That Gig Life
Apr. 17th, 2025 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39Monday, I was up just a little before Jameson for breakfast and to feel nervous about the Steamboat Lillie rehearsal.
After Jameson went to the gym I practiced bass and packed my meals for Epic tomorrow.
Ate lunch in the car on the way to the musician's union building near downtown, which is where rehearsal would be held.
I haven't been to the union building for ages. Bad memories. When I first moved to Orlando Jameson lived in an apartment so I couldn't practice there without disturbing the neighbors. I'd practice at the union building whenever I could get a reservation for it...but 9 out of 10 times my rehearsal was halved by assholes (men) who insisted on rehearsing past their assigned time, or who would bust in in the middle of my time slot to banter and guffaw and use the space as a hang, and would glare at me for being there (even though I had more right to be there than any of them considering it was MY time slot.)
This was one of the reasons I left the union soon after. And then we moved to a house in Kissimmee anyway.
It all looked pretty much the same, maybe slightly cleaner but not much.
Three ladies were already there practicing. I introduced myself and got set up. Others were running late (people have kids and real jobs) so we used that time to try on our flapper dresses from Amazon. Our bandleader had wisely ordered multiple sizes, knowing that sometimes clothing online is not what it seems. My dress fit perfectly, and it is pale purple, almost the same color I wear as Phillipa in 1920s Paris at Epic Universe. Go figure!
When everyone else arrived we buckled down and plowed through the music piece by piece.
None of it is particularly hard, but some arrangements were pilfered online and are kind of "not the best" as far as making sense. Overall, though, people will have an easy time recognizing familiar Disney classics played in an old-timey jazz style. My favorite arrangements were the ones our bandleader did herself, you could tell she knows what she's doing as an arranger.
Overall this rehearsal went much better than I'd anticipated. Jazz is my biggest weakness as a musician, and improv jazz is worst of all. Playing it makes me feel inadequate and self-conscious. But this was a good group of patient people. And fortunately a lot of what was marked "solo" improv in my part turned out to be optional or for anyone to solo, not just trombone. Phew. It was a big relief not to have to improv much!
Back home I thanked my Morning Self for packing the Epic stuff so I wouldn't have to do it after a long day :p
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Tuesday. Halfway through April, wow.
They've moved our Epic sets by about an hour so I was able to get up an hour later, still 6:45am.
I argued with myself about bringing the bass trombone to Epic because with the schedule change I may actually have time to practice. Decided to bring it and at least have a try.
It was a normal day, quite hot and sunny. I did indeed find time to practice, only 30 minutes but way better than nothing. I was incredibly tired today, but so were a lot of other people, so maybe it's the heat or the alignments of the planets or something. Nothing else to report except that leaving work an hour later (5:30pm instead of 4:30pm) really, really sucks.
This was the "best route" according to the Googs:
What kind of squiggly-snake BS nonsense is this?!
Just horrific. And Epic isn't even open yet. Ugh.
By the time I got home I was truly exhausted, and thanked my Morning Self for insisting that I bring the bass to Epic because Evening Self had absolutely no energy for it. The morning version of me sure is stepping up this week! LOL
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Wednesday. Jameson had to get up at 8 for a doctor's appointment, so I just got up when he did.
Had breakfast and went out to get myself bagels and coffee but otherwise stayed at home and felt nervous about tonight's gig.
Practiced parts of the Steamboat music that I'm uncomfortable with, and tried to relax the rest of the time because I feel stressed and tired. Our third party has been getting our pay wrong, multiple weeks in a row, and it's stressing me out on top of misc other things.
When it got to be time to go I packed some snacks, trombone and music stand, trombone stand, mutes, in-ears, music, and dress shoes, then put on my Phillipa makeup and stockings (I had smuggled my makeup bag and stockings home from Epic for this haha.)
The venue was easy to find. Dragged all of my stuff inside and got set up.
From here, everything kind of went off the rails.
Problem 1: A child--I'm talking Gen Alpha--came running out from somewhere to do our sound setup, already on the phone with someone for help and with a panicked look on his face. Oh, lord. Sound check was supposed to be at 4pm and we did not play one note until 5pm. We found out later that the actual sound guy's grandfather had died and that's why he wasn't there...and we are all sympathetic to that. But the venue also could have told our bandleader that, so she could have had us come earlier, or made arrangements for us to warm up elsewhere while sound got their sh*t together instead of wasting an hour sitting on stage.
Problem 2: The bassist's bass started BREAKING. I don't exactly know how, but suspect that since it was hot outside and she'd had a long drive, she'd brought the car-warmed bass into the absolutely freezing theatre and it had started to crack (this is a VERY common problem with wooden instruments including clarinets, and is why unionized musicians insist on specific temperatures in performance spaces.) We all jumped on our phones and frantically started asking around for any bassists in the area to help...within the next hour.
Problem 3: Our trumpet player's audio pack died immediately meaning she'd have to do the entire show without the click track.
Problem 4: There were four songs that we didn't get to at rehearsal, that we were planning to cover at this sound check. Which we now couldn't do because due to the theater's audio crew (a child) not knowing what they were doing, we were now an hour behind schedule.
We did end up getting an emergency upright bass from a local bassist, god bless her.
And we did get our mixes together. But had absolutely no time to warm up or run any tunes.
And hey, the dresses were nice. Here's mine.
Problem 5: I have to apologize if this sounds snooty or rude, and I have loads of respect for our bandleader, who worked very hard to make this band happen. But truth is truth, and every musician on that stage with me would agree: most of these arrangements were simply NOT GOOD. Even during intermission our reed player was frantically making changes to her part to try and make it sound reasonable. There were so many times that I, a low brass instrument, was written to play ABOVE the trumpet and saxophone. That just doesn't sound good, which is why people don't WRITE that way :/
Problem 6: The click track was difficult to hear, and one of us (trumpet player) didn't have the click at all and so couldn't hear any count-offs. I tried to give her the count offs when I could, but *I* barely knew them either as we'd only had that one rehearsal and one run-through of each song (well, most songs.) The result was that we'd start with the click and quickly migrate away from it. So imagine trying to sing a song while another completely different song is playing loudly in the background. That's what it was like, and it was horrible. I stuck with it for a while but when we hit the Monsters, Inc. medley it's very syncopated AND I have a solo. I locked eyes with the drummer and we simultaneously reached out and yanked out our ear buds, lol. At least that was comedic, because the rest of the situation really wasn't.
Problem 7: Our poor bandleader had paid a professional photographer/videographer to come and take footage of this set, to use for media promotion to hopefully get the group hired for corporate events or weddings or whatever. Yikes. He probably got some decent visual footage...but I doubt much of our audio was usable the way things were going. Between the bad arrangements and not following the click track and the bassist being on an unfamiliar instrument and all of us having to play in a very cold space...it just didn't go very well.
Was it terrible? No. Every woman on that stage is an excellent musician. But circumstantially, we were screwed.
Even without the sound check issues, having a gig based on less-than-ideal arrangements, with only one run-through rehearsal, and using a click track when we had a perfectly excellent drummer, is what did us in. It's a shame. I was grateful that Jameson had NOT come out to support me for this one.
I do think that the idea of an all-female 1920s Disney jazz band is awesome!
But tonight it was too rushed, too unorganized, to come together.
Maybe in the future the parts can be refined, we can talk the bandleader out of using a click past the count-off, and we can have more rehearsals. I think all of that would make this a great band.
(but the odds of me playing with this group again, after that experience, are slim.)
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Thursday: I was supposed to have a bass lesson but Will is still recovering from surgery so it's a day off. Practice, some chores, the usual.
Friday: Another day off, I'll cook dinner and probably find other things that need to be done. Still have a lot of crap to list for sale online.
Saturday: Day at Epic.
Sunday: Easter, Easter church gig, eating candy all day with Jameson hopefully, making us a nice-but-basic Easter dinner. Thinking of my mom (Easter was her favorite holiday.)
Addendum: Someone made a video of our full set at Epic a few days ago! I didn't play my best (this was the last set of Tuesday and I was ungodly tired and unfocused) but now you can hear ALL of the lines and see Plume's big reveal, the percussion number, etc!
(and yes, we know we need to be miked, we've been asking for mics from day one and will continue to push for them!!)
After Jameson went to the gym I practiced bass and packed my meals for Epic tomorrow.
Ate lunch in the car on the way to the musician's union building near downtown, which is where rehearsal would be held.
I haven't been to the union building for ages. Bad memories. When I first moved to Orlando Jameson lived in an apartment so I couldn't practice there without disturbing the neighbors. I'd practice at the union building whenever I could get a reservation for it...but 9 out of 10 times my rehearsal was halved by assholes (men) who insisted on rehearsing past their assigned time, or who would bust in in the middle of my time slot to banter and guffaw and use the space as a hang, and would glare at me for being there (even though I had more right to be there than any of them considering it was MY time slot.)
This was one of the reasons I left the union soon after. And then we moved to a house in Kissimmee anyway.
It all looked pretty much the same, maybe slightly cleaner but not much.
Three ladies were already there practicing. I introduced myself and got set up. Others were running late (people have kids and real jobs) so we used that time to try on our flapper dresses from Amazon. Our bandleader had wisely ordered multiple sizes, knowing that sometimes clothing online is not what it seems. My dress fit perfectly, and it is pale purple, almost the same color I wear as Phillipa in 1920s Paris at Epic Universe. Go figure!
When everyone else arrived we buckled down and plowed through the music piece by piece.
None of it is particularly hard, but some arrangements were pilfered online and are kind of "not the best" as far as making sense. Overall, though, people will have an easy time recognizing familiar Disney classics played in an old-timey jazz style. My favorite arrangements were the ones our bandleader did herself, you could tell she knows what she's doing as an arranger.
Overall this rehearsal went much better than I'd anticipated. Jazz is my biggest weakness as a musician, and improv jazz is worst of all. Playing it makes me feel inadequate and self-conscious. But this was a good group of patient people. And fortunately a lot of what was marked "solo" improv in my part turned out to be optional or for anyone to solo, not just trombone. Phew. It was a big relief not to have to improv much!
Back home I thanked my Morning Self for packing the Epic stuff so I wouldn't have to do it after a long day :p
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday. Halfway through April, wow.
They've moved our Epic sets by about an hour so I was able to get up an hour later, still 6:45am.
I argued with myself about bringing the bass trombone to Epic because with the schedule change I may actually have time to practice. Decided to bring it and at least have a try.
It was a normal day, quite hot and sunny. I did indeed find time to practice, only 30 minutes but way better than nothing. I was incredibly tired today, but so were a lot of other people, so maybe it's the heat or the alignments of the planets or something. Nothing else to report except that leaving work an hour later (5:30pm instead of 4:30pm) really, really sucks.
This was the "best route" according to the Googs:
What kind of squiggly-snake BS nonsense is this?!
Just horrific. And Epic isn't even open yet. Ugh.
By the time I got home I was truly exhausted, and thanked my Morning Self for insisting that I bring the bass to Epic because Evening Self had absolutely no energy for it. The morning version of me sure is stepping up this week! LOL
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday. Jameson had to get up at 8 for a doctor's appointment, so I just got up when he did.
Had breakfast and went out to get myself bagels and coffee but otherwise stayed at home and felt nervous about tonight's gig.
Practiced parts of the Steamboat music that I'm uncomfortable with, and tried to relax the rest of the time because I feel stressed and tired. Our third party has been getting our pay wrong, multiple weeks in a row, and it's stressing me out on top of misc other things.
When it got to be time to go I packed some snacks, trombone and music stand, trombone stand, mutes, in-ears, music, and dress shoes, then put on my Phillipa makeup and stockings (I had smuggled my makeup bag and stockings home from Epic for this haha.)
The venue was easy to find. Dragged all of my stuff inside and got set up.
From here, everything kind of went off the rails.
Problem 1: A child--I'm talking Gen Alpha--came running out from somewhere to do our sound setup, already on the phone with someone for help and with a panicked look on his face. Oh, lord. Sound check was supposed to be at 4pm and we did not play one note until 5pm. We found out later that the actual sound guy's grandfather had died and that's why he wasn't there...and we are all sympathetic to that. But the venue also could have told our bandleader that, so she could have had us come earlier, or made arrangements for us to warm up elsewhere while sound got their sh*t together instead of wasting an hour sitting on stage.
Problem 2: The bassist's bass started BREAKING. I don't exactly know how, but suspect that since it was hot outside and she'd had a long drive, she'd brought the car-warmed bass into the absolutely freezing theatre and it had started to crack (this is a VERY common problem with wooden instruments including clarinets, and is why unionized musicians insist on specific temperatures in performance spaces.) We all jumped on our phones and frantically started asking around for any bassists in the area to help...within the next hour.
Problem 3: Our trumpet player's audio pack died immediately meaning she'd have to do the entire show without the click track.
Problem 4: There were four songs that we didn't get to at rehearsal, that we were planning to cover at this sound check. Which we now couldn't do because due to the theater's audio crew (a child) not knowing what they were doing, we were now an hour behind schedule.
We did end up getting an emergency upright bass from a local bassist, god bless her.
And we did get our mixes together. But had absolutely no time to warm up or run any tunes.
And hey, the dresses were nice. Here's mine.
Problem 5: I have to apologize if this sounds snooty or rude, and I have loads of respect for our bandleader, who worked very hard to make this band happen. But truth is truth, and every musician on that stage with me would agree: most of these arrangements were simply NOT GOOD. Even during intermission our reed player was frantically making changes to her part to try and make it sound reasonable. There were so many times that I, a low brass instrument, was written to play ABOVE the trumpet and saxophone. That just doesn't sound good, which is why people don't WRITE that way :/
Problem 6: The click track was difficult to hear, and one of us (trumpet player) didn't have the click at all and so couldn't hear any count-offs. I tried to give her the count offs when I could, but *I* barely knew them either as we'd only had that one rehearsal and one run-through of each song (well, most songs.) The result was that we'd start with the click and quickly migrate away from it. So imagine trying to sing a song while another completely different song is playing loudly in the background. That's what it was like, and it was horrible. I stuck with it for a while but when we hit the Monsters, Inc. medley it's very syncopated AND I have a solo. I locked eyes with the drummer and we simultaneously reached out and yanked out our ear buds, lol. At least that was comedic, because the rest of the situation really wasn't.
Problem 7: Our poor bandleader had paid a professional photographer/videographer to come and take footage of this set, to use for media promotion to hopefully get the group hired for corporate events or weddings or whatever. Yikes. He probably got some decent visual footage...but I doubt much of our audio was usable the way things were going. Between the bad arrangements and not following the click track and the bassist being on an unfamiliar instrument and all of us having to play in a very cold space...it just didn't go very well.
Was it terrible? No. Every woman on that stage is an excellent musician. But circumstantially, we were screwed.
Even without the sound check issues, having a gig based on less-than-ideal arrangements, with only one run-through rehearsal, and using a click track when we had a perfectly excellent drummer, is what did us in. It's a shame. I was grateful that Jameson had NOT come out to support me for this one.
I do think that the idea of an all-female 1920s Disney jazz band is awesome!
But tonight it was too rushed, too unorganized, to come together.
Maybe in the future the parts can be refined, we can talk the bandleader out of using a click past the count-off, and we can have more rehearsals. I think all of that would make this a great band.
(but the odds of me playing with this group again, after that experience, are slim.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday: I was supposed to have a bass lesson but Will is still recovering from surgery so it's a day off. Practice, some chores, the usual.
Friday: Another day off, I'll cook dinner and probably find other things that need to be done. Still have a lot of crap to list for sale online.
Saturday: Day at Epic.
Sunday: Easter, Easter church gig, eating candy all day with Jameson hopefully, making us a nice-but-basic Easter dinner. Thinking of my mom (Easter was her favorite holiday.)
Addendum: Someone made a video of our full set at Epic a few days ago! I didn't play my best (this was the last set of Tuesday and I was ungodly tired and unfocused) but now you can hear ALL of the lines and see Plume's big reveal, the percussion number, etc!
(and yes, we know we need to be miked, we've been asking for mics from day one and will continue to push for them!!)
no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-18 03:21 am (UTC)That commute looks miserable! The Orlando area traffic is such a beast. I've been debating applying for jobs I've seen at Disney and Universal but I'm not convinced I could deal with the traffic of living anywhere near the parks.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-18 12:00 pm (UTC)Same, hoping the bass is all right. I don't know if it was her actual good instrument or what, and I didn't even see for sure that cracking was the problem, just tried to deduce what might cause an unexpected breakage and temperature is usually the number one.
Absolutely miserable commute.
If you apply for jobs at the parks, just live near them and it's not a problem. Some of my coworkers walk or bike to work. Both parks have student/internship programs and dorms as well, in case you were to get a job and needed more time to find a place. Those have a shuttle/bus service to and from the parks. If you were gonna apply for a corporate job, it would be well worth living near the parks imo. At my level/entry level...not so much haha
no subject
Date: 2025-04-20 04:33 pm (UTC)I'd only be applying to corporate jobs with Walt Disney (there's one with the cruise line that would be based in Celebration that could maybe work for me) and then a few corporate jobs with Universal. I do think we'd have to live near the parks so the commute wouldn't totally suck but then there's having to deal with theme park traffic all the time, even when you just want to go do something on the weekend. That part is NOT appealing, though I suppose it would be tolerable with the right salary (and neither of those corps is forthcoming about salary range on their job postings, sigh).