) and is lined by a sidewalk with benches covered by oak trees. I would sit out there at lunch and practice. It was good for me to try to shake some of the performance fright, as others would walk around the lake on their lunch break.

Now, after taking a long break from playing and living in a railroad town, I go down to our local train station that is pretty much a gaggle of office suites and local sports hall of fame. The platform out back near the track is 99% always abandoned and I play back there both whistle and flute, although I try to play through tunes instead of practice parts over and over simply because there are people around occasionally and there's a Virtual Rail Fan camera on top of the platform that potentially could "hear" me. I did not realize this until about a week or so ago. At first I was embarrassed, but then I tested it one day and I'm thinking the flute is not loud enough to be caught by the camera's microphone.

Eric