busk

I’d love to go out and busk, most of musical inspirarions did, and aswell as that… i need the money. So i’m improving my crappy guitar skills and singing every day and one day i’ll go out to the streets of bury (uk) and sing until someone walks by and tells me to SHUTUP ! I want to busk on grafton street, dublin, thats THE place for buskers as far as i can see, Glen Hansard started there-my hero.

I met some amazing people at an Amanda Palmer concert, both were buskers. A contortionist and a glock player.. Basically it made me realise how it’s possible to do.. it’s not like there’s a massive barrier to doing it.. apart from your own brain. Anyway, when I get free moments I’ve been picking up the accordion and mucking around.. I might do this with my friend (if he can deal with using an acoustic guitar :P)..!

I talked to my friend today, and we planned what songs we want to busk. I looked up some websites for good busking songs, and surprise surprise, a lot of them were beatles ones! yay. I think we’ll do some that are a little sad (the site said that ppl tend to pay minor ones for some reason).. so i’m thinking, hide your love away, and i love her, all my loving, while my guitar gently weeps (need to learn the chords tho XD). Non-beatles songs- oasis, don’t look back in anger, not wonderwall, the site said wonderwall was overbusked. My friend wants to do viva la vida by coldplay. Yeah, I like coldplay too, so dun mind. I also thought that some folksy tunes would be good, like danny boy. Any other suggestions? Gotta fill in the form for my busking permit. When’s the best time to busk, i wonder. We were thinking january but then everyone’s already spent all their money. Christmas might be good but then everyone’s too busy spending their money. Hmm…

Oh well, 43thingers please let me know any other good busking songs!

I know that if I don’t busk now, I will never have the guts to when I’m older. Right now I have less inhibitions… when i’m older i’ll probably think too highly of myself to busk :( but now, yeah, i can stand and play crappy chords and not feel too self-conscious.
it’s $10 for a busking licence for 3 months… not that I’ll need it that long lol, but $10 aint bad for something i’ll probably never get to do again. :D
Am I too crap though? I can only play a couple of chords on guitar.. A, E, D, C, G, F,... Am, Em, Dm,... G7, C7,... and only a couple of songs. not much else. i will probably reserve the singing- i’ll already be embarassed enough. I wonder if people expect a certain standard from buskers? Or I’ll just get the sympathy donations :).

I recently quit my full time job in NYC to do this daily. I make more money on my terms and time while enjoy every second of it (and meeting some great people).

I figure Ichiro bobble-head night will attract many thousands of people to Safeco Field, so… I’ll be bringing my banjo and meeting a friend and his accordion. We’ll see what happens. Not so much about the money, though if everyone gave us a single Federal Reserve Note or even a few cents, we’d be doing pretty well. It’s more about the journey, playing our guts out and meeting new people.

a few years ago me and my cousin sat on the side of the street and she started plaing her guitar and i was singing, within 2 hours we had made $25 but the end of the day we made $75….totally worth it.

Maybe when the weather’s warmer.

for the first time (wed night), playing didn’t seem even slightly like a big deal. I hit the wrong chord at first, but afterward played well. I was shaking a little during the song after, but at the end of the night, I’d forgotten I’d played.

I still need to work on my endings… The “you can clap now” head-bow should be automatic and as effectively closing as possible.

I got a list of popular songs, and another -shaky- one of oft-covered songs… I’m slowly downloading them and trying to play them all.

One thing I’ve noticed is I’m not so comfortable with this material as I am with more familiar “folk” style stuff… a lot of it’s so alien to me I don’t know if I can play it properly.

I’d be interested to know what’s most frequently requested or what everyone can sing along to, but maybe that just comes with experience… when I do hear such a song, I often fail to write it down.