First Full Rehearsal of 2010

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday January 16, 2010 – First Full Rehearsal of 2010

Fremont Abbey was not available this week (nor will it be next week), so today’s rehearsal was moved to Phinney Neighborhood Center. A powerful sense of déjà vu, as this is where the circle met every Saturday when I first moved to Seattle in 1998, and continued until we formed Seattle Circle NFP and rented the house on 65th Street. For scheduling reasons at the facility, it was a somewhat earlier rehearsal than we generally have, running 9am to noon.

This was an all-company meeting with guitars; that is, every company member with a guitar, regardless of whether or not they are on the “Performance Team”, was invited to sit in the circle, and so we were 13 seated with guitars, plus Frank on his feet. The morning was divided into 3 segments. The first hour was with Frank, focusing on the Alexander Technique. The second hour was led by Bob, and the third by Bill.

Frank worked with us on what Alexander called the “critical moment”; the moment just before we “do something”. The work on exploring this moment was done in the circle, with guitars, in some directed circulations. In an email after the rehearsal, Bill asked if someone might document what we did. Mary Beth responded with the following:

Work with Frank, Phinney Community Center
Mary Beth’s quick upload of thoughts, 1/16/10

Frank began by quoting Alexander. It was something along the lines of “you can’t do what you want to do unless you do what you don’t know how to do.”
We did an exercise of playing a note. During this, I played an A, I think. I remember feeling pulled by the group movement to play. And then feeling glad that my note seemed to fit.

Then we played another note. During this, I played another note and recognized that I played the same note as someone else.

Something about these exercises had me think about the information available to me and how I could best use it to make music and contribute to the group.

Then, Frank exhorted us to play. But, we all didn’t play because he had told us not to do so? Everyone was pretty good at not playing. I was good at it because I was a bit confused about what we were doing at that time.

Frank mentioned that Alexander’s efforts in developing the technique involved a “yes” or “no” approach to whether or not an action would take place. The approach was an effort to have habits essentially get “bored” with the fact that often the opportunity to manifest was denied. So, that when the “yes” to action did occur the habit was not prepared to appear so to speak.

We did circulations in which we practiced passing the notes, but when the note came to us it was either played or passed by the previous person depending on how they responded in the moment.

Frank noted that on one of our early times around, we played more notes than he had hoped.

It was noted by a few people that tension appeared long before the note arrived because they were anticipating playing.

During one of our circulations, I used a misinterpretation of what Frank said to approach the circulation differently. I thought Frank had said “bare your soul” in playing your note (or not), but he had said “save your soul.” I had also been thinking about habits, the exercise, and where intention fits in the scheme of things. Anyway, I began to see if people were “baring their soul” as they passed the notes. I hoped to see the person more in their essence rather than, perhaps, their collection of gestures. And I was able to see the note move from person to person. I wondered about what I would need to do or be in this exercise. The thought came to me to play the world’s most beautiful note. That led to a surge of energy inside me, a kind of nervous, excited energy. The note came to me and I pass it, rather than played it.

At one point, Frank juggled well. He described the trajectory of learning something.

We concluded after Bill shared a story about the word “po” being an alternative to saying “yes” or no.”

Frank posted his description of the class in his own blog: http://www.frankmsheldon.com

After a break, Bob picked up the baton and ran us through a circulation exercise that involved a series of chord changes played in time, with the instruction to circulate only notes from the particular chord. For the preliminary work, this was limited to 4 chords – G Maj-G7-C Maj-C7 – moving swiftly, with only two beats for each change. Travis and I picked up an accompaniment arpeggio that Bob presented, which helped to hold the pattern. Once the pattern was established, we were invited to drop the accompaniment, so that we could simply hear the chord pattern in the circulation.

From here the pattern was extended, eventually to sequence of 16 chords. At that point, the 4/4-ness of the circulation was dropped, and instead we made the chord change at the beginning of each circulation - Bob was on his feet, so that meant there were 12 circulators. This was a rather advanced version of an exercise I have been doing with the House Circle (in those exercises, we generally stick with I-IV-V7-I patterns, or others similarly familiar sequences), and required the group to hold a very long and somewhat complex harmonic pattern in our collective minds eye. For much of the time, Bob had to call out the changes as they came by, but before we were done we did manage a few cycles without the prompts.

G Maj-G7-C Maj-C7
F Maj-C Maj-G Sus-G Maj
D Min-F Maj-A Min-E Min
D Maj-D Maj-D7-D7

The final segment of the day was led by Bill. This was a preparatory exercise that will move us toward something he has in mind. It involved circulating notes of our choice with eyes closed, and the aim of having everyone eventually playing the same note. The first time around, the strategy emerged of one person sitting on their note and those around the circle moving to match it. This was certainly effective. The person initiating the circulation had misunderstood the instruction and thought that was what they were “supposed” to do. The next time around, Bill amended and clarified the instruction to match whatever note the person to our left passed it to us. This changed the game rather drastically. There were moments when a segment of the circle managed to play the same note – perhaps 4 or 5 players in a row – but if someone played a different note the “letter of the law” stated that we were to follow it, and so we were never in much danger of succeeding. Very interesting stuff, and I am looking forward to where Bill might go with this.