Work with House Circle I and II

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday January 2, 2010 – Work with House Circle I and II

Hello 2010!

The Tuning the Air company remains on break until next Saturday, when we kick things off with the first Open Circle of the year and then come together to begin the work for the next season.

The House Circle, however, soldiers on. Mary Beth will be joining the Performance Team this season, but has indicated (my paraphrase, with apologies in advance) that she feels that it is important that she continue to be a part of this group. They have organized/evolved into two overlapping project-oriented teams working along slightly different, but complimentary, lines. My approach in working with this group has been to remain available, and supportive, but to resist the temptation to “direct” – 25 years of Guitar Craft experience, much of that engaged in “leading” groups, has established some habits that are a bit of work for me to resist. But it is also very clear to me that while jumping in might, at times, provide a level of short-term efficiency, in the longer view it subverts the larger aims of work in the Guitar Circle.

The first team to meet today, consisted of Igor K, Greg and Mary Beth. This is the performance-oriented group. They work on learning repertoire, and in recent months have put together several “podcasts” recorded late at night in the Great Hall at Fremont Abbey. Today’s work was with 49 Notes. All of the parts are in place. Mary Beth is playing the melody, Greg the bass, and Igor the 49 Notes, so this was primarily about the subtleties of mechanics and phrasing, and how the parts fit together. Good work, and much accomplished in only a little more than an hour. The team is working toward performing at a monthly open mic that takes place at the Triple Door. With a little work, they will get there.

After a short break, Christina and Charles joined us for 90 minutes of group work. We began with a free circulation in C Major, and then moved to C Harmonic Minor. My observation of circulation in a particular key with this group is that there is a randomness about note choices. This often leads to wonderful but entirely accidental combinations, but I am not certain that relying upon accident is really the aim of a group playing together. It is a gift when something unexpected happens, and so a level of trust and openness in necessary, lest we devolve into mere safety. Nevertheless, knowing the function of the notes within the scale is an important skill. It is not necessary to be able to explain or understand this in terms of traditional music theory, although that does certainly make the discussion go a lot faster. It is only necessary that we have an internal understanding of the import of the note we are choosing.

We moved into an exercise of circulating in 7-note phrases, with a pause (“Tyger, tyger burning bright, in the forest of the night.”) using notes of our choice from the C minor triad (C, E♭ and G). From there to notes of our choice from the F minor triad (F, A♭ and C), and then onto notes from the G7 chord (G, B, D and F). We then put it all together in a 4-bar repeating sequence of I-IV-V-I, one phrase on C minor, the next on F minor, the third on G7, and the last one back to C minor, and then repeat. Instant musical structure. A recognizable construction in C Harmonic Minor. Perhaps not the most inventive harmonic sequence ever conceived, but a sensible one that could easily be grasped by anyone listening.

From here we moved onto a circulated study of the sequence of diatonic seventh chords in C Harmonic Minor. This was a variation on an exercise that we worked on several weeks ago, and it was picked up rather quickly. I pushed it, increasing the complexity, as we say, and the team responded. After a short break, some musical adjustments were added to allow the exercise to flow in a musical way. This involved the addition of a coda that spelled out a clear end to the exercise. It also involved putting Mary Beth in the hot seat, breaking out of the established pattern in order to have the arpeggios move from one to the other more musically. After only a few tries, success.

With only a few minutes left in the available time, we returned to the I-IV-V-I circulation, this time with one additional challenge. Rules were added that required the tritone in the G7 chord to be resolved. This one was a little more of a monkey wrench in the works than we could handle in the allotted time, but some progress was made, as was the point.

A final free circulation in C Harmonic Minor, with evidence of new ears, and we called it a day.