My family band's new YouTube channel

[wcap]

So, a few days ago I e-mailed off an application for my family to perform in the Minneapolis Park Board's Music in The Parks program this coming summer ('cause, like, it would be fun, and it would force us to get around to playing more music together).

We needed to provide music samples, so I ended up creating a new YouTube channel where I compiled some of our better (or perhaps less embarrassing?) recordings from both my own YouTube channel and from my daughter's channel. I even came up with a little logo thing.

So, here we are, trying to look like something worthy of being booked this next summer!

We'll see what happens!

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXIfHas0FmR6gdMlQPJVhQA

[flatbaroque]

Nice job on your page. Hope you get some bookings.Your daughter has a clear powerful voice...suits that type of music well.

[Bob1131]

Nicely done! You all sound terrific so you should have no problem getting bookings!

[BUDSTER]

The family that plays together stays together, LOL. It is great to see you all performing together and good luck !

Bud

[JoeCharter]

Well done for sure. Vocals are so clear and penetrating that I had to lower the volume of my speakers...

All the best for your family venture.

[wcap]

Originally Posted by JoeCharter

Well done for sure. Vocals are so clear and penetrating that I had to lower the volume of my speakers...

Or maybe that was bad mixing on my part!

My daughter does have a very nice, very strong voice (you should hear her singing Poor Wand'ring One at my YouTube link below.... her voice can fill a church, which is where we recorded that!), and plays flute really well too. She was largely self taught for quite some time, but flute lessons with some good teachers for a few years have really helped her refine her flute playing. And even more dramatically, though she has sung really well for some years, she started voice lessons last year with a great teacher, and the development in her singing over a very short time has been wonderful.

She's only been playing guitar a few months, but has done pretty well with it. I'm impressed by some of the stuff she has figured out on her own for Farewell Angelina (emulating Joan Baez's playing in her recordings of that piece). It is lots of fun having a second guitar player in the house. We experimented a bit with me joining in on guitar too, and the two guitars together are sounding really nice.

In terms of recorded sound quality, and our overall performance, I'm not completely pleased with our recent recording a few days ago of The Water is Wide (we did that in a hurry to have another vocal piece up on the YouTube page), but I was very pleased by how my daughter's trial recording of Farewell Angelina turned out. She spent quite some time experimenting with microphone locations. As everyone who has dabbled in recording will say, small changes can make huge differences in the sound (now we need to put in the time trying to figure this out for our group recordings - yikes, this can be time consuming, and the challenge of getting good sound when recording three of us at once is making my head spin a bit!). I'm very eager to see her do a full recording of that piece. I think Farewell Angelina is a really beautiful piece (even though I have very little idea what the words mean!).

We have no particular aspirations to be doing this music professionally (nor do we have the time), but doing occasional performances the past few years has gotten us to actually get around to playing music together. It is all too easy to not get around to doing this, and indeed, we sometimes go 3 or 4 or months at a time without ever managing to carve out time to do music as a family. We are to the point now where we have gotten asked to perform a few times (e.g. for a political fundraiser, and for a wedding). We make no money at this (and it is not our intent to do so) but it is fun.

And this has also made be a better guitar player, especially as my daughter in particular forces me to sit down with a metronome sometimes so I am not such an annoying musical companion!

Thanks everyone for the nice feedback.

[wcap]

Given the comments on my daughter's singing, here she is singing Poor Wand'ring One, from Pirates of Penzance - this is a very different sort of music from the Joan Baez/Bob Dylan stuff she has been singing a lot lately!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB08VshgRnQ

[Wacguitare]

Really lovely! liked!

[wcap]

Originally Posted by Wacguitare

Really lovely! liked!

I don't know which piece(s) you are referring to, but thanks for the nice compliment!

[JoeCharter]

Originally Posted by wcap

She's only been playing guitar a few months, but has done pretty well with it.

Your daughter clearly has a remarkable ear and so I'm not concerned about her guitar abilities.