Rehearsal in the Great Hall

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday September 26, 2009 – Rehearsal in the Great Hall

Sitting at my place, and then we migrated over to Fremont Abbey for rehearsal.

Reflecting on Thursday’s performance, my overall sense was that while there were certainly pieces and bits of pieces that needed attention (there are always pieces and bits of pieces that need attention), what we primarily need is to simply put in time playing in this remarkable, but unfamiliar, acoustical environment, and from that standpoint it kind of doesn’t matter what we play just so long as we play together.

Bob was out today, so we were eight in the circle, but left a space where Bob would have been sitting. Bill audited from outside the circle. Warmed up for about 10 minutes with the 6-note pattern we are working with in the Division of Attention exercise, and then ran the exercise itself.

Next I called “Eye of the Needle”. This room is the closest in temperament to the room in which this piece was born, and it sounds amazing. Following on from the work last week, I then called for everyone to pass their part to the right. Interestingly, a number of people could not play the new part and so had to sit out, and no one who is not already playing bass knew the bass part. So, we learned the bass part together. We then played through the whole piece several times, with and without the metronome, with me on the main melody accompanied by 7 bass players. Kind of fun. Armed with fresh information, we all reverted to our original parts and played the piece one more time.

Moving to practicalities, before the break we touched on a section of the Zeppelin medley that had seriously slowed down in the performance, with Bill providing feedback and guidance.

A break. Bill departed.

Back from the break, more practicalities, including auditioning and ultimately adopting a hilarious wrinkle in “Brasil”. Worked with “My Precious Dream”, “Cultivating the Beat” and “King for a Day”.

For the last half hour we brought “Thrak” into the room. This is a room that is just screaming to be thrakked. Put together a working arrangement. Chris’ observation (completely paraphrased by me, so don’t hold him to it) was that this was like the reward for having had to play the piece for so many years with so many [not so talented (my edit)] groups. It really is something. Not quite ready for primetime, especially without having run it with Bob, but it is firmly in my back pocket, with a certain encore potential should the spirit move.

Home to a short meeting of the team organizing the Raft Island course. Now showered and resting before I head out to this evening’s gig with the blues band.