Fun with Tango Revisited

As trumpeted, our guitar orchestra played and recorded "Tango Estampie" by Luq Lévesque at the April meeting. Almost everybody reading this missed a chance to be part of something that was not only a lot of fun, but much farther reaching and longer lasting than the event itself.

A very special thanks goes to Phyllis Fleming, D.C. area violinist (and tour guide extraordinaire) for directing the orchestra. You're going to have to find a better writer than me to describe what a great job Phyllis did pulling us together, and how enjoyable she made it for us all. The recording you hear on the web represents only about our third play-through of the Tango, if I remember rightly. Keep in mind that the orchestra consisted of players of all levels of ability - no more than two or three of whom had seen or played their part before (we'll get back to that.)

Tuning a bunch of guitars always seems to be a problem, but Phyllis came up with an effective and efficient method. The first step is for everybody to tune up as well as possible to some standard note. Then, a "concert-master" with trustworthy tuning gets the ball rolling by playing his open high E string. Then, going up and down the rows of the orchestra, everyone plays the same open string in rapid succession - ping, ping, ping, ping! When an out-of-tune note is heard, any keen-eared soul calls out "sharp!" or "flat!", and the process is halted for a moment while the note is fixed. The process continues until all the open string notes are right on. It goes quick.

Rehearsing and playing the Tango was, for me, as fun as the guitar gets. Still, there were some disappointments. The crowd was smaller than for our previous guitar orchestra. For "The Floating Ancillary Ants" in April we had 15 players; this time we had 10. Figuring everybody had had a great time then, I was hoping to see that group, plus more. Actually, I can't understand why we don't get numbers in the hundreds - not that we could accommodate that many, but if even a tiny percentage of the area's thousands of guitarists thought it was a fun thing to play with, and for, fellow guitarists, WGS orchestra sessions and members' recitals would burst at the seams. Teachers, this is a fantastic opportunity for your students.

I had distributed parts of the Tango in advance to more than 20 guitarists, about 5 of whom showed up. No doubt obligations arise that are more important than a guitar society get-together, but a better reliability rate would minimize people having to switch to a different
part at the session.

We could do a much better job getting ourselves set up. It wasn't until 8:00 or so that everybody had finally settled into his spot in the orchestra. There were definite forces working against getting going - party types bent on socializing first - but I won't name names. If this was making me a little "uptight", you can understand I was having a flashback to the previous, "Ants" session, where we had also frittered away the first half hour - and got kicked out just as we were starting to pull the piece together. I could imagine - and would like to see - a hundred guitarists arriving and setting up within a few minutes. By the way, begging people who do show up to pull out their guitars and join in is getting a bit wearisome.

It was unfortunate that the community center was somehow not expecting us that evening. I am very grateful that they wrestled a room away from a couple of ping-pongers for our sake, but still, it would be nice to have a meeting place where we can relax and have a good time, and not always feel like we're imposing and on the point of getting thrown out. Does anyone who digs guitar and enjoys entertaining have a ranch-style home with a large basement? All in all, though, the pluses beat the minuses by a country mile.

-Donald Sauter

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