The Remediators at Winterstock Festival

[Briallan]

In addition to what to wear, it's not too early to decide what to play. We have two 10-15 minute sets as LBC's guest on Sunday, and then we have a full hour of our own on Monday (though this will probably be a little less due to having to get on and off the stage -- though we are on first and could perhaps start a bit early.

Here are my views:

• If it there is one thing I have learned from playing and attending concerts, it's that the audience likes to dance, and I think this is particularly likely of regular concert go-ers who are likely to be in attendance at Winterstock. So, while I (and, I think, the other arrangers) have wide musical interests, I think that Winterstock is a chance to acquire a strong audience base for our later concerts by giving them some very accessible, danceable music. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have any change-of-pace songs, I think we should, but I think danceable music should be a big focus.
• since it is winter, it would be nice to include some winter music; though, as we don't usually perform lyrics, it should be stuff that stands on it's own as winter-themed without the lyrics being performed. Krokhur has some raw material along these lines (here) and he and I have been going over it to see which of them might work best. I also think it's a little late for XMAS music lol.
• I'd like to feature songs by all our arrangers. We have a set of rock songs from the 80s and beyond that we approved in meetup one week, but we have never performed them, and this set includes work by all our arrangers -- we could spread these across the two days we are performing (here)
• I would like to feature both lore-friendly/traditional stuff as well as stuff from later eras. Some role-play groups are interested in hiring bands to play for their events, and I would like to show them what we can do. I've got some that we played for the KWL gig and our graduation party, but we've never performed them for the general public, and I've made some recent additions to that collection.
• I don't think we should recycle stuff that we've performed in public recently -- in fact we really don't need to play any of our previous stuff since we have a lot of unperformed stuff at this point, and that's been increasing lately (Krokhur and I have a lot of free time hahaha)

Anyway, I am happy to make up setlists and assign parts (once we know who is going to be available when), but this is your chance to provide feedback -- please reply on this thread or PM me with your thoughts and ideas for Winterstock.

 

[Siltharan]

I like the idea of the unplayed rock music. I look forward to everyone else's ideas on what to play. I know VG music isn't going to necessarily be danceable. XD

[Briallan]

By the way, all the bands who are performing at Winterstock get a write-up in LotroArtists.com: ours was just published today: http://lotroartists.com/music/bands/winterstock-preview-the-remediators/

 

[Ice Weasel]

Nice write up!

 

[Siltharan]

My thoughts on setlists:

Sunday, 10-11pm server time (guest-play with LBC):

• 2 x 10-15 minute sets
• In my mind, not enough time to do our usual single genre idea, with some songs anywhere from 3-7+ minutes.
• We could do a "Best of the Remediators" Part I and II for both sets, highlighting our best/favorite arrangements from our concerts or unplayed music, featuring at least one per arranger over both parts (not necessarily 1 in each part)

Monday, 8-9pm server time (Solo hour):

• Full hour to run through the unplayed rock music we've all arranged. Enough time to build up a single genre setlist.
• Setlist ideas: Arranged by genre? Style of rock? Not the best at making lists... Bri or Krohkur can step up on that one. ;)

Let me know what you think!

[Briallan]

Silth's suggestion seems reasonable to me, though I have some further thoughts:

• I would still like to fit in some lore-friendly stuff somewhere. One thing about the lore-friendly stuff is that the music is typically simply-structured and repetitive, and often pieces are about 1:30 to 2:00 long, so I think we could easily do perhaps 3 or so such pieces as well as squeezing some other stuff into one of our 10-15 minute sets. Well, at least two anyway -- depends how much we squeeze :)
• I think the idea of structuring the main concert on a rock theme is fine, as I believe this is an area most of our arrangers enjoy, though one thing I was thinking about maybe having some band/orchestral work as a finale (I mean 'band' as in concert band not 'band' as in rock band). We had a lot of audience enthusiasm on the Handel piece we did, and I recently did a Sousa march (stars and stripes) that I think might make a good finale.

However, the more I think about this, I am wondering if we should try to get together (that is, anyone with an interest in what we play for Winterstock) sometime this week. We might not play completely through pieces that we are thinking of doing, but we could at least come prepared with some specific ideas and hash them out at the meeting, and get most of the way through coming up with a setlist. I might be busy with something else on Thursday, but the rest of the week I should be free evenings. Are people interested in doing this -- if so what days can you make it -- I was thinking perhaps 9pm EST or so?

The other thing is -- we have not done much planned banter / role-play (we did some tonight that was funny, but it might be even funnier if we had worked out ahead of time what we might do). Does anyone have any ideas that they would like to purse along those lines?

[Ice Weasel]

My thoughts on genre are that, if by "Lore-Friendly" we mean just folk/traditional, that is what a lot of bands and solo players do; adding classical (like the Haydn) is a good step towards diversity, but there's still a huge body of work out there.  I don't think we should avoid those genres, but here's something to consider: 

We are "The Remediators", and I take a point of pride that we do take music that hasn't been done before in-game and "remediate" it in.  It also serves to differentiate us from all the other bands. You may not know exactly what you are getting when you come to a Remediator's gig, but you know it will be different, something not heard before in four of five versions.  To me, that's a big "selling point" in getting our reputations out there and generating more gigs. 

I'm not saying to abandon "traditional" tunes... the KWT concert was great! But keep it for special times like that... if we can become known for technical proficiency, artistic flair, even a bit of musical humor, those "core competencies" go a long way towards showing potential gig organizers that we can handle,... er... the Handel. I appreciate the desire to be more "RP friendly", and I think we can have a library for that, but I don't want to focus on it. (That said, I love both traditional and classical music, too, and spent a couple years spinning it on North Dakota Public Radio in college. I'll gladly play them here, I just think we have a larger theme to think of.)

I was busy with the announcement thing, making sure I was in the right place and playing the right thing, how did the audience look last night?  We did do a bit more advert than we have in the past; I hit both Facebook pages, and dropped items in the "Player Event" and "Landroval" topics on the official forums, plus I did a round of Regional shouts the day before and the day of the concert. I would say that if people came for the concert specifically (as opposed to wandering by), they knew the theme and that it wasn't likely to be traditional/classical. That response really fills me with optimism about the other genres we do. As we become known for, ... well... Remediating more modern music of different genres, we build identity, and from that, a following. 

While dropping some pieces into a larger concert set-list is fine, I wonder if a more "scholarly" approach might be fun. Like a "Thursday Evening with the Remediators" or something (day for example, only), where we have performances at the House of the Courserrim, with RP "tea and cakes", and a short bit on the history or the musicology of the piece. Nothing too heavy or pedantic, but just something like:

"Barbara Allen is listed as Child 84, and Roud 54. It is a traditional ballad originating in England and Scotland, which immigrants introduced to the United States, where it became a popular folk song. Roud and Bishop described it as, "...far and away the most widely collected song in the English language — equally popular in England, Scotland and Ireland, and with hundreds of versions collected over the years in North America. A diary entry by Samuel Pepys on January 2, 1666 contains the earliest extant reference to the song. It has been preformed by many over centuries, and woven into our cultural memory. Here, then, is our Remediation of "Barbara Allen".... 

Maybe a bit more RP in the intros, but not to lose the meat of the history.... This isn't a full blown "Idea" yet, just a "thought".

 

As for the patter and so on... Lyrical made that pretty easy.  I could worry about the real-time conversation and banter, because all my "official" comments and song announcements were "pre-recorded" in Lyrical... just click the "say" button to cover the bits to the next song. I would highly recommend that method to anyone pulling announcer duty. (The other thing that does is to let your chat window stay in RAID chat, since Lyrical broadcasts in SAY by default... I didn't worry about mis-telling to the audience anything I meant for the band "behind scenes".) I actually popped in-game Sunday morning and ran through my part of the entire concert to get the feel for what buttons to push when. (I went to the upstairs room of the Northern Lights kinhouse, so no one would hear my practicing. )

As for the in-band banter (like we did a bit before we started), something that might help with that is if each member wrote a short "biography paragraph", things the other band members would know, things they are likely to be teased about, what topics would be taboo... I think we know one another as "Players" pretty well... our characters don't interact beyond the band events in an RP setting so we need a boost in getting them to sound like a group that travels the world far and wide and plays music together.

Man, I've written another book... I'll pause for thoughts, suggestions, cease-and-desist orders...

Oh, and I'm available any evening for a meet-up. 

[Siltharan]

I'm good tonight and tomorrow night, plus Thursday and Friday nights. :)

[Briallan]

 

OK, so maybe we de-emphasize lore-friendly for Winterstock :) Let's get together tonite for first meeting, that way we have plenty of time if we decide we want to meet again before the festival starts. 9PM EST at the kinhouse -- its on the calendar.

Again, this is just a "planning" meeting, so you only need to attend if you have interests/opinions about creating or selecting the songs we play for Winterstock.

I've uploaded a file (Winterstock sets.xlsx) to the File Library in the Gallery -- these are possible songs we could do at winterstock for our main appearance on Monday, and is just for discussion purposes at this point.

EDIT: Re-uploaded the spreadsheet after discussions with Silth and Krokhur at the kin house last evening-- still needs some work.