The Care and Feeding of Filk Circles

[billroper]

I've been kicking this idea around for a while and I think I've gotten my thoughts together enough to produce a draft. As with most things, Your Mileage May Vary.

A filk circle is an organism. It is born, it lives, and it dies, usually in the space of a single evening. No two filk circles are ever going to be quite the same, being made up of the individuals who are participating along with the particular set of expectations that they're bringing with them for the occasion.

On any given evening, the most important thing is that the filk circle be healthy. I'm going to adopt a relatively low bar for the health of the circle:

A filk circle is healthy if the majority (preferably a super-majority) of the people participating are enjoying themselves.

This seems self-evident to me. We do this for fun, after all. If we're not enjoying ourselves, there's no reason to be doing it. This leads to an interesting corrolary:

If I'm not enjoying myself, I may improve the health of a filk circle by leaving it.

See, the problem is that if I'm not enjoying myself, I may try to drag the circle into directions that it really doesn't want to go. This ends up making me frustrated (not good), but it also is going to frustrate the people who are perfectly happy with the current state of the circle. The filk circle at WindyCon this year went aggressively folky one evening. The majority of the people and performers there seemed happy with that; I wasn't. I didn't really feel like listening to folky material, nor did I really want to play it myself.

So I left. There was absolutely no point in spoiling everyone else's good time, but there was also no point in me hanging around and not having a good time. I'm sure you can invent your own, similar examples.

There are a lot of prescriptions out there floating around to try to produce a healthy filk circle. We have names for them like "bardic circle" or "chaos", just to pick two diametrically opposed prescriptions, each of which has many variants. And our personal choice of prescription is going to vary, depending on what we value the most.

The bardic circle (which I'm going to use here to refer to a performers' circle, where the rotation moves between performers and excludes non-performers) values an egalitarian ethic: everyone should have the chance to play, equally often.

Interestingly, it's a still more egalitarian version of the bardic circle, "Pick, Pass, or Play", that includes the non-performers actively in the circle and -- in my experience -- can produce the least egalitarian results. Take, for example, a circle that contains an infrequent visitor to the region who we will, for the purposes of this example, call "Leslie Fish". The PPP circle frequently will have non-performer A ask Leslie to play a song, as will non-performer B, and non-performer C, and...

What you end up with is an impromptu Leslie Fish by request concert with an occasional song by someone else. Here's one of those circles where -- with no disrespect intended to Leslie -- the best thing I can do for the health of the circle is to go somewhere else. The circle is fine and healthy, save for me. I should go.

But let's go back and look at the performers' circle. The good thing about it is that everyone gets a turn (modulo occasional exceptions, see below). You'll sometimes get to hear something good that you didn't expect to hear, because someone who wouldn't manage to get a song in edgewise in other formats will screw up his courage and sing, as did the young woman I saw at Marcon two weekends ago.

The problem is that a performers' circle can get to be too large. The circle at Marcon on Saturday night took 90 minutes to go around. And I'm going to assert that any circle that takes more than an hour to go around is inherently unhealthy, because singing a particular song is now going to become more important to the performer than singing the song that is best for the health of the circle.

Let's think about this. Ego-driven monster that you are (aren't we all? :) ), you've got a new song that you'd like to sing sometime tonight, or something that you've worked up for your repertoire, or just a song that you really like to sing. It's your turn now. The song that you really want to sing doesn't follow worth a damn. You could sing something else that would make the sing "better", maintaining or gently changing the mood. (Or maybe completely disrupting the current mood, if that's what's called for.) Or you could sing the thing that you really want to sing.

What're you going to do? I submit that you're probably going to sing the song that you want to sing, because you just don't know if you're still going to be awake when the circle gets back around to you again.

And the circle is less good because of it.

Would you make a different decision if the mean time between songs dropped to 30 minutes? I would -- and I suspect that most of the rest of you out there would too, because then you feel like you're going to get another shot at singing that song that you want to sing at a better time.

So if you figure that the average song is about 4 to 5 minutes long, that suggests that a "good" number of performers in a bardic circle would be 6 or 7, if you want folks to be able to sing every half hour or so.

By not-so-odd coincidence, that's the number of performers that I usually say is the maximum that a good chaos sing can support. But that's because I'm all about the flow -- and any sing that is too large is a flow killer.

A chaos sing can support more than 6 or 7 performers, but generally not more than that number who want to sing each turn around the circle. Yes, contrary to what it may appear, a good chaos sing actually does move around in a circle, it's just in non-Euclidean space and points are not always touched in the same order.

A good chaos sing is based on shared knowledge and observation. I may know someone else's repertoire well enough to surmise that if I sing X, they'll follow it with Y. People are looking to see who has hands on the necks of their guitars, or who is standing up with songbook in hand, to get an idea of who wants to sing next. And they'll frequently communicate non-verbally across the room to determine who's going to sing that follower. Sometimes the previous song will end and one person will say to the other, "I've got a really good follower. Do you want to follow me?"

Most times, this works, as long as there are few enough performers in the circle, the sight lines are good, and everyone's paying attention. Some times, not so much. I've seen people who have things queued up and are patiently waiting their turn get trampled.

I try to avoid that myself. I don't always. But I never claimed to be perfect.

I find that I'm not quite done, but I think that's enough for now.

Comments

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

I like the "poker chip bardic" formula because it preserves the "good follower" dynamic of the chaos filk while ensuring that everyone gets to perform. But poker chip needs a good moderator (to sort things out when multiple chips are tossed in at once, to gather up the chips, to redistribute the chips, to collect chips from people leaving, to give chips to latecomers arriving, etc., etc.), and it gets bogged down like the other varieties when the circle gets too big.

[billroper]

Something that I didn't get into here, but may get around to in a subsequent post, is that I frequently treat chaos circles as a variant of poker chip bardic. I tag several people known not to be filkhogs and try not to sing any more often than they do.

Of course, this requires enough mental capacity remain at that hour of the morning to keep count...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I think a good moderator *really* makes the filk circle.

I generally detest poker chip bardic, because to me it feels like the worst of both worlds. Not only do you have the limitedness of straight bardic-- in other words, the circle can't be an organic conversation; because of the limited number of turns, you often *don't* preserve the "good follower" dynamic, because often the followers don't have chips left-- but you still have the wrangling over who tossed their chip in first when two or more come in together, etc. It seems to me that since you're going to have to do all the negotiating *anyway*, you might as well just have chaos so that at least you have an organic thing.

I like chaos because then it's like a conversation. I don't just mean with "followers", though that's part of it; also with just... general interaction. Chaos just feels more organic to me, less constrained. I find that in chaos I really don't spend much time thinking about when it's going to be my next turn; in any kind of turn-mandated bardic, you kind of have to be thinking about that. Sometimes chaos actually means I play less often. I'm okay with that.

Chaos works really well with a great moderator (I guess that'd be "moderated chaos". Here on the west coast we were blessed for a while with a *wonderful* moderator in the form of Karen Rall. Karen was absolutely FANTASTIC about making sure that everyone got a turn, spotting the shy ones who had a song up but were too quiet to grab attention on their own in a roomful of guitars, asking non-performers if they'd like to make a request of a song or topic or person, and gently and politely (but firmly) mediating whenever two or more people accidentally started up at the same time. She was just a gem.

Sadly, she doesn't have time to do much filking anymore, and we miss her.

Harold Groot (hvideo, also of the west coast) is another really good moderator, and he has the added advantage that, since he usually sets up in the center of the circle to video everyone, he can see better than anyone else when there's someone up that maybe other parts of the circle can't see. And people generally look wherever he points his camera. He has become sort of moderator-by-default on several occasions just because he saw what other people missed. It really worked well.

So yeah... the best circles I've ever been in have been moderated chaos with conscientious moderators like Karen and Harold. But I realize that you just can't always have that; first, because not everyone wants that, and Bill's absolutely right about a healthy circle being pleasing to the *majority* of people in it, and second, because there's just not always someone like that available. But whenever someone's willing... well, no matter what form the circle's in, I love a good moderator. :)

Circles

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Worth writing, Bill, and worth everybody else's thinking about.

Nate

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

Oh, one other thing: I have been in good chaos sings with 10 or more performers, but the key was that everyone was very laid back, no one was too quick to launch followers or otherwise in a hurry, and no one was determined to get eight songs in before crashing for the night or had any other big agenda. If everyone in a chaos sing is OK with mostly listening and performing only two or three times over the circle's lifespan, the circle can get fairly large.

[demoneyes.livejournal.com]

It's the "number of people who want to perform and how often" that is key to whether a "circle" works - as you say people often complain that "bardic takes too long" but the only way chaos solves that is by discouraging some people from singing, usually quite unpleasantly. And the eternal dilemma of filks is that everyone wants to be in the room where the good stuff is happening - but if everyone's in there then it won't! So there is no perfect solution!

Courtesy, though, is vitally important as you say - I see way too many people who have decided "I'm going to sing next" and trample right over whoever might have been waiting. Especially those who like to invoke the great god "Follower here!" which apparently gives them divine right to do this regardless of who might be "up".

Okay, I exaggerate a tad - not all people with followers do this, but too damn many I've seen do just this! And there's also a sub-species of follower-junkie who one might call the "somebody did A therefore somebody MUST now sing B" (which relates to A in some fashion). Which I find equally annoying after a while. No, we *don't* have to sing B every time we sing A! Occasionally, perhaps, but it's not compulsory!

And enough for now here too... :)

[billroper]

There was a time when we went from Howie's "I will only sing The Birdie Song" at midnight to people insisting that Howie must sing The Birdie Song at midnight. I like the song, but that was a tremendous flow killer...

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

The two best ever circles I've been in?

Saturday night, Conthirteena, UK: a /massive/ chaos-folk-jam. I dunno exactly what happened, but there were a bunch of folks sitting around chatting, and IIRC I suggested Rachel S got her fiddle out. We jammed a couple of folk tunes, and it sort of took off from there, including the Suttons, the Childs-Heltons, and heck knows who else....

Saturday (IIRC), GAFilk 3 (I think), in the overflow room: IIRC it was about a dozen active performers chaos, but it ebbed and flowed... and went on till about 5am :)

I don't think you can PLAN for a good circle. The real art is knowing when you have one :)

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

I'd also add to that? They were good circles for ME (and clearly for a fair bunch of the folks present).

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Well written, worth musing over, which I'm too tired to do right now, but just as an intersting anecdote, it's the "follower" thing I find annoying the most the most often. An occasional one's tolerable, but really, I'd rather have flow than followers. They often are disrupting the flow, from my prespective. (I do realise that "follower" can have different interpretations, too, so there's a grey scale, of course.)

[billroper]

Oh, yes. I think there are two distinctly different interpretations of "follower" hanging around filk circles.

a song that touches on the same subject matter in a similar mood to the previous song, thereby building on the flow of the circle

a song to the same tune as the previous song, regardless of any other similarity to that song

I tend to prefer the first case to the second by a large margin, although after the fourteenth or fifteenth consecutive vampire song, I usually think it's time to do something that doesn't follow quite so well. :)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Thought provoking ... I don't sing in circles often, for various reasons, and the points you make are all exactly my sort of thought processes ...

... while I love the German filkcons, far too often they turn into one or two circles of 30 or more performers (in fact there really isn't much choice as you have 100 people of which probably 2/3rds are performers, and two big function rooms and not much else, so either you go to your bedroom or you end up in a room with 30-60 people in it, often including the GoH for a while (and/or other BNFs) and so the circle does indeed take up to two hours to go around ... and after midnight you see people waiting for their turn, and then as soon as they've done their song it's amusing to see them decide how long to wait before heading off to bed (as going immediately after you've sung would be terribly impolite unless you're the GoH and have said "oh ok, one more song, and then I've *got* to go to bed as I'm on first thing in the morning")

[little-cinnamon.livejournal.com]

... and this is where the YMMV thing comes back into play. The German filkcon circles are among my favourite circles ever. Yes, they take ages to go around, but all the people I want to be with are in the same room. I'm generally not overfussed about whether or not I get to sing in a circle, unless I have something new (which happens, oh, every 2 years or so). Then again there have been very few filkcons where I haven't done at least one set in one incarnation or another. And I'm not exactly short of musical outlets in general.

A couple of years ago, at one of the (in)famous Dead Dogs in Germany, where about 80% of the con membership is crammed into the Freusburg dining room, about 4 people stood up during their turn, and said they had never sung or performed before in their life, but wanted to do so now. And they did. And everyone rallied round, helped as needed, listened respectfully, and brought the roof down at the end. During that same circle, there was at least one story read, one poem recited, and one piece of instrumental classical music played.

Yes, it probably took about 4 hours for the circle to go round. But if I could pick one filk circle to go back to, it would be that one.

... and, as I say, I'm not disagreeing with anyone - it all just goes to show how individual a thing filk circle happiness is. :)

[gorgeousgary]

The other problem with "Pick, pass, or play" is that frequently the circle will come to a screeching halt while people try to eke a song out of someone --progressing through "Do you have a favorite song?" to "Do you have a favorite filker" to "What topics do you like?"

[billroper]

TJ recruited me to run a bardic circle at LACon back in 1984 when PPP was in vogue out there. I started by putting my guitar away for the night (the better to moderate with, my dear), then explained to people that if they were not ready to Pick, Pass, or Play when my moving finger came past them, I would skip them and move onto the next person in this really big circle.

This cut down on delays quite a bit. :)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Yes, the 90-minute quasi-bardic "command" circle Friday at Marcon put me in a bad mood. It made me feel small and snubbed, and I really can't *sing* in that situation. If it were OVFF, I'd have turned around and left the room as soon as I stepped in the door, and found my way to a smaller room. I wasn't able to get in until archiver_tim very loudly asked if I'd had a chance to perform. Instead I fell back on my one instrumental that other instrumentalists tend to join in on.

Fortunately, the Dead Dog was lightly attended, and I had a chance to try one or two things I don't do so much.

I agree that Pick, Pass, or Play is a problem in anything but an all-day housefilk (where everyone knows each other, pickers know who sings what, time is abundant, and you can get up to stuff yourself with goodies). Specifically, as you point out, the pick option is the least egalitarian thing that happens in a circle. My pet peeve at bardic at a convention is when someone who was ready to pass is cajoled into picking (by a well-intentioned official or unoficial moderator) something, anything--the cajoling itself frequently uses up a turn's worth of time.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[madfilkentist]

Performers' bardic is, in my experience, mostly a midwestern thing. In my main regions of experience (northeastern US and Germany), bardic circles are invariably all-inclusive. This has the advantage that everyone gets a chance to sing. The disadvantage is that it can take a very long time to go around the circle. I think that given the goals of filk, the advantage outweighs the disadvantage.

[allisona.livejournal.com]

I have to assume one's early filk experiences have a lot to do with what type of circle you prefer. Here in the Toronto area for years and years we did nothing but chaos, so it now tends to be the type I fantatically prefer :). I tend to find chaos works best when one goes by a rule of thumb I first heard from SteveMac- ten guitars should be about the maximum size for a chaos filk that works. As the guitarist for a group and usually feeling the pressure to be the person who decides when to jump in I've always said that to really have fun I practically need a psychic link to the other performers in the room to almost organically know when it's time to add in a song. Get beyond about ten guitars/performers and that becomes increasingly difficult. Usually at that stage, if we feel like singing, UT is likely to move to another filk circle or even seed a new one ourselves.

Torontonians throw around the term "polite chaos" a lot and, again, it's a philosophy we cut our teeth on in local filk circles and take pride in. It kind of makes us all moderators and responsible within our filk circles, making sure we wait our turn 'til everyone else sings, encouraging new and quiet filkers. It always works so well in local circles here that it still surprises me to find people -not- living by those circle rules elsewhere :). For example, as fun and dynamic as the Balticon circles were two weeks back, they sorely could have used a chaos moderator in some of the open filk circles to make a handful of the filkers more considerate of others. UT filled that role during theme circles we were officially hosting, but didn't feel it was our place in any of the other filk settings. To be fair, I also heard more than one person say that there were many more filkers at Balticon than normal, so I realize that had a hugely different impact on the dynamic of the circles, too- a dynamic that perhaps hasn't quite worked itself out yet (I think I heard Gary say that next year they may split the open filk into two circles if the numbers remain that big). To be fair again, sometimes it only takes two or three or four filkers not playing by the unspoken assumptions of the group to upset the balance of a circle.

[billroper]

I like polite chaos. The trick is keeping it polite. :)

And I have regretfully observed that I don't get nearly enough opportunity to hear you folks at FKO. This, unfortunately, is one of those side effects of being polite which has afflicted a lot of folks that I know.

[maverick-weirdo.livejournal.com]

I think the term "Performer" needs to be better defined.

Certainly if you only have 7 people who are each prepared to perform 2 songs/hour (average) and X number of non-performers then it can be a fun circle, however that excludes there being people who wish to perform just 1 or 2 songs per night. I'm not sure if you would define them as performers or not, but I believe a healthy circle needs a place for them.

Circles draw on the existing talent pool. Unless there is a place in the circle for those who perform less often, then the talent pool will dwindle over time, and it will be tougher to bring together a "critical mass" of performers to form a circle.

[billroper]

True enough, but I haven't gotten to that (and related) point yet. :)

[tollermom]

Hmmm... good stuff, and I think you and I tend to like (and thrive in) similar types of circles so I'm not surprised that I pretty much agree with you.

Chaos isn't perfect, but IMO it's still the best we've got. I've seen some big chaos circles moderated (at least one by qnvhrtz at Duck a few years ago) in such a way that they preserved flow without degenerating into a brawl. Moderating (guiding) a circle like that takes a light touch, though, and we don't have many people willing to tackle the tastk.

A smallish group makes chaos a joy, and if the flow is good my definition of a good chaos size is a little larger than yours, at least in total participants (assuming not everybody is performing in each "round"). Even a medium-largish chaos circle, _if_ people are being attentive and polite, can work well but it requires active observation, as you've said, not only to keep a nice musical flow and to flow in such a way that all of the active participants are happy with their level of participation, but also to notice and advocate for the shyer/quieter members of the circle. I'm unlikely to just single someone out, in the absence of any indication that they're trying to join in, and say "Hey, we haven't heard from you... do you have something?", because I think most (probably all) people will telegraph their desire to perform. If somebody's not ready or interested, I'm not going to put them on the spot by going "Hey, you! Sing!" but I do try to watch for the folks who are telegraphing a desire to jump in, 'cause sometimes they just need somebody to help make an opening for them. This works best, though, when the circle is only one layer deep (an exception being if there's a inner layer in the floor... they don't interfere with sight lines), and when it's no bigger than it needs to be for the number of people involved. In the same way that circles need to open up to add people, then need to "close ranks" once the numbers get smaller, so that you don't end up with isolated clusters instead of an actual circle.

My biggest frustrations with circles in the last year have come when poker chip bardic was imposed without any apparent desire by or consent of the bulk of the participants in the circle. I hate hate hate poker chip, but I'll freely admit that it's because both of my exposures to that format have been when somebody inflicted it on the circle and then didn't pay attention or attempt to moderate. It's not a format that can run itself, and I think it causes more problems than it solves unless the originator actually intends to take the reins and moderate. Without a moderator, it's not bardic... it's chaos with projectile weapons.

I _have_ realized that I need to learn to knit, or something. Saturday night, when the circle at Marcon was Way Too Big to be manageable and would have normally frustrated the stuffing out of me, I found myself enjoying it immensely as a non-participant, hanging out in our little Wild Mercy CD-signing party at the end of the room. We were quiet and didn't distract the circle, but having something to do other than sit and try to find an opening meant I could enjoy the music without being annoyed by the fact that it was taking all freaking night to get around the circle once. Still, I hit the end of the weekend and realized that there were people there who I'd either not heard or maybe only heard once all weekend, which was disheartening.

(more to come... post was too long)

[billroper]

Actually, I pick six to seven participants as optimum simply because very little special handling is required. :) If you want to assume a 60 minute cycle -- which is still reasonable in my opinion -- then you can manage a dozen or so regular performers, or eight regular performers and another eight who perform half as often (for whatever reason). That's given an average five minute song and no stunningly entertaining interruptions, fire alarms, etc.

[tollermom]

(continued from previous response)

I will say, though, that a filk hog can kill my interest in a circle faster than almost anything else. I generally don't get particularly cut-throat, and in fact am more likely to retreat into my notebook rather to fight for an opening in a room that isn't playing fair, but there are occasional times when someone drives me right over the edge. It happened one night (I'm reasonably sure it was Friday, but I won't swear to that) at Marcon, when I finally snapped after three or four hours of not playing at all. I'd been trying to get a song in for easily an hour, and I finally elbowed my way in even though I knew someone else was trying to get a song in. That person had sung four or five times by that point, though, and dammit there were a _lot_ of us who hadn't had a chance yet. After a while, I stop feeling guilty about stepping on people like that. *sigh* Returning rudeness with rudeness ultimately isn't the answer though... by that point in the evening it probably would have been better for me and for the circle if I'd just given up and gone swimming, or gone to sleep.

I'm not trying to pick on Marcon, either... the same problems manifest at OVFF or Duck or Conflikt or any other con with a high number of performers. Marcon's just the most recent example in my memory. What I personally learned on Saturday was that I don't have to remove myself from the room if I don't feel like fighting for a spot in the circle... sometimes I just have to remove myself from the circle itself. Once I put myself in the position of listener rather than potential performer, I could just sit back and enjoy the music. On nights like that, I generally find that I can slide into the circle later (much later) when things have gotten more civilized. Unfortunately, I can't always stay awake that long!

[billroper]

I understand this sort of reaction to filkhogging. Admittedly, it's sometimes hard to see that someone else is ready to go, but there are some people who seem to pay no attention whatsoever.

The Marcon circles were being particularly rough this year, it seems. I missed most of Friday due to crashing out early, so I can't say a lot about that. But the capsule summary of the weekend came when reporting back to daisy_knotwise about how the filks had gone. I think this is a roughly accurate quote, but I may have shuffled lines between the participants:

catalana: Roper sang twice as many songs as I did this weekend.

daisy_knotwise: Ah! He sang two and you sang one.

billroper: That would be about it.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Some of it is leadership. Self-leadership and group leadership.

When PPP is going around, should one politely decline the third offer to sing in the circle per round? I have not seen someone take on that rule until it got beyond that third or fourth performance in one round. Should it be the moderator who has to point out that X has had too many turns this round?

Another problem with bartic is that a performer can estimate when their next turn will be and duck out for some conversation or whatever. If they are gone too long are they an real participant? Listening also makes one part of the community.

I think the MarCon Open Filks were great each night. I've come of the opinion that a filk that might only have a 4 hour life-span needs a community gathering theme or event to start the room. Damn it! Bob Asprin died for that circle! Would have those wanting to remember him most be there, at 10pm, ready to sing without the sad event. I don't think so. Maybe some in and out over the course of the evening. If Bob made it, would he have come to the open filk? I came to MarCon hopeing so, but I was also weighing the chance he would have partied with his DI elsewhere. Eitherway, I knew I would be seeing many more filkers in circle than I have seen in a long time.

I wish ConClave and ConFusion would again learn to start each night's filk with a planned theme or set of performers. Hey, Roper! would you like to start an evening with yourself and invite others to get critical mass to a "21st Century songs only"? Let concom know, I think it would be good idea.
If a second room looks ready to happen, how about giving it a distinct purpose, such as 'instrumentals, collaborations, vocal harmonies and jams' or 'we're going to be doing classics', instead of just starting a second version of the first room?

Oh well, I could go on, as I did not anticiapate The Red Wings, 45.3 seconds away from winning The Cup, to give up a goal and now go into triple overtime.

Sigh.

[billroper]

See, my reaction to theme circles is almost the opposite -- I don't really care for them in general (the wake for Bob was a special case). If there's going to be a theme circle, I think there ought to be another room available for general filking, because there are going to be folks who don't have anything that fits the theme or who don't want to listen to songs on that theme. They should have a place where they can go and have a good time doing what they want to do.

And a lot of times, what's needed is a second version of the big room, because the big room has gotten too darned big to satisfy everyone. As demoneyes observed above, that does mean that you can't sit in one room and hear everything, but it also means that there's more of everything, which I believe to be a greater good.

[poltr1]

I personally don't care for chaos. I have a hard time jumping in.

I also used to attend housefilks that were chaos circles, and the host (exercising their "perogative") often jumped in with, "I have to follow that up with this." Needless to say, I don't attend those housefilks any more, and contributed to my burnout toward the person on question.

I'm also more of an ensemble player than a soloist, so I tend to shy away from circles where I'm expected to play and/or sing alone.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

Random points of questionable relevance....

I enjoy *listening* to music. Not all music, certainly -- and I've removed myself from circles where the style and mood seemed unalterably wrong for me -- but I do like to listen. I find that I have a better time in filk circles that are populated with other people who also like to listen. If I play when, and because, others want to hear rather than motivated by *my* desire to be heard, I enjoy myself more.

Since everyone is going to be a listener far more than a performer in any reasonably sized circle, it seems to me that the focus of 'health' should be from that direction. I have 3 songs that run longer than about 4:15, but I never play them. :-)
(Most are well under 4 minutes...so much for any folk credentials I might claim.)

The idea that leaving a circle can make it more healthy seems right for situations where there's a reasonably desirable somewhere else to go. If that's not true then it may make more sense to define circle health in terms of minimizing discomfort rather than maximizing enjoyment.

[billroper]

One advantage of having been around as long as I have is that "a reasonably desirable somewhere else to go" can turn out to be "down the hall chatting with friends". :)

But I do like having an alternate filk room available when possible.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The problem I have experienced with pokerchip bardic is that if many people are arriving, the latecomers receiving chips during time X can have total performance times exceeding time X and the poor boobs who have been waiting in the circle all this time *never* get to sing.

I think the real issue is circle size. Pretty much any circle type can be made to work with the right circle size, which is, as Bill puts it, about 6 or 7 performers in any given go-round. If it's a PPP bardic circle, that means 6 or 7 people total, especially once you count in coaxing and songbook-searching time. But so it goes.

That said, I enjoyed the Marcon circle because I'm willing to endure a longer mean time between songs if there's a lot of good stuff getting done, and plus, it was a special occasion that I attended kind of expecting to let the people who knew Robert do most of the performing. On the other hand, I "grew up" with chaos circles, so I'm used to having to be pushy in order to perform, so perhaps I got more than my share of turns in the Marcon circle.

I guess a lot of my enjoyment of circles in general is complicated by the fact that I also have an Agenda; I write lots of songs, and if I don't perform them they don't get heard at all. I have brand new songs I wrote last year and this year that have never been performed in public in any venue whatsoever. I'm guessing there are other songwriters out there with this issue. It's frustrating to realize that I will go home with these songs still languishing unsung among the loose sheets of paper tucked into the front of my songbook.

Now arguably that's my problem and I try to deal with it without stepping on other people's who want to perform. But it would be helpful to have more smaller circles rather than great big ones. And it might be cool to have a "new material" theme circle now and again, now I think about it.

[billroper]

I sympathize with the unsung song problem, although I suspect that you've got it much worse than I do. Right now, I've got one song that hasn't been out in public yet and another that managed to get to a housefilk. :)

But, hey! Duckon is coming up...

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I have been a vocal proponent of chaos since my very first exposure to bardic, but I'm actually starting to come around to a more nuanced view. With 4-6 people who know each other and get along well, any format tends to work pretty well; I'd rather not have a strict turn order, but I've had plenty of good experiences even having to go in a set rotation. When 30 or more people all want their turn, nothing will keep most of them from being frustrated. Any format will sometimes work with in-between numbers. With about 12 people who want turns, I think chaos usually mostly works (with a few people feeling snubbed), and bardic often works, even though most people feel like it's a little too long. With about 20 people who want turns, chaos usually has a fairly large number of people feeling like it's too hard to get a turn, and bardic almost always seems like even the good songs are muted by a general feeling of frustration.

The thing that's crystal clear to me is that tripling the number of people who want turns by giving an equal shot at a turn to someone with a request almost always pushes the numbers up to where nothing is likely to work. Rather than giving the listeners equal turns in the name of fair play, I think it's better to give them good music to listen to. Better music results when each song is performed by someone who's decided that now is a good time for them to sing that song then when the turns are dictated by the seating arrangement or by requests.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

The first BIG filk circles I was introduced to were at the 87 UK Worldcon. I can't for the life of me remember who was organising them, but they had a very definite division into a 'performer' circle and an audience. One spot in the circle was designated as 'audience sweep'. It worked surprisingly well, I think, but I guess it depends on the will of performers and audience.

me? I prefer nice small cozy snobby elitist (the last two words are a) a joke and b) (C) bedlamhouse) chaos.

[ms-dblk.livejournal.com]

Our con attending has been very limited, but T'B was interested in listening to the filk. However, he soon returned, feeling that an audience was not appreciated, only participants.

As listeners only (we neither sing nor play), we don't feel we belong in the circle, but there appears to be no place else to sit and listen, and standing in the doorway doesn't seem very polite (plus it's tiring).

I'd appreciate everyones feelings on the subject.

[billroper]

Oh, gosh. No, the objective is not to exclude people who are there to listen from the circle, although it may be more convenient if they sit in the second row of chairs rather than in the innermost circle, just so that the folks who are trying to perform can better keep track of what each other are doing.

The problem at Marcon was that we had a lot of performers and a lot of listeners and the room was simply overfull. Ideally, a second sing would have started in Union C, but we didn't get that room until 11:30 PM, which is a little late for a second sing to try to get to critical mass. That would have bled some of the people off from Union E and there would likely have been space available in each room.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

After reading all the comments to date, I sent a link to this thread to Trace, who runs the filk programming at Marcon, with the suggestion that they expand the open filk space to two rooms next year.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

I've heard back from Trace, at Marcon. He tells me that Marcon does, in fact, have an alternate filk room, which was listed in the pocket program and announced at the beginning of the open filk. Good for them. (I've suggested adding prominent signage in the filk room.)

And that leads me to my own comments. Chaos, bardic, poker chip, moderated chaos, and whatever other shapes of circle that filkers form all have their advantages and disadvantages. The common factor I see is that all of them have their faults magnified when they become Too Damn Big. Right now, I think both OVFF and FKO are doing a good job of making alternate rooms available, so things mostly flow into reasonable sizes and configurations. Certainly there are circles that become Too Damn Big, but the people there do have the opportunity to find or form another circle if they want to.

I'm performing less these days - personal preference, and the fact that I'm not writing much lately - and I'm enjoying open filks more as a result. Friday at Marcon was the most I've done in a while, and I only did one or two beyond the Dorsai theme filk, I think. Saturday I only performed once, and that was because I'd just written something new. (And I admit I pushed in after waiting a while, because the people I wanted to sing it for were about to leave.) At FKO, I only soloed twice all weekend, and once was my contest entry.

But at FKO, I had a wonderful time in the first alternate room one of the two nights, just listening and harmonizing. The musicianship was outstanding, the energy and flow were spot on, and there were enough songs that either had a chorus, or were songs I knew, that I had lots of opportunities to harmonize.

I'm not an instrumentalist at all, but over time, I've learned to love listening to jams. My favorite musical moment of Friday at Marcon was when I asked Amy to do something, she announced the key, and we ended up with an ensemble of two fiddles, several guitars, and (I think) a couple of drummers. Magical.

I guess what I'm leading towards is the question of expectations. So much of a person's enjoyment of an open filk depends on what he or she wants out of it. If the goal is "I want to hear a bunch of great music", then enjoyment is easy to find. If the goal is "I want to sing, and it doesn't matter if it's lead or harmony", then it depends on the ratio of solo performance to songs you can sing along to. If the goal is "I want to sing lead", then it's a question of finding a venue where that's possible. (Which can be a big problem if the con only has one room for open filk.) If the goal is either "I want to sing lead in front of a big audience", "I want to sing lead in front of particular people", or "I want to sing some leads *and* I want to hear my favorite performers", the it may be necessary to either be pushy (in chaos) or wait a long time (in bardic).

I don't yet know how I'm going to approach my first Contata. Since I'll be in the presence of a lot of people who don't already know all my stuff, I may try to step forward and do more, possibly in an alternate room. Or I may decide to stick with the largest sing, to hear more people that I haven't heard before. I've found that it's best to just flow with whatever I most feel like doing at that particular moment.

[billroper]

Yeah, I swapped e-mails with Trace too (who is planning to take some time off from running filk at Marcon, at least next year). I wasn't aware that a second room was available on Friday, but I know that the one that opened up on Saturday wasn't available until 11:30 PM due to another panel, which is really later than I'd like to see, especially when there's a theme circle running in the main room. And I do understand the difficulty involved in negotiating space with the rest of the folks running Programming.

As you observe, what you feel like doing at any particular moment varies. I'm sure that's true for most everyone. For me, it's usually some combination of "I want to sing some lead", "I want to hear some particular people", and "I want to hear something I enjoy listening to" (the latter two categories overlapping, but not being identical, especially since you can never know when something new and interesting is going to pop up). These are also modified by "I don't want to be a filkhog" and "I don't want to have to actively fight to get a song in edgewise".

On average, I'd rather be in a smaller circle with people that I like (both for listening to and as friends) than in a larger circle of any kind. (This doesn't mean that I don't want to be in a circle that includes people that I don't know well, just to be clear -- if that's possible given the number of negatives that I just piled on there. :) ) That can be a tricky thing to arrange, especially in a situation when space is limited.