The Making of a Freestyle Part 3: Choosing music

Ok one of us was sleepy, the other was wide awake.

Hampton and I drug our sleepy selves to Lexington Saturday and Sunday morning for a freestyle clinic. It's a lady who frequently does freestyles in the area. I was really curious as to how she puts these together.

Plus, I can't turn down an opportunity to ride in Lexington. Every farm I have been to there has been lovely. This one was particularly ridiculous.

You pull up to a gate that magically opens for you.

House.

Front of the bigger barn
(yes that's a BARN)

Back of the barn

It was originally built and owned by the Chanels (yes, THOSE Chanels) who apparently had daughters who did the show jumpers. When they lost interest, they sold the farm. It's now for sale again ($3,750,000!!!!), and a dressage trainer leases the arena and a smaller barn, and I'm not sure who leases out the rest. Fields were full of retirees, broodmares and some young horses. Probably Thoroughbreds. Absolutely gorgeous farm.

Indoor arena

Day 1 consisted of music selection.

I requested Talking Heads, or any 80s funk. She had some 80s music, but pretty much ignored my request for funk. I thought that's fine, she's the pro. I can roll with it.

She has literally 8000+ songs on her computer, and had be trot and canter around until she found songs that worked for each gait (and walk of course). It really did not take us too long to find 3 songs that worked rather well with Hampton, I must admit. Even though I would not have selected these songs for my own inspiration.

Lexington Horse farms are UNREAL. This was neighboring farm Donamire
(has a work track surround this barn)

Another shot of Donamire

A couple of songs I requested she would not let me use because another client of hers in the area was using it. This I do understand and respect her for that.

Walk: Landslide (Stevie Nicks)
Trot: Sail Away (Styx)
Canter: .... some current pop song that's always on the radio but I can't remember the name of! lol

After we selected the songs, she again had me trot and canter while she adjusted the tracks to the tempo of Hampton. Not much adjustment was needed, just little tweaks. Obviously if you don't have the software, you can't really do this. So you would need to find a song that matched right off the bat in it's original state.

We started some canter choreography at the end, and Hamp and I were sort of a hot mess. We stood around for 20 min talking, and then she immediately had me pick up, do a canter zig zag, to 10m counter canter circle to a fucking half pirouette. I felt that was a little unfair and it was a borderline disaster. Ooops.

C'mon. Someone pony up the $4M and buy me this farm.

I wasn't super impressed with the attitude that we were "not capable" of the movements she wanted to include. I was mildly insulted, and told her we were green 4th level and my plan was to "grow into" this freestyle over the summer. Obviously I would not let us be overfaced. It will be June at the earliest that I will be showing it anyway.

Admittedly, I left a little perturbed but shook it off and really did have a good time hacking around to loud music! Hamps worked great and is feeling fresh these days.

After dropping Hamp back off in Louisville, I went to work until 115 am. With my alarm set for 530 am on Sunday to do it all again. The things we do for these horses!

To be continued ....