sessions with mics

A continuation of the thread on banjo amplification.

……..recently I’ve found myself doing a session in a large pub that is sooo crowded and noisy that we have to set up ‘communal’ mics in the center of the circle. This was in response to the pub owner’s request, as well as many of the musicians who complained about not being able to hear themselves. Once that happened it seemed a natural evolution to move to an on-board mic/pickup system for myself and the accordion player (both of us being ‘required attendees’). I admit that the idea of mics at a session was abhorent to me originally but it has actually worked out pretty well.

Perhaps this is fodder for a ‘serious’ thread. Any other mic’d sessions out there??? And if so, how do you handle it??? Techically and emotionally 🙂

One word. Oxymoron

I think it’s kind of weird, myself, because a session is for the musos, not for an audience, but then of course you must take into consideration that often the session is only there because the landlord believes it brings in the punters and that must be a consideration…

There is no consideration. A session is a session, and a gig is a gig. The difference being, there is no audience at a session. (Only punters making a racket, which I’m sure just goes up if the volume of the music goes up.)

Michael - that sounds pretty absolute. In my experience if the session is full of beginners, you’re right. But if you have a hot session with excellent players, a lot of people really enjoy listening. If you have an audience, you are performing - even if you pretend they are not there.

Oxymorons are usually *two* words. Oooops!! I forgot. This is a *serious* thread.

It’s nice to think that sessions are for the musos, and from the musos perspective that is most certainly true. But being for the musos and being for the punters/audience is not mutually exclusive.

Absolutly not. Once you start to perform it completely changes the music. It changes the dynamics, it changes the tunes you decide to play, the keys, everthing. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with mikes and performing etc, it’s just a completly different kettle of fish.

Car racing is for the drivers (at least from the drivers’ perspective.) Yet they build grandstands.

Michael, IMHO (LOL) you are *absolutely* wrong on this issue. How does an increase in the sound level (that’s really all that is at issue) change the character of any session. It seems, at worst, a Luddite’s attitude, and at best, far to purist even for you, the idea that an *intrusion* of technology will radically change the character of the session. If that were the case we’d all be singing and pounding on logs.

“….(Only punters making a racket, which I’m sure just goes up if the volume of the music goes up.)” You’re right on that one. That’s just real life.

I love the race car analogy. As a long retired motorcycle racer I can tell you that on no occasion during a race did I ever consider or acknowledge the audience, in fact was usually totally unaware of them. The experience of *racing* is different from *watching* but they are the same event and not mutually exclusive. The race is most certainly for both groups, drivers and punters.

No one has mentioned the “S” word yet.
Certainly around me, I have lost count of the number of ITM sessions that have closed or totally changed their character because the pa attracted singers and or rhythm guitar players, usually of “the loud is best” school with and minimum musical knowledge.
It is a slippery slope - as amplification only makes the punters louder and everyone cannot be amplified equally or correctly.

Tusong: It changes the character of the session in that it makes people closer to the mikes *much* more prominent in the music than people further away from the mikes (inverse square law). If you never have extra people turn up to the session, then fine, but if you do, they’re not likely to be heard, which seems a pity. (then again, if noise levels are that loud anyway, then they probs wouldn’t be heard anyway!).

I once went to session in Boston (the Burren, possibly) which was miked. The whole pub was standing-room only, full off people shouting at each other because of all the other people shouting at each other. Nothing could be heard of the session (even when playing in it), apart from (apparently) in the next door room, where there were some loudspeakers piped from the session mikes… Quite amusing.

Grego’s point is interesting. The punters at car racing pay to see the spectacle, and that money is what enables the teams and the drivers to spend the money they do on equipment.

This is the same concept as a “paid session” - which is a gig.

A session which is only allowed by a landlord who hopes to sell more ale on the strength of the “Live Music”, is actually a “paid session” i.e. (by Michael’s definition) a gig, even if the only payment to the musicians is being allowed the space to play in, and the only “payment” by the audience is buying drinks from the Landlord.

In Michael’s second post above he makes the distinction between a session (no paying audience) and a gig (with paying audience) [see definitions in previous para].

So now we can rephrase the original post using the word “gig” in place of session for those who feel the need to do so. Then we can get down to the serious business of answering the question for Tusong.

IMHO Tusong, and also in my experience, it is not true that the only thing at issue here is an increase in the sound level. The use of amplification changes the nature of the beast. It becomes ipso facto a performance for the audience, not a “playing together” for the musos - which it might perhaps have been in its early days.

Right - outside in the car park now!

Dave ;op

I think that mics change the nature of the session itself. And this is so for a numer of reasons, but these reasons must not be directly related to the presence of an audience. I mean, I think that for a good session it is important to have good listeners too, but that doesn’t mean that you need loudspeakers. My experience is that generally if the punters pay attention to the music the mood of the bunch of musos that are playing in a session improves. But, as some of you said, the logic “the louder the best” doesn’t work when the pub is too crowded.
Besides, mics generally allow everyone in a pub to hear a lot of mistakes and the like (false startings, stop-and-gos when you forget some bars of the tunes, the wrong chords that the guitar player try to make fit into a melody he does’t know too well, and so on…) that are usually “forgiven” in a session but that you are not expected to make in a gig. Personally, I don’t like the kind of situation in which I go to a pub to join a session and find myself involved into a gig.
On the other hands, the frustration that many musicians feel when they are not amplified in a noisy environment can give way to other maniatic obsessions when mics show up, such as thinking that other instruments (not your own) are too amplified and are heard too loud, or other miseries of the human spirit that generally are labelled as envy, egotism and other self-centered passions. Am I right?
Luigi

Luigi is that you!

Nice craic in Lisbon ….humm remember!
Gillins and Hogans

At the Woodman we’ve done both - in fact some here may remember the old picture I put up on my Woodman webpage, me and the guitarist miked up. We got round the problem by a nifty bit of lateral thinking from yours truly - just moved the session to a better part of the pub - better feng shui. The roof is lower, we have two walls that the sound will bounce off and we’re more “in the pub” now. Also I tend to sit away from the louder instruments - nothing personal, just so I, and the punters, can hear myself play. I wouldn’t take michael’s extreme either/or view, but would agree that I personally much prefer to play, and be heard, accoustically. A session with mics is just that - a session with mics. There’s a grey area of gradation between that and a gig, cos a gig usually is a paying thing, is up on stage, has a front man with some patter, and has a pre-rehearsed programme of sets/songs, etc. A miked up session in my experience is exactly like a normal session except the whole pub can now hear me cursing and swearing between sets :~}

I didn’t explain properly - The Woodman was called into existence as an accoustic session, then became miked up when the pub became busy, but has now thankfully reverted to being accoustic.

Yes, Marco, it’s me. Nos veremos pronto otra vez, espero, aqu

Luigi, I agree with most of what you say with the stipulation that the most important words in your last post are“sometimes“ and “might”. Your observations are untrue in my circumstance but they sometimes might be true in other circumstances.

There are never prerehearsed sets at our mic’d session and the tune selection is the same as it would be at any other session with mostly the same players, many of whom play at many other sessions in Chicago, myself included. (The idea that we might feel compelled to change keys, positted by Mr. Gill earlier, is just baffling to me!!??).

I’m not promoting mic’d sessions or even defending them. My original post was soliciting info as to how, technically, other folks have done it when necessary, because sometimes it is necessary.

Luigi - yeah, good points. I think we used to do that, play sets we were well-versed in. But it was still a session. So it’s so much nicer having it back as an accoustic session.

One night recently, the governor, out of the blue, had us play, back in the old (amplified) corner. The 4 “booked” players were to be miked up again, up on stage, which is about 30cm high. But the other players, because our sound went straight over their heads, actually couldn’t hear us very well. This caused so much confusion that one of the players, a very respected player, packed up and went off after about half an hour - who could blame him. The following week it was back to our normal accoustic session!

And Tusong, as well as my general comments about accoustic being preferable, a view which I’m sure we all subscribe to, I do agree there are some sessions where unless you’re miked up, you literally can’t hear YOURSELF, never mind the other musicians, play. But then it becomes like an arms race. The louder they shout, the more you have to increase the volume…then the punters start shouting louder to be heard above the music, so you have to increase the volume…and so on. I’ve seen that at a Dervish gig, never mind mere mortal sessioneers!

Also, don’t you find there’s a lot of tedious messing about, getting the balance right, and anticipating the right volume for when the pub fills up later on….and it’s always the guitarist who knows all the electronical gobbledigook, because they were in a rock band in a previous incarnation, and now it’s their chance to show their true indipensibility….and after all that, you only get session money, which is much less than gig money (in my experience).

Danny.

So do harp players usually carry their own pa system around? That alone could explain why you don’t see many of them at sessions. Every session I’ve been to but one was acoustic–no mics, no sound system at all. Raises the question of whether any given instrument is really suited to sessions (regardless of how well you can play the music on it) if it can’t be heard in a typical session setting. Perhaps you learn to highgrade your sessions and avoid the big noisy ones (which is what I’m about to get into below, in answer Tusong).

A friend here plays the small pipes, and sometimes brings his electronic chanter and amp (instead of his regular acoustic set) so we can hear him.

My personal preference would be to ditch the mics and in fact ditch the whole session until it quits being overrun by noisy punters. Either move on to a quieter session, or move the whole session to a less populous venue. Seems to me if you want to ensure your music is heard by an ‘audience,’ you ought to be playing in a band, doing gigs. No sin there, but it’s a different purpose than a session, and you’ll likely find yourself at odds with the other players (at least some of whom prolly don’t care whether anyone else is listening or not).

BTW, the one session with mics I’ve seen was a mess–each player with his or her own mic (even the thumpers), all petrified of being heard (except the thumpers), the whole wall of sound piped into the far reaches of the bar, which was overflowing with drunk college kids screaming their heads off just so their pick-up lines could be heard. It took about 5 seconds to assess the situation and leave, wondering why anyone would *want* to play music in such a place.

One block away there was a quiet paycheck bar with a table around the corner just right for 4 or 5 players. We didn’t annoy anyone, and except for a few inquisitive looks and one old guy buying us a round, they didn’t give us any mind.

One thing’s for sure–I do hate feeling like a performing monkey (good visual–thanks david a!) when it’s a session and not a gig.
I would think a microphone(s) would heighten the probability of that happening.

Tusong, you’re right, it doesn’t necessary happen (in every place, at every time) that a sesh becomes something else when it is amplified. But I don’t want to take any risk, that’s why I get a bit worried and nervous when a mic shows up. A session is a session and, I’ll insist, the presence of listeners is a good thing (a session is an event in which not only musos take place: someone standing by your side with a pint in his hand saying “Brilliant” or “Lovely”, or rolling his eyes in sign of disapproval, is one of the members of the session) (well, maybe I am exaggerating a bit). It seems to me that microphones sometimes (or often) paradoxically contribute to separate the player and the listener, since they add “concert” factors to the event and provoke the appearance of a sort of the fourth-wall barrier (I feel like it always happens when you climb on a stage).
Luigi

reverentially silent?

Great to have someone here who’s even more respected than Dervish…..

When I said, “A session is a session, and a gig is a gig. The difference being, there is no audience at a session,” I meant that once an audience is acknowleged, the session turns into a gig. The motor racer is a good analogy, because the cars, even the track itself, are designed to entertain the punters. Do you think a bunch a drivers get together and decide to put a corner here, a shikane there, just to make the race more fun, and then some completely unrelated person decides to build a stand right next to the finnishing line. Come off it, racing is entertainment.

And here’s the rub, some tunes were written to be entertaining to punters. Some players prefer these kind of tunes. And if you’re in a session with one of these players, they’ll turn it into a gig, mike or no mike.

But one of the things I love about diddly music is that the best of it is completely impenitrable to Joe Punter. It’s just a streem of notes that only the musician in the know can decipher into music. It is insular. It cannot be performed. Just played, for the abstract love of it

Actually we have gone over many many times, what instruments we like/ dont like in sessions. You should look back through the archives, it makes for very interesting reading.
I used to play in a session in Galway with a chap Paul moran who mic’d his harmonica. Three *VERY* important points to be made
1) He is a great player
2) You cant tell its miked.
3) He plays good tunes.
I think we all agree…nobody likes a showoff. Having said that - Dont like the didge particularly in Irish music…..the jury is out on the harmonica to be honest it doesnt bother me either way if there is or isnt one. But love Mandola, zouk and guitar - as long as they are played well. Each to their own. I really like blues harmonica tho.

“It cannot be performed.” Oh, Michael, don’t be silly. *grin* Or quite so absolute.

OK, you can perform anything, (come to Edinburgh in August for the full horror of it) it’s just that diddly music is better not performed

LOL – right, I’ll concede with you on that one, then…

Michael, you wrote: “But one of the things I love about diddly music is that the best of it is completely impenitrable to Joe Punter. It’s just a stream of notes that only the musician in the know can decipher into music. It is insular. It cannot be performed. Just played, for the abstract love of it”. Do you mean that no Joe Punter can be “in the know?” Do you mean that only the one who is actually playing can decipher the music? Consequently, I suppose, you mean that when you stop playing or you are listening to someone else playing in a session you have not joined in (when it is your turn to be a Joe Punter), that ability to decipher music fades away. It sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it?
Luigi

I said “only the musician in the know can decipher it”, not “only the musician who’s playing it”. If you are a musician in the know, then you are not Joe Punter. Duh

Hey now. Curmudgeonly huffing is one thing…

Actually, Michael, there are some punters who know their stuff - just that they can’t play it! A guy asked me to play The Moving Cloud the other week - that’s not yer everyday tune - I hadn’t played it out for maybe a year or 2 - but I got through it ok…phew! It’s usually a banjo tune but in D (or is it G!?) it’s good on the flute. Yer man must have been an avid listener to know that one.

As a general rule, people who don’t play Irish music and can differentiate between reels and jigs and hornpipes, let alone individual tunes, are in a pretty small minority. That isn’t to see they completely fail to appreciate it though.
On the original subject, if you want to see the difference between mic’d up and unmic’d gigs/sessions, a visit to the two monthly music events in our village might prove instructive, particularly since the audience consists mostly of the same people. The Jazz Evening has loud instruments, which are amplified, and you frequently have a problem hearing what is being played. Sometimes the noise from the bar is deafening.
The Unplugged Evening has mostly people singing accompanied by guitar or piano. Most the time you could hear a pin drop.
If a particular group of punters are ridiculously noisy at a session, a quiet word can sometimes lead to at least a temporary respite, though the noisiness is usually due to the drink, and it soon creeps up again. The individuals concerned frequently don

Right, Danny. Don’t you think that that guy that asked you to play The Moving Cloud was “taking part” in that session?
I’ll try to explain what I mean: the point is: to me a session is not a show, a concert, or anything like that that entails the existence of someone else who is just a receiver (an audience, spectators and/or listeners), with a clear barrier between the performers and the public. It is more similar to a rite, in which everyone participates through different roles (the players and the rest). The comparison we must think of is note car races (IMHO), but liturgy, a mass or some kind of rite. What happens when no one goes to a concert or a theatrical performance? That concert or show won’t take place because no one would see/listen what had been previously rehearsed.
But now, think about the session/liturgy comparison: what happens when no one goes to a Sunday mass? The priest will “perform” the liturgy in spite of the fact that he is alone in the church (it is a rite, it has a meaning in itself, doesn’t need to be watched buy a “public”). On the other hand, what happens when some musos meet in a pub for a session, but there are no customers and the pub remains empty for the rest of the night? Just like in the case of the rite, the session will take place. If the session is more like a rite than like a concert/show, it means that the public participates in a way more similar to the participation of a churchgoer (taking part in the event) than to the participation of a theatergoer (watching in a much more passive way).
Another thing: I am sorry if someone has thought that my mails are a bit rude: I am trying my best to cope with English, but I am aware that my expression lacks of fluidity and warmness. Perhaps I should try emoticons to avoid “curmudgeonly huffing” replys.
Regards
Luigi

Oh, sorry, Luigi, that wasn’t a reply to *you*…it was to Mr. Grumpo over there in Edinburgh… 🙂

Luigi,
I’ve often played in Italy between sipping water and wine. Rite?

Re“ The Performing Monkey Syndrome“ (PMS):

Steve–It’s not about not being practiced on your instrument and that’s why one would feel uncomfortable. It’s about the “audience” yelling at you to either “play more harp!” “play louder!” “play faster!” or to “play (insert a tune here like Dirty Old Town or something similar.) All of these have happened to me and I’m sure to many others. I just think that a microphone would encourage more of the same behavior.

Joe, it is not a rite, it is “like” a rite as for participation.
some weeks ago you mentioned you had been in Turin. Have you ever headed southward in Italy? Do you know anyone from Rome or Tuscany?
Luigi

I know a few, Luigi but they are now based in Turin where I lived and played for many’s the year. I’ve even played with Mics an’ Paddies.

Joe

When anyone asks me to play a particular tune, the moving cloud say, I always play a different tune. 99 times out of a hundred, said person says “thanks, I love love that tune”

very good michael

So let me get this straight. This music, as opposed to every other kind of music on the planet, is not understandable to the average joe - and we know this because he hasn’t memorized the tune names?

I’ve played with people who think trad should sound like a “stream of notes”. They might feel they have some mystical understanding of the music that nobody else shares, but the rest of us know they’re just a crap player.

I like the religious metaphor, and maybe can take it a bit further…

I don’t know if they still do it, but some “silent” meditative orders of nuns used to have a special place behind the altar in churches where they were screened from view of the rest of the congregation. They could therefore attend and silently participate in mass, but not come into direct contact with the outside world.

Can we design pubs that way perhaps? Two options - one would be to put the session musicians behind the screen so they are free from the psychological influences of punters who are unable to comprehend the deep subtleties of the music.. You could hang notices on the punter’s side demanding reverential silence as long as the session is in progress.

The other option is to stick the punters on the other side and make ’em swear a vow of silence.

Glenn, you sort of miss the point. It’s not that the music is not understandable, but that a lot of it’s very similar. I know enough musicians who couldn’t tell you whether they were playing The Hunter’s Purse or The Congress, say (me for one, half the time). And Irish music isn’t alone in this. Any arcane music, where the standard repertoire has developed by variation on a small number of root musical themes, is going to be the same - look at Old Tymey music. Hell, a lot of people who don’t listen to it even think that all opera sounds the same!

All that modern music is the same. Will you TURN IT DOWN…
In my day when music was music…….

Ring any bells from ye’re youth? Or for our more youthful friends from us auld wans?

Ottery -

Yeah, I know it all sounds the same (“What’s the difference between tunes - their name”) to people who don’t play it.

I think Michael was saying that well-played Irish music ought to sound like a jumble of notes and that only the ‘insiders’ really get it. This was what I was responding to.

This thread is about performance vs sessioning and I object to this idea that trad is somehow mystically beyond the comprehension of the punters. I mean… I agree that it is that way .. if the players are incapable of making it accessable by playing well. There’s nothing mystical about a bunch of beginners screeching away in the corner of the pub, turning good music into a “stream of notes”.

Michael, in the last two decades I have met 30 or 40 people who have told me (all of them, with slight variations) the same story, that runs like this:
“One time I happened to be in a pub in Edimburgh. There was a session (acoustic, no mics around) and a bunch of musicians playing. So, I took a chair and seated near a smart fiddler called Nick (or Mick, or Michael, can’t remember). I asked him to play a reel I do love, The Moving Cloud, and he started playing something else: The Maid I Have Never Forgot. Then I asked for a hornpipe and he played a jig; then I asked: do you know any slide?, and he played a polka. I was a bit puzzled and I thought that this Nick (or Mick, or Michael) was pulling my leg! Then I realized that he didn’t know exactly was he was playing, and I didn’t want to hurt his pride, so I smiled and said: “Thanks, I really love love that tune”. That night I left the pub with a strange feeling about music and human ingenuousness”.
Have you ever met one with a similar story?
😉
Luigi

Luigi - ha ha! Brilliant!

Michael - your reputation goes before you…

Steve–fair enough, I misunderstood the word “rig”, thought it meant instrument and that maybe it was British or Cornish slang for it. And you’re right, the PMS usually wouldn’t last all night.

Hi Steve sorry for the late reply. I guess I would hope the 3 points would be followed by anyone playing anything that is mic’d up or a really loud instrument that cant blend with everyone else. Obviously people are learners so I doubt they would be mic’d up anyway.
I think tasteful tunes are important tho and we’ve had many a discussion/disagreements on that topic here as well🙂

Unfortunatly (or fortunatly, it doesn’t really matter) this diddly music, together with most other kinds of music on the planet, is not understandable to the average joe. That’s the thing about music, you have to study it.

I agree that a great performer in any genre can connect somehow with his audience and comunicate on a sublime subliminal level. But we are talking here about being in a session and deliberatly not performing, that is, playing exclusivly for your own and other musician’s enjoyment. Is this insular and anti social? Yes. Sorry.

And then … one time out of a hundred, Joe says to me “I don’t recognise that as the moving cloud, the version of it I have goes …” and he whistles the first few bars. I say “By heck, your right, You’ve rumbled me for being a cynical git. Do you have your fiddle with you? No? Borrow mine, I’ll get the viola out.

“… so, this Nick (or Mick, or Michael) said to me: “Do you have your fiddle with you?” Now, you must know that I don’t play any instrument; I wanted to explain that to him and I started answering his question saying “No, ’coz…” But this Nick (or Mick, or Michael, can’t remember) suddenly said: “No? Borrow mine, I’ll get the viola out” and handed his fiddle to me. Again, I didn’t know how to act: obviously, something was wrong with him: first he had been mistaking all the tunes I had requested, then he wanted me to do something I wasn’t able to do. I couldn’t believe that the mere fact that you can play music can produce such an odd behaviour. I told him: “Do you expect every one who enjoys music to be a musician? What about football, then? Do you think that only goalkeepers or strikers know what football is?” And then -believe it or not- that Nick (or Mick, or Michael) shouted: “By heck, your right, You’ve rumbled me for being a cynical git. Borrow my shoes, I’ll get the ball out”, then took off his shoes, handed them to me and challenged me to dribble and score. That night I left the pub with a strange feeling about music and anti-social and insular pathologies”.
😉

Luigi

Luigi, you’re a wag!

Luigi,
Can you play “Arrivedeci Roma” for us?

Where’s me spoons?

Luigi,
You might be interested in this site:http://www.marcogiaccaria.it/musicamancina/CataGen.html

Joe

Hey, Michael,
I hope this little story hasn’t annoyed you. I have to confess that all of those 30 or 40 people I have met that told me this little story always added at the end that, after leaving the pub, that famous night, they thought again about that nice fiddler (Nick) and started thinking that perhaps he was right, and that’s how they started playing the fiddle themselves. So now they -the 30 or 40 of them- are fiddlers. A happy end, isn’t it?
🙂
Luigi

Luigi - any more stories? Have your 30 or 40 friends ever met any other musicians at sessions?

Brilliant.

Ok, Danny, I’ll tell you the truth: our common friend Joe Quinn is one of those 30 or 40 people… But his version of the story was a bit different from the rest. When Nick told him: “Borrow this”, Joe wasn’ given a fiddle, but an empty fiddle case. That’s how he started playing the bodhran.
Joe, now that our little secret has been revealed: can you tell us something more about that famous night in that Edimburgh pub?
🙂
Luigi

I have some freinds who were in a session in Spain recently, and there was this Italian fiddle player there. But hardly any tunes were played as the Italian had them all rolling on the floor with laughter at the outrageously funny stories he was telling them…. I think they said his name was Louie or something?

Play us a tarrantella, Luigi. I’ll accompany on the fiddle case. when I give you the nod, change to a rondena.

A few days ago, after several long threads full with comments such as:
…..wow…….
*snort*
*splorf*
Geee
and the like, someone wrote he didn’t want “silly” or “uninteresting” subjects in the list. Now, I am discovering that someone else doesn’t like SERIOUS subjects such as “if the punters can enjoy music like us the musicians” to be dealt with in a lighter way.
Since it seems that not always everyone catches the meaning of the mails, and since after the NO-SILLY-SUBJECTS-ALLOWED policy now seemingly is the turn of the SERIOUS-SUBJECTS-CAN-BE-TREATED-ONLY-SERIOUSLY policy, I’ll translate my last mails and turn them into a more serious language:
I don’t like the mystical thing. Music is something you can learn and transmit to others, it is the outcome of a technique that you can learn, play and teach to others, it is not a “stream of notes” that only the performers can understand and feel. My point of view is that in a session even the mere listeners are participants. And to be a participant in something that (I’ll repeat it) is more similar to a rite than to a concert as for the way not-performers are involved, you must be in the know even if you are only a punter. Anyway, we don’t know what is happening exactly inside a person’s mind, we have just a few clues about what someone else is feeling at a certain time. And from the feedback one receives from the punters at a session, I don’t think they “feel” the music less then we musicians do. In some way, and as for the possibility to be known and understood by everyone, ITM is not different from other human activities such as football (that was what the protagonist of my story was trying to say to Nick).
Now, Joe, as for your last mail, it seems you still have the fiddle case Nick lent you that night. Didn’t you give it back to him?
🙂
Luigi

How refreshingly serious!

But it’s so hard to be serious with Nick around - I reckon he’s Irvine Welch in disguise :~}

Sorry about being so picky, but I believe there’s a k in mics, . . and a capital m. Slan.
mairtin

Heehee - Luigi its been brilliant reading your posts on this subject! thanks!

I’ve seen one pub where a few omnidirectional mics are hung over the session table, if needed the music was only *slightly* amplified through the house system. I thought that worked well. But then again I’m not a member of the “has-to-be-acoustic-at-all-times while-drinking-guiness-and-wearing-a-full-tweed-suit and-a-cable-knit-sweater-in-texas-in-august or-else-it’s-not-an-IRISH-session” police.