A Tuning the Air Journal
Monday February 1, 2010 – Full Company Rehearsal at the Wilsons
Chris and Igor were out sick, and Bill was celebrating his dad’s birthday, so we were able to fit into the Wilson living room.
A call for a circulation in G Major.
Jaxie presented an exercise in zithering using chromatic “magic chords”. First with return, then continuous, then continuous counterclockwise (ascending) 10 times and clockwise (descending) 10 times and repeat. The aim for this, rather than whizzing, was a smooth swirling sound in the spirit of what Taylor has been experimenting with for Neptune. From there we worked with a version that moved by skipping forward one seat and then back one seat: 1-3-2-4-3-5-4-6-etc. This proved rather difficult at the beginning. In order to keep steady time we adopted a sharper attack to our chords at first, dropping the slow glissando of the zither. For a time the metronome was introduced, but largely ignored. Once the pattern was established it was possible to reintroduce the zithering gliss of the chords while maintaining tempo. The crossover from the end of the circle to the beginning, jumping from the highest chord to the lowest, was not working musically, so we adopted a return that was much more satisfying in that respect.
Some discussion of the Little Red Riding Hood exercise from Saturday. I think the intention was to give it another go tonight, but it seemed that sharing observations was more pressing. I had noticed at Fremont Abbey that the room does not lend itself to a lot of talking – the acoustics make that just too much work – and there had been a lot of talking about the exercise during the break, but in small groups. So it felt as though we needed to compare our experiences this evening.
A break. Afterward, Greg worked with us for a couple of minutes to test an arrangement strategy he has been experimenting with on Norwegian Wood.
For the final part of the rehearsal we worked with an exercise that had come to me on Saturday involving the entire group forming a specific chord – we began with C Major – by each choosing a note from the chord and playing it all together in a steady pulse. If we are not satisfied with the voicing, or if anyone detected that a note is missing, we are to continually adjust our choices until a satisfactory voicing is reached. Once the person who called the chord is satisfied, on their count of 4 we quickly circulate our notes, once around the circle and return to the pulsing chord. Then the next person calls out a different chord, gives a 4 count and we all shift to that chord, and repeat the process.
The first time around the circle, with each person having an opportunity to call the chord, it was clear that there was a lot of thinking going on; a lot of time in choosing the next chord, a lot of time in finding the notes of the chord when it was called. For the second round I suggested that we move a bit more quickly, keeping it simple. Only marginal success with that. We do love our fancy chords. The third time around began to take on a certain flow.
But then it was time to go.
Sending Jaxie good wishes as she flies east to take part in this weekend’s Guitar Craft course in Neptune (yes, Neptune) New Jersey. She will be working with Robert, Sandra, Tony, Victor, Tom, Dev and Patrick, and I am jealous.
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When the TTA company reformed a few weeks ago, Frank used the expression "to not throw the baby out with the bath water", which I felt was a good strong metaphor for change and progress. I wonder how strongly the metaphor resonated with others in the company, and if others have a sense whether, over the past month of all-who-wished rehearsals, some bath water has been distinguished from baby and thrown out.
ReplyDeleteAt the reformation meeting, Bill made remarks to the effect that audiences don't care how musicians got to the point of presenting their music - they just want a fantastic listening experience. In live performance, in my mind, this extends to the visual and somatic experiences that create, through synergy with the purely aural, a physical, emotional, and intellectual excitement. This got me thinking about the physical/emotional/psychic affect of the overall TTA presentation. Some attenders of the shows, who are sympathetic supporters, poke gentle fun and suggest that this affect often conveys stiffness and self-importance.
Most of my favorite performers of my favorite music put their whole bodies into it: dancing, swinging, singing, swaying: moving. The music moves them, the music moves the listener. We listen with our whole bodies; why do we not play with our whole bodies? No one would argue that when speaking one should express no body language, display no facial expressions, make no gestures. Why constrain ourselves in this way when speaking the language of emotion that is music? Surely musicality is more than slender tendrils of instruction passing from the guitarist's brain to hands. This is not to deny the role of aesthetic choice, of choreography, of theatricality: my comments are more to the notion of one-size-fits-all.
I've been thinking about thrakking and wishing these techniques could be applied to the full dynamic range and with beautiful chords, in addition to the loud banging of dissonant and brash chords.
I've been thinking about single note circulations in large groups and the difficulty in consistently and reliably producing results that can be distinguished from the sonorous but random tinkling of wind chimes. My experience suggests that single note circulations stand a much better chance of organizing as music in small groups because individual players can much more easily construct interacting, overlapping phrases employing repetition and variations on themes.
A lot of the difficulty in producing spontaneous composition with circulation, i.e., circulations that cannot be distinguished from written and rehearsed pieces, may be the result of single notes with rapid decay being too fine grained in terms of musical information. Chord circulation and group loop-type improvisational rule sets increase the information granularity through repetition and persistence, which is more likely to establish context and create meaning through structure (time as an arrow + time as a circle = time as a spiral).
I'm glad I've had the chance to work in the circle with all-who-wished this past month, and look forward to seeing and hearing what the performance team and musical directors design for this season's production. Here's to fun, joyful, and uplifting musical experiences together!
- Joel