🎻 What sourdough, EQing, and memorizing tunes all have in common

Hi Reader!

Lest you were worried (😉), my sourdough starter Eleanor is still going strong, and I'm continuing to enjoy being a beginner bread baker.

And yes, there is definitely a connection to Irish fiddle music with this story so stick with me on this!

Earlier this year, Bear's mom asked if I wanted to take her jar of sourdough starter home. It was headed to the trash otherwise, so in the spur of the moment I agreed (if it didn't work, I'd just toss it myself).

I knew about this baker Maurizio Leo thanks to Kit, the email service I'm currently writing you from (I'll link Maurizio's list below if you want to be a fellow sourdough nerd with me). And while it was a lot of different factors to take in all at once -- equipment, maintaining a starter, and learning what on earth a levain is -- I was very intrigued about taking on something new and getting to exercise a new creative muscle!

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I've since made several loaves a month and have tried a ton of fun discard recipes (waste not, want not), and have locked into my favorite loaf recipe.

Each time I bake a loaf, I'm spending less time checking every single step of the recipe and more time listening to my instincts I've started to develop by mastering the basics.

Now that I've gotten into a rhythm with making bread, there are fewer factors my brain has to reach for and more that has become more subconscious or second nature. I'm not worried about how to stretch and fold the dough, so that gives me room to:

• Experiment with other flours like rye flour, heritage wheat etc.
• Try different scoring patterns (my Instagram algorithm is full of fun sourdough shapes and trad videos, and I'm not the least bit upset about that)
• Bit by bit invest in other tools that will help make bread baking easier -- even though the tools I have at hand already let me do the most important thing, which is feed myself, family and friends.

A similar thing happened the other day when Bear and I were testing our gear for our upcoming September gigs (check out our new Sionainn Laoi website here).

Bear's dad was walking me through the multitude of ways my mixer could control the signal and overall volume for the fiddle and my vocal mic. He was double checking that I knew where to adjust levels and we were clicking around some of the different settings.

It's not the first time he's walked me through the Stomp Mix, but each gig that I use it, I start to understand it more and more.

I'm comfortable knowing where to plug everything in and how to mute either my fiddle or vocal mic (the main reason for using this particular mixer). So now that gives my brain more space to remember "okay this is the level I'm going for," and "this is how to control the signal I'm sending to the main mix."

Building layers upon layers!

Weekly Tune Library Update

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By now, I suspect you're nodding along and can see exactly where I'm taking this metaphor in the context of Irish traditional music. And while I can only speak for fiddlers, this likely applies across all instruments:

The more you internalize, the more space you free up to get creative with your phrasing, your ornamentation and your variation in tunes!

To quote Maria in The Sound of Music: "When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything!"

When you know a lot of different interval patterns, you'll recognize them across multiple tunes as similar phrases appear... and suddenly have fewer phrases to memorize in a tune.

When you know how to make your bow create different sounds across the strings, you know exactly how to strategically throw in a crunch, a squeak or a swell to add character, playfulness and depth to your tunes.

When you know how to play each ornament, and where to best insert them into each tune type... look out, world! The tune is your oyster!

Happy playing!

~Hannah