Skip to the room
Small RoomsA review of the small-room show

Notes on acoustic songwriting

The small-room show, written down

Twenty minutes, forty chairs, no monitor and no crew. The review writes down how that show is built, and checks its numbers where numbers exist.

No. 1Volume one · five rooms, ten notes, sources at the foot of the page

A folding chair, a microphone stand and a guitar case at the front of an empty room lit by a single curtained window

The register

Every note, dated

One line per note, the most recent first. Entries the desk reads elsewhere travel in the same list and carry the name of their publication.

  1. A person writing on a clipboard at a café counter before a show, chairs still stacked and a mop leaning by the door

    · The scene

    Who books a listening room in a town of 140,000

    Who holds the diary of a small room, what each of the four optimises, and what a city's hundred-night pool means for the act asking for a date. The message that gets answered, in its five parts.

  2. A guitar bag and a padded instrument bag standing upright against a basement wall beside a bus timetable taped to the plaster

    · The instrument

    Carrying a show on instruments that fit in two bags

    A small-room set travels on two bags: one holds the instrument, the other holds everything else and has to close. The desk sets out the test that decides each object, what the house can be asked for, and what the unpacking costs the slot.

  3. Audience leaning forward on wooden benches with lights off, only the exit sign glowing at the back of the room

    · The room

    The house that lets the last song stay quiet

    An inventory of everything in a small venue that makes a sound during the last song, who can switch it off, and what it costs to ask.

  4. A performer playing a guitar seated among a close audience in a small room, coat hooks and bicycle helmets on the wall behind

    · The set

    Why the first song is never the loudest

    Three numbers are unknown at the first note and known by the third song: absorption, noise floor, carry to the back row. This note works all three, and places the loudest song where the room can carry it.

  5. View from the last row of a narrow room over the heads of the audience towards a single performer in a pool of lamplight

    · The writing

    Writing for the back of the room

    The listener on the last chair is not a quieter version of the one at the front; they hear a different show. This note works the distance arithmetic, runs a two-pass test for lost words, and rewrites a line so its sense arrives.

  6. Low white ceiling above a small audience seen from the performer side, a heating pipe running across the top of the frame

    · The room

    What a low ceiling does to a ballad

    Two back rooms with the same floor and a different ceiling are two different instruments. Here is the arithmetic, worked through, with the point where it stops being trustworthy.

  7. A wrist watch lying on a scarred wooden table beside a glass of water and a set list written by hand on a sheet of paper

    · The set

    What a twenty minute set actually holds

    A twenty minute slot is 1200 seconds, and what fits inside it can be counted before the night. The desk works the walk, the songs and the gaps, and prices every minute of talking.

  8. A wall calendar hanging above a cafe counter beside an electric kettle and two cups on a saucer, daylight from a window

    · The scene

    How the small room circuit holds a season

    How many quiet nights can one city hold? The desk works the answer from one counted figure, four assumptions you can replace, and a share nobody knows until it is counted.

  9. Two handwritten verse lines crossed out once each on lined paper, a cup of black coffee on a saucer at the corner of the page

    · The writing

    The four line verse that carries a whole song

    What the folk ballad's four line stanza offers a small room: eight and six syllables, one rhyme per verse, short lines that leave a breath. The note takes the form apart, line by line, and times three verses.

  10. An empty wooden chair beside a music stand with a folded coat draped over the stand, in a bare daylit room with wide floorboards

    · The instrument

    The melodica in a quiet room

    The melodica is a keyboard you blow: the note begins with the air and ends with it. This note works out what that does to a held chord, to the breath the front row hears, and to the attack a low ceiling returns twice.

01-05

The five rooms of the review

Five rooms in the same house, from the shape of a set to the way a small circuit holds a season.

  1. A person on a wooden stool beside a floor lamp writing in a notebook, a row of folding chairs against the wall of a bare room

    01

    The set

    The time budget of a short slot, the order of the songs, and what the first three minutes are for.

  2. A lined notebook lying open on a wooden school desk, an orange pencil across the page and a small keyboard on the seat behind it

    02

    The writing

    The four line verse as a working unit, and the plain test of whether the words reach the back row.

  3. An open hard instrument case on bare floorboards with a folded wool blanket inside it and a canvas bag strap across the corner of the frame

    03

    The instrument

    What a melodica actually is, and how a whole show fits into two bags without losing anything that matters.

  4. A back room of a cafe before a show, bare brick wall, stacked chairs in the corner and a single microphone stand in the middle

    04

    The room

    One equation, a worked estimate, and the part of a quiet ending that belongs to the house rather than the performer.

  5. A bicycle leaning against a wall beside a lit doorway at dusk, streetlight reflected on the wet pavement of a quiet street

    05

    The scene

    The arithmetic of a season, and the four people who might be holding the diary of a listening room.

What the desk keeps up to date

Four pages read again more often than the others, because a room changes or a season fills up.

  1. A person on a wooden stool beside a floor lamp writing in a notebook, a row of folding chairs against the wall of a bare room

    · Room 01

    The set: how a small-room show is built

    How a short acoustic set is built: the time budget of a twenty minute slot, the order of the songs, and what the first number is really for.

  2. An open hard instrument case on bare floorboards with a folded wool blanket inside it and a canvas bag strap across the corner of the frame

    · Room 03

    The instrument: the melodica and the small kit

    A blown, keyed free reed instrument and the rest of a show that fits in two bags: what each object is for and what it costs to carry.

  3. A bicycle leaning against a wall beside a lit doorway at dusk, streetlight reflected on the wet pavement of a quiet street

    · Room 05

    The scene: the small-room circuit, documented

    How a small circuit holds a season, who actually books a listening room, and the arithmetic of an audience in a city of 139,804 people.

  4. Low white ceiling above a small audience seen from the performer side, a heating pipe running across the top of the frame

    · The room

    What a low ceiling does to a ballad

    Two back rooms with the same floor and a different ceiling are two different instruments. Here is the arithmetic, worked through, with the point where it stops being trustworthy.

The review describes the small-room show and nothing else: what the desk accepts and refuses is written in the editorial policy, the desk itself sits on the about page, and a question travels through the contact page.