Performance Team Rehearsal and Music Lab

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday May 15, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal and Music Lab

Fremont Abbey was once again otherwise booked, so we needed to forgo the full group work with Frank. Instead, after the sitting the performance team met to rehearse at my place. Jaxie called, sounding something akin to death warmed over, to say she was sick and that Bob was going to need to stay home with the kids, so we were 7 for the rehearsal.

We began with taking a deep look at how “spontaneous compositions” work; establishing themes, recognizing and supporting themes, moving to new themes, etc. This is the sort of work we did a lot of in the early days, but rarely have or take the time for recently, and it felt very necessary. Spontaneous compositions have, so far this season, been very good (and occasionally incredible), but the general sense is that we have not begun to explore their potential. We took turns proffering thematic material, quickly establishing it, with everyone else responsible for getting behind it. By the end of the first hour there was a sense that we had cracked a bit of the code on this mystery.

After a short break, we moved on to Space Zombies! From Outer Space! [I am resolved to use the full title for a while, in part to get a handle on it – I am perpetually butchering it – but also because the composer said in an email that the title is “the only thing I'm particularly picky about regarding the tune these days.”] Mary Beth was brought up to speed on the part that she was assigned in absentia on Monday. We took a hard look at some of the details that will move this from an enthusiastic bodge to a tour de force of silly fun. This is always a tricky moment in the life of a new piece of repertoire. When it is brand new and just plain fun, it seems to play itself, and you can do no wrong. Then we begin to dig in on the details and it is not so easy, and not nearly as much fun, so the spirit of the piece becomes a kind of assumption of virtue – in this case, played as if it were fun, even though we are not feeling the fun so much ourselves. Then, once we have mastered the details, and can really, actually play the thing, it will not only be fun again, but very, very hot. We listened to both the Riddle Trio version and the SA League version (which the composer regards as the currently canonical version). The Tuning the Air rendition is a kind of hybrid, more like the League in overall arrangement, but with a strong nod to the Acid-Surf bass-driven sound/feel of Riddle.

We also did some detail work on My Precious Dream, focusing on the group phrasing of the melody. This phrasing work, which is very much connected with the work the entire company has been doing with Frank, has become something of a theme for this season, and most of our repertoire is benefiting from digging in on this level. It has everything to do with allowing the music to breath, and that always has something to do with allowing ourselves to breath.

Finally, the 800-pound gorilla I the room: A Day In The Life. More work with the same kinds of phrasing issues, but much of the work centered around the two orchestral freakouts in the piece; the 23 bars that connect the Lennon section to the McCartney section, and the second, more frenetic, 23 bar section leading up to the end. We listened to the recording in some detail to identify the overall shape of these sections, as well as the strategies the orchestra employs. We of course cannot duplicate the range of a full orchestra, and acoustic guitars will never have the blasting range of brass instruments blowing their lungs out, but we can certainly honor and replicate the spirit. So far, my inner Mal Evans has been chanting out the bar count in these sections, and I wanted to see if it was possible to do without, or at least limit this. Leaving the count out entirely was, at least at this stage of the game, a total flop. In the end, we settled on a strategy of me weighing in on the count around bar 19 (or anytime it feels like we need to take stock of where we are), and then cuing the downbeat of the next session. This worked pretty well. And we will have to look again on Monday before committing to a working strategy for next Thursday.

One final run through, followed by a rehearsal-closing blast of Space Zombies! From Outer Space! and we were done for the day.

A short meeting in the sun of the back yard for Chris, Travis and myself, and then I returned for the Music Lab. Ian and Mary Beth stuck around for this, joined by Greg, Christina and IgorK.

I had originally planned to revisit and continue with the ear-training exercise from last week, and that was my intent as we sat in silence before beginning. We began with a circulation in C Major – we always begin with a circulation, which for me amounts to taking the pulse of the group. On hearing this circulation, I decided to take an entirely different tack. For most of the 90-minutes we worked with an exercise that I used a great deal in the old Beginner’s and Repertoire Circles, as well as in the early days of the Seattle Guitar Circle, that we referred to as Intentional Circulation. In this exercise we build a composed circulation one note at a time. The first person chooses and plays a note. The next person in the circle 1) listens to the note, 2) hears the note they wish to play, 3) plays that note, as best they are able. If the note is the note they meant to play, that is acknowledged. If the note is NOT the note they meant to play then, 1) the intended note is found, or 2) if the note played is “better” than the one they intended, they may commit to it. These first two notes are then played, and the next person in the circulation goes through the same procedure. This continues two or three times around the circle, creating an “intentionally” composed circulated musical phrase.

This is an extremely enlightening exercise, and generally a humbling one for players at every level.

In the final 20 minutes of the Lab, we took a look at the 2 supporting parts (colloquially, the Hernan and Martin parts) of Voices of Ancient Children.