The Guitar Circle I
Guitar Craft 25th Anniversary Completion Course
Special Project: The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists III
Convento La Pace, Sassoferrato (Ancona), Italy
6:48am
Slept through the night. I hope this in a good sign. I do feel well rested. I have the sense of an active dream life. I awoke with the feeling that it has been a busy night, but nothing more than one or two images makes it through the transition to my waking life.
9:15am
Very good and focused sitting. Breakfast not entirely organized, but there was sufficient food. House Craft followed. I took responsibility for my own room, so my bathroom is now clean and my room tidied. House of Guitars at 10am; life in the house will change once there is Music.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
On March 26, 2010, the first morning of the first Guitar Craft course, we gathered in the ballroom of the Mansion at Claymont Court, and I sat in a guitar circle for the very first time. Sometime later I recorded the experience as follows:
Early one morning nineteen guitarists sit in a circle in a large room with a high ceiling. They have only met for the first time at dinner the night before. One of the guitarists rises.
“The instruction is - choose a note in the key of C Major ......”At this point, 25 years later, I cannot say with certainty that these were the precise words spoken. The language for this instruction has evolved considerably. In March of 2010, it comes down to, “When ready, please begin.” The “old friend” I refer to is something that at one time I referred to as “the ghosts”, and it had to do with something that happens when all of the music aligns, and there is something present that cannot be accounted for by any of the instruments, or any combination of instruments. In this case, out of what amounted to cacophonous and badly tuned wanking, suddenly emerged an organization, followed by the sound of a chorus of violins, or possibly voices. A gift, undeserved, but gratefully accepted.
Got it.
“..... and establish a relationship with your note ......”
What ?!?
“When you have established a relationship with your note you may begin to play it in whatever manner, speed or rhythm feels correct to you.”
Tentatively nineteen separate notes begin to sound around the room. Now a bit more assertively a sound builds until the room is filled with a swirling cacophony. The sound, though unstructured, is developing character hard to describe. It swells and falls, ebbs and flows, builds and retreats with what almost seems to be an intelligence of its own. It is as if there is a twentieth player in the room.
I recognize an old friend.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I go into this morning’s meeting, to the best of my ability, without expectation. I do have that memory, however, and it is a true experience of what is possible, though too rarely realized.
1:47pm
Three hours of Orchestra work, and I was actually winded.
5:39pm
When we arrived at the ballroom for the first “House of Guitars” this morning, it was set up in 3 concentric circles. I moved to a seat in the inner circle (18 chairs – aka, the number of people on the first Guitar Craft course), but avoided the concertmaster’s seat. I think it is not clear just how many actual guitar players there are here yet. Perhaps some people were on other duties, but there were a number of empty chairs in each of the three circles.
The instruction, “when ready, please begin”. And we did, a little tentatively at first, but soon gaining confidence, or at least asserting. It was a longer improv than usual, but there was definitely a there, there. The outer, middle, and inner circles were given instructions in turn to begin when ready. The inner circle’s solo improv was, in all modesty, pretty astounding. After an hour+, a 10-minute break declared.
When we returned, the chairs had been rearranged somewhat. The extra chairs had been removed, and the outer circle was separated into 2 horseshoes, one at either end of the room, making the entire arrangement fit a little more comfortably in a rectangular room. This time I took an anonymous seat in the middle circle. A couple more improvs. Nothing that stood out for me, although that is not necessarily meaningful, since as a player I’m not in the best situation for listening.
Robert asked us to stand and to move the chairs out of the way. He then called 6 group leaders – Curt, Tony, Mariana, Jaxie, Victor and Martin – and told everyone else to gravitate to one of those people. So we had 6 standing circles. Some discussion about how to arrange ourselves. The question, how to maintain the integrity of the small groups, while maintaining the integrity of the whole group. A few suggestions about how we might arrange ourselves. In the end, Tony’s group organized themselves into a horseshoe, but the rest of us stuck with circles. I jockeyed myself around into a position where I could make eye contact with the other 5 group leaders. Victor, Martin and Mariana were clearly within my field of vision. For Jaxie I needed to turn to the right, but I have been playing and performing with her for so long that I don’t really need to be able to see her to know where she is. Tony was the furthest from me and the most difficult to connect with. I found the horseshoe arrangement of his group tricky to take in as a whole.
“When ready, begin.” We did. Really quite something. It was very much like a 6-person improve in that a large part of my focus was on the other groups, and particularly the other group leaders, and my team had the task of following my indications as best they could.
The best moments for me were when several of the groups interacted to create a part. At one point, my group and Jaxie’s combined into a single circle for a bit of whizzing, and then returned to our separate groups.
There was a moment when my group was playing a simple rhythmic part on magic chords of our choice. It was familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me: it was the Bo Diddley beat. That was absolutely a Guitar Craft first for me.
Whizzes were present in moments and hints, but never quite achieved orbit. Circulations were generally pretty lame. Angelic choruses never appeared. Still, there was something real in this work today.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Latish one evening during the first week of the first Level Two in December 1985, Robert set us up in several small circles consisting of 4 or 5 players each, and worked us on some basic circulation exercises. We could not get it. I can only imagine his frustration as the chasm between the clear potential of circulation and what was possible for this group revealed itself to be much wider than perhaps he had anticipated; certainly wider than he had hoped. I was in a group of five players, and he had us skipping a chair, in effect tracing out a star pattern, and we simply could not maintain a flow. Finally, he just looked at us, shook his head, muttered “this is really pretty basic stuff, guys,” and walked away.
The best we could ever do with that group were the carefully arranged and composed circulations that can be heard on the first album. Today, we do more complex circulations in the average beginner’s circle than we managed in that entire course. There is something in this that bears a closer look.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
11:17pm
- Bullying disguised as music.
- Never ending nattering in my left ear.
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