Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday April 26, 2010 – Rehearsal at the Wilsons

In a way, rehearsal began an hour early, and at the Seattle Drum School. Ian, Travis and I arrived there to run through of the Zeppelin tunes we’ll be doing on Saturday night with Urban Achievers. Bob was there to pick his youngest daughter up from her drum lesson, so we nearly had a quorum. Bob will be doing The Ocean and Black Dog, but he was not there to rehearse today. Ian went in first and played Houses of the Holy. Next Travis ran Custard Pie and Ten Years Gone. I was last, and we did Out on the Tiles, The Immigrant Song and Rock and Roll. This left us about 10 minutes to dash down to the Wilsons for the Tuning the Air rehearsal.

Chris was running a little late, so we began looking at metronome work with the pieces we identified on Saturday as needing attention. Not My Sharona was first on the list, which we dialed down to about 80% tempo. Chris arrived and joined in. At one point Travis observed that one of the things we need to find a way to practice is adjusting to one another when things threaten to go off the rails, so we went around the room playing the piece in pairs, some more successful than others. From there, we moved on to Batrachomyomachy, and then played the entire trilogy. Jaxie has been working on getting Igor’s part to My Precious Dream up to speed, so we gave that a spin. Not far off… perhaps another rehearsal or two and we may be able to get it into the available repertoire. Mary Beth will be learning the melody that Jaxie used to play. Howard will be playing the melody through the opening.

We took a break, where Christina, cake with strawberries and whipped cream, and some very green “Avatar” cupcakes appeared, in a small celebration of my birthday.

After the break we took a little time to go through the setlist and identify who we are looking to for the beginning and end of each piece (not always the same person), as well as who is cuing and leading the various blocking changes. From there we moved on to more work with A Day In The Life, focusing on the as yet skeletal McCartney section, and then running the piece as best we were able all the way through. We ended with Eye of the Needle, bringing Mary Beth up to speed on the inner work that is the real focus of the piece. We ran it, and rehearsal was complete. Travis, Ian, Mary Beth and I stopped off for a little Birthday Beverage on the way home.