Performance Team R&D

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday August 14, 2010 – Performance Team R&D

Met briefly with Travis and Chris at 9:30, to discuss the proposed realignment of organizational structure for Tuning the Air. My life gets easier. Or, so one might hope. We’ll see. Mostly, my energy will be somewhat redirected. Briefly touched on some practical issues, including getting promotion up and running. A question about the CGT potential at Fremont Abbey in November. Before we could get far into that, however, it was 10am and the rest of the performance team was arriving.

Six of us got together this morning, plus a special east coast guest who sat in as an observer. The plan largely to begin shaking the dust off. Fremont Abbey is booked for September, and so we cannot open the show until October. Making a virtue of a necessity, Chris thought that we could use this time, which ordinarily would have been the beginning of the formal rehearsal crunch, to work on some simmering ideas for new material. No guarantee that any of it will make it into the show, but injecting a little “new music energy” into the process, just to see what happens.

We began with some work on the scales that Ian introduced last season in the context of the Voodoo Situation. In rehearsals we rarely had time to give these tonalities the kind of exploration they require if we really intend to present them with any level of mastery, let alone playful creativity. This work helped a lot, bringing both the “Augmented Scale” [C-C#-E-F-G#-A] and the “Lydian Augmented Scale” [F-G-A-B-C#-D-E] more into our common experience. Some beautiful things came up as we discovered the natural tonal centers. Took a brief look at the zither potential of the Augmented Scale, and quickly saw that there is something there to be explored further.

Chris and Howard presented Vrooom. Howard worked with Bob on the lead lines. Chris took Ian, Travis and myself aside to get the bass line going. A tricky little ditty. It needs more lead players. Taylor may already know the lead; not sure if Jaxie and/or Mary Beth have ever addressed it. It is a piece that the League has been playing for some time, and we tend to bump into it whenever we attend a course in Europe. Fun. Twisted. Entirely doable.

A short break to stretch. We took some of that time to come back to the CGT question. Travis, who has been the point person on the discussion, brought us up to date on the email conversations that have taken place so far, and the various options that have been discussed. Cleared up a few questions, and set a plan in motion to get a bit more to the heart of the matter. More to follow.

After the break, Bob introduced what will be the middle section of a piece he is working on. It involves 3 truly twisted bass lines in 15. The circle was divided into 3 groups of 2 (it will be 3 groups of 3 when we are all together). Each group responsible for one of the bass lines. Chris and I had the one in “C”. While we played it (Struggled? Scrambled? Faked it?), Howard and Travis improvised Cmin7 chord vamps in the midrange, and Bob and Ian improvised melody/solo lines in the upper range. When we switched to the Ian/Bob bass line (in “D”), Chris and I moved to chord improvs and Howard/Travis took on the lead/solo improvs. When the Howard/Travis bass line (“E♭”) was on, Chris/Curt moved to lead, and Ian/Bob to chords. Bob set up a specific form for these changes:

C min – 4 bars
D min – 4 bars
C min – 4 bars
D min – 4 bars
E♭ min – 8 bars

First we simply circulated (and connected) the bass lines. Once that was more or less (mostly less, but who is keeping score) established, Bob added the chord improvs, ad finally the lead/solos as well. Playing the bass lines was certainly a challenge, but keeping contact with the long 15 count while improvising was what nearly always undid us. We did manage to hit a stride and for a few repetitions of the form it was possible to hear the potential of this arrangement. Improvising within a structure. And the movement of parts around the circle could be very effective in the performance space.

We were scheduled to go to 1pm. At 12:45 we agreed we had reached saturation.