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.

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... :)

[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.)

Saturday, Gafilk 3

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

YDRC. I was in that circle for at least a while. :)

[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")

[billroper]

I think I may have been in that latter circle too. :)

I'm tempted to say that stronger performers will tend to push up the carrying capacity of a chaos circle, because the imperative to sing now tends to drop in such a circumstance.

Jams, of course, are a different beastie altogether. I admit to being pretty lousy at jamming, but I'm trying to learn. :)

[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...

[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...

[gorgeousgary]

...especially if it's the "extended dance mix" with 30 minutes of shtick/build-up before the actual song

[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. :)

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Agreed... I like it when the "followers" are not necessarily "the obvious follower", but as often as not, something that just *felt* right, somehow.

[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?"

[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.

[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]

I make what I think is a good-faith effort to do this, usually making sure someone has played twice, and most people who seem to be actively participating have played once between my turns. If I'm a known filk hog, please let me know.

[callylevy.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Interesting stuff Bill!

I'm commenting to Mike's as ironically the Saturday night jam at Conthirteena (my first con) was one of the more unhappy circles for me, and had almost convinced me that I should leave on Sunday morning (a situation headed off at the pass by Dave Weingart overnight, luckily for me!). Why was I miserable? Because I couldn't work out how to join in. I didn't know guitar chords at that stage to be able to see what key people were playing in, the music was so loud I couldn't hear the keyboard to check whether anything I was playing was right and I didn't have the courage to ask people 'what key are we in'? I found it overwhelming and sad that I couldn't participate. Relevant to Bill's YMMV re: enjoyment and Mike's postscript! *smiles*

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I've always found you to be gracious and polite (both in and out of filk circles). :)

[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.

[ldwheeler.livejournal.com]

Agreed as well ... I take the most liberal possible interpretation of the term "follower." Which often means "only a follower somewhere in my mind." Heh.

* Of course, my repertoire is currently limited enough that if I took a strict interpretation of "follower," I'd never sing anything. *