Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday September 30, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal at the Wilsons

Jaxie was going to be a little late, due to a family obligation, so for the first few minutes of the rehearsal we focused on getting the “head” to Ninth Guitar E on its feet. The middle 8 was the only part we had not yet addressed, so the 3 sections split off for a few minutes to review and consolidate the parts. We came back and ran the new section several times with and without the metronome. We then put it into context and ran the entire head a number of times, mostly with the metronome. Finally, after Jaxie had arrived and settled in, the whole piece, beginning with the head, moving to the whacky-Williams improv section, and then returning to the head. Clearly, we can do this.

We then moved on to a systematic review of all of our repertoire, much of which we have not played together for some time. For the most part we did not stop to correct of fix anything. The function of the runthrough was more as a reality check; for the performers in terms of seeing where their personal work lies, and for the Music Director as he begins to put together the set list for opening night. We played (not necessarily in this order):

• Voices of Ancient Children
• Cultivating the Beat
• My Precious Dream
• Sigh and a Kiss
• Twilight
• Space Zombies! From Outer Space!
• A Day In The Life
• The Children’s Hour
• Vrooom into Thrak*

During the break, the conversation turned to the CGT’s visit to Seattle in November, and Paul’s suggestion of one particular piece we might join them for. This segued into the presentation by Lost Pedro of a CGT piece for consideration in the set, as well as the possibility of expanding it into a full group piece. Chris also mentioned the idea of expanding Pipeline for the large group.

Saturday will be the Open Circle in the morning and then Performance Team rehearsal in the afternoon. By then we will have a preliminary set list to work with and tweak as necessary. Monday evening will be a full tech/dress rehearsal at Fremont Abbey. Then… Thursday!





* I observed that as of the first week of December, I have been playing and performing this piece for 25 years.

Tech Rehearsal at Fremont Abbey

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday September 27, 2010 – Tech Rehearsal at Fremont Abbey

The team arrived at the Abbey at 8:30. We gathered, and the Managing Director gave us our marching orders. The aim was to get the lights and sound set up as quickly as possible. Travis was working with Gene, the soundman/genius, and training Carl in the setup of the sound. Necessary backup, and freeing Travis to attend to larger concerns. Ian also worked with Greg as backup on the light setup. Redundancy in technical areas is a good thing.

We were set up in record time. Sound check was relatively painless. One small glitch in Joel’s gear was the only hang-up, and that was addressed swiftly.

Chris began calling pieces. A Day In The Life, Vrooom, My Precious Dream, Ninth Guitar E (as far as we know it so far), and even the first page of Neptune. Joel was so hot in Space Zombies! From Outer Space! that the guitarist were tripping over their own smiles, and so we did it again. Greg, from his post in the center of the circle, registered an unambiguously thrilled thumbs up on Neptune. A good night all the way around. The work that needs to be done between now and opening night was definitely clear, but the sense was that it is totally doable.

Striking the set was notably efficient. We're getting pretty good at this.

Thursday evening we rehearse at the Wilsons. On Saturday, the Open Circle and then the Performance Team rehearses. The set list for opening night will be set, and it will be run at the dress rehearsal next Monday. On our way!

Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal, and Tech Preparation

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday September 25, 2010 – Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal, and Tech Preparation

Ah, the perils of having 4 rather major and time-demanding projects all on the front burner… the Tuning the Air blog ends up fifth in line, and too often left off entirely. Mia Culpa.

Monday and Thursday were evening rehearsals at the Wilsons, and today we were at Fremont Abbey for an hour of full team self-organized musical work, followed by a Performance Team rehearsal and an hour or so of practical work around the Abbey.

For the full group hour we began again with wordless improvisation, and as with last week it was very satisfying on every level – good group interaction, thoughtful but still playful. High level work. Toward the end of the hour, the suggestion was made that Chris begin presenting the De Hartmann piece to this group. He showed us the first 8 bars. In earlier Performance Team rehearsal, he had assigned parts, but for this we all learned every part, and then gravitated to the one that best fit us. With very little adjustment of assignments, an excellent balance and sound was achieved, and the sense that this is the right group to be taking the piece on.

A short break, and then we transitioned into Performance Team rehearsal mode. Earlier in the week the Musical Director had the epiphany that all Music Directors always have about 2 weeks before opening: we are nowhere near ready to perform, and we have very limited rehearsal time. So the heat was turned up on the Performance Team get our practice regimen amped up, our established repertoire up to performance level, and to get a firm handle on the new material that has been presented thus far. For today’s rehearsal, we touched briefly on Vroom, and it was clear that the challenge had been taken up. Not quite performance-ready, but the path to performance-readiness is clear. Then on to Bob’s Ninth Guitar E. Here we are still at the beginning of the learning curve on the composed sections, and just a little further along on the improvs. We worked primarily on getting the next 8 bars up and running. This took some time, but we crossed a certain threshold, and the general feeling was that the impossible was becoming possible. A much clearer picture of the Whole, and how these individual parts and sections fit in. Again, not performance-ready, but the path is much clearer, and the necessary work very straight-forward.

Then on to Neptune. Still the most daunting of the new material, our full parts had arrived this week and we are in a position to begin to dive into the Music much more seriously, again with a much better grasp of whole. In the case of this piece, rehearsing the group is the work most needed. Individual parts are not particularly difficult or complex in themselves, but everyone has a separate part. There is no duplication, so the way they connect to one another, and the way the various sections flow from one to the next – that is the real challenge. While a modicum of personal work to learn and memorize the parts is called for, it will be the group work that brings this little gem to life. So little time, so much to do.

After rehearsal, a small team remained at the Abbey to install some shelving in the storage area, while the rest of us drove to the TTA storage unit to collect everything we need for the show; lighting rigs, PA and house stuff. By the time we got back, the shelves were ready and we stowed the gear away. Monday night will be a tech rehearsal, which generally means a lot of tech and not a lot of rehearsal. Necessary, of course, but wouldn’t it be nice to be spending that time on Neptune?

Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday September 18, 2010 – Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal

For me, this was a big day.

Last season we saw that there was a need for the Tuning the Air company to spend more time working together in the circle. We were opening up the show to more improvisation, and more intentional hazard. But we had settled into small working groups – the Performance Team, the House Circle, Sgt Bones, etc – and were not making the opportunities for all of us to sit in the circle and work together. There were times when I got together with the House Team on guitars (this morphed into the Music Lab), and of course there was the Monthly Open Circle where we could all take part. But the open circle is geared for beginners, and the music lab is specifically “educational”. So we changed the weekly schedule to include 90 minutes on Saturday morning for the whole team. We invited Frank to take charge of these sessions, so that the entire team (myself included) could focus on the work. In this way, Alexander Technique became the unifying theme for the season, with a specific focus on breath and breathing. Sandra Bain Cushman came into town for a week of intensive work, that mirrored and amplified what we were doing with Frank.

We made a lot of changes last season, so it is difficult to say precisely what was responsible for the huge qualitative shift that occurred, but I feel very strongly that it all sprang from the foundation of this work together.

This year as we began the pre-preparation for the new season, the question of what it takes to be on the performance team arose on a number of occastions. In our 5 years we have lost a number of players to normal attrition and necessity, and we have added a few players as well. There are certainly quantifiable standards and requirements that we could enumerate; but the truth is that no one currently on the performance team has absolute command of everything that might appear on that list. Clearly, it is not a matter of checking off items on a list of skills.

In fact – and this is the tricky bit – skill is not sufficient. There will never be a Tuning the Air audition. There is something else. For myself, I always know when someone is ready to be on the team – I can’t explain it, and it is always impossible to justify/rationalize on the basis of qualitative standards.

The x-factor is that it really comes down to “what does Tuning the Air need?”

Parenthetically, in every case I have known when a player is leaving the performance team, because I have seen that in fact they have already left. I was “taken by surprise” only once, and frankly that was because I really, really didn’t want to see what I was seeing; active denial – not a useful quality, but a human one I suppose.

So, in discussing the question of what it takes to be on the performance team with the Tuning the Air Artistic Director, Music Director and Managing Director, I came to the conclusion that holding the question is better than sitting down and trying to answer it. It is something that needs to be seen, rather than enumerated. Holding the question is active. The decision, then, was to dedicate the full company portion of the Saturday morning rehearsal to working together at the highest musical level we can, giving everyone who wishes the opportunity to see themselves in that circumstance, and hopefully to recognized the qualities required, as well as the skills.

We know how to do this. It is not a class. I do not have a pile of exercises that will unfold to reveal the answers. It is not for me or anyone else to “teach”.

So, without any preconceived plan, we set ourselves up in the circle, and sat for a few minutes in silence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jaxie’s hands move to her guitar. We all responded by quietly bringing ourselves to a place of readiness and responsiveness. She played a note and passed it across the circle. Forty-five minutes later, the improvisation came to its completion. Fantastic.

Compared to that, the Performance Team rehearsal that followed was mundane. Necessary, and very good work done on a very practical level. I actually love this part of the process.

We dove into Vroom once more. I am substantially off-book at this point. There are 3 parts that I still use the score for, but it is more of a security blanket than a necessity. Two of the sections are short, rhythmically eccentric lines that simply need a bit of drilling. This rehearsal served that purpose for one of them, and a little practice before Monday should take care of the other. Then there is one long but technically very easy passage that simply needs memorization. This should also be possible before Monday. The primary accomplishment of this rehearsal was that we reached a full-group understanding of the piece. A very clear sense that we have turned the corner from hacking through the parts to addressing the Music.

Ran The Children’s Hour, A Day In The Life and Space Zombies! From Outer Space!, taking a few moments as necessary to address problem areas. The rehearsal ended with a little more R&D on Holzt’s Neptune, which we are chomping at the bit to get up and running.

Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday September 16, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal

Since Thursday is gig night during the season, we have decided to go ahead and set it aside for rehearsals during the preparation period. The full team was all present and accounted for at the Wilsons tonight. As is our practice this season, we opened with a bit of open circulation.

The work for tonight continued to focus on new material, and material that was new last season. We began with Vroom. We began looking at the “bass solo” sections, where the lead players are playing cross-picking figures in 7, Mary Beth and I are playing the low bass accompaniment, and Travis and Chris have the bass solo/melody. Each part has its particular challenges, and we had not yet picked this section apart to understand what is happening, and how these parts are related. Until now, in our run-throughs, simply getting to the end of the section at the same time was a major success. This is the kind of detail work that indicates we are beginning to change modes in our own process. We spent the better part of the rehearsal on this, resisting the temptation to spend a lot of time breaking up into sections, except for a period when Chris and Travis slipped away to compare notes on the tricky timing of the solo.

Grunt work, but necessary and useful grunt work.

After the break, we again touched on A Day In The Life, Space Zombies! From Outer Space! and The Children’s Hour, and a bit more R&D on Prayer of Gratitude.

An Evening With Sgt Bones

A Tuning the Air Journal

Wednesday September 15, 2010 – An Evening With Sgt Bones

Was called upon by Sgt Bones, my current favorite guitar-circle-related band, to give them some feedback on the state of their repertoire.

It was a lot of fun. I have spent a large part of the last 25 years working with guitar circles at the beginner level, where simply making it through a piece with all of the notes in the right place is a legitimate reason for celebration. Happily, this is a group that is moving into the next stage of the process. The notes are there. What is necessary for them lies in the realm of Quality; musical choices, phrasing, breathing and performing. Part of the challenge is to let go of the concerns of the first phase; to trust that the notes will be there in the right place, and to attend to other matters.

They ran their set: 49 Notes, a circulation in G Harmonic Minor, Eye of the Needle, Lament, and Big Rock Candy Mountain. I just listened, watched, and took it in, making occasional notes to myself. Melvin kibitzed. Afterward, we talked a little about where they are, and then I walked through the pieces one at a time, consulting my internal notes, and trying out a few ideas. Almost everything we worked with had to do with trusting that the work they have done thus far will not fail them, and to move into matters of playing as a group. Much of this was not new news to them, clearly, but perhaps hearing it from a fresh corner helped to drive it home. And with any luck I may have been able to clear up one or two questions of detail on the performance of these pieces.

A good way to spend an evening.

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Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday September 13, 2010 – Performance Team Rehearsal

The Music Director had to work tonight, but left a couple of instructions that boiled down to “Circulate” and Vroom.

We began with some free circulations, helping us to get back into the group groove. Next, a bit of the C Augmented Scale (C-C#-E-F-G#-A), which had the dual virtues of keeping us circulating, while continuing to explore one of the tonalities used in the Voodoo Situation.

Straight on to Vroom. The bass players (Mary Beth, Travis and myself – Chris is also on bass, but was absent tonight) excused ourselves and headed to the back room to address a particular passage with very tricky timing. This took some time. The lead players drilled their parts with the metronome. When we rejoined the group, we began by putting the bass part we were concerned with into context by playing it all together. This helped to make sense of what feels like a strangely disjointed rhythm when played alone. Expanded the part we were practicing, adding the sections that come before and after, eventually opening up to the entire piece which we ran several times. Not yet presentable, but very definite progress and an increased sense that this is doable. Some insights into where the metronome does and does not work with this piece. We are asked to be off book for Thursday’s rehearsal, so there is personal work to be done.

It was already late at this point. We took a short break and then reconvened for the final 20 minutes to run some of the newer material from last season; specifically A Day In The Life and The Children’s Hour. Travis had missed Saturday’s rehearsal when we confronted all of the current repertoire. He has very specific roles to play on these pieces, and it took a little while for him to get them back into his hands.

Next rehearsal: Thursday evening.

Monthly Open Circle and TTA Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday September 11, 2010 – Monthly Open Circle and TTA Rehearsal

Not a terribly early beginning. This season the Saturday morning group sitting will be at 9am on Open Circle days (8:30am on regular rehearsal Saturdays), so it was an easy morning. After the sitting, we migrated to Fremont Abbey (by way of assorted coffee shops), for the 10am Open Circle. Eight in attendance, all from the TTA company. Two newcomers had signed up, but they did not show. Since this was a group of players with circle experience, I decided to sit in the circle myself rather than direct the work from my feet. One of the plans for this season is to set aside the first hour of every Saturday rehearsal for the full group, not just the performance team, and to work on more challenging circulation work and other exercises. With no newcomers, this felt more like that than an Open Circle, and I decided to go with it.

We circulated for two hours, taking several different strategies for contending with dual circulations – bidirectional circulating, bidirectional with one on the off-beat, bidirectonal with one moving at double-time, and two circulations in the same direction with one at double-time. Interesting to look at the difference in experience between working to perceive and enter into the circulation, and actually breaking it down in terms of counting in order to execute it with some reliable accuracy.

At noon, out the door and back to my place (by way of various grocery stores for snacks and sustenance). Chris had made a mistake in the scheduling email, listing rehearsal time as 1pm rather than 12:30, so those of us who had been at the morning circle chilled out and snacked at leisure until 1pm when the others arrived. Wishing to keep to the 3-hour rehearsal plan, we determined that everyone was available to 4pm, and then dove in.

This was reality check day. We began with the new material from last season: The Children’s Hour, A Day In The Life, and Space Zombies! From Outer Space! Chris’ sense was that these would be the most difficult to get back, and his intuition was borne out. Sobering. Most of us had to dig for our scores. Several times through each, getting them up and running, reviewing target tempos and remembering musical indications. Our work is cut out for us.

A break, and then into our core repertoire; pieces we have been playing for some time. We simply ran these as a way to begin to reconnect and take inventory of the work ahead. Here we revealed mostly rust, and it was clear that there is both individual and group work to be done.

Another short break, followed by a bit of discussion about some work we could consider taking on for this season, as a group. This rather naturally moved us to an arrangement Chris is working on of a de Hartmann piano piece, one of the pieces of new material that we have been playing with off and on during the August “R&D” rehearsals. Lovely, and full of potential. Next was a down and dirty look at Vroom, showing improvement but still needing some very focused work supported by a lot of personal work. We skipped past Neptune, as Taylor has not completed the arrangement, but took the opportunity to nag him to get on it since there is very strong support for getting it up and running for this season. We also passed on the Voodoo Situation for this week. For the last 15 minutes we looked at learning a few bars of Bob’s anagrammatical opus. In August we had been focusing on a specific section involving some structured group improvisation, but we had not yet heard any of the music that will surround it, so this was our first exposure.

Begin with the Creative...

Begin with the Creative...

Seattle Circle Guitar School Mission Statement

The Seattle Circle Guitar School is a nonprofit music school devoted to opening the door to the creative process for children and adults, regardless of previous training or experience. Our approach emerges from the knowledge that learning to play music together contains endless possibilities for growth, and that the experience gained through this process develops skills that are essential.

Music Instruction Turned Inside Out

We have turned traditional musical instruction on its head. We begin by immersing students in a musical environment where they are composing and experimenting on their first days in class. The master musician is able to play and have fun while calling directly on the Muse. We treat the children as if they are master musicians and gradually build in the skills needed to actually move toward this goal. We introduce skills as the child recognizes the need for them: my pick keeps falling out of my hand! Well, let's take a closer look at how to hold the pick, then. If we can remain in contact with this spirit of exploration and play while developing skills, then our journey is joyful and we remain in contact with the spirit of music.

Working within the guitar circle, we open the door to a world where learning is a meaningful inquiry. Once we have a taste of this playful and joyful spirit, then any musical pursuit is enriched.

Our Approach Is Experiential

Music is primarily a collaborative activity, and the skills we develop in the process have far reaching application. We learn by doing, by failing, by doing again in the light of what we have learned. What we experience is ours, and cannot be taken away or forgotten. It informs us as we look ahead to where we want to go, and helps us to see for ourselves what we need in order to get there.

Make This Sound

The Seattle Circle Guitar School works within the oral tradition of music, engaging our students with the actual sound and feel of music as presented by practicing musicians. Throughout history and in every culture, musical education has been transmitted through apprenticeship. Music is best learned by being around musicians, listening to and playing with musicians.

Engaging The Whole Body

Crucial to our enjoyment and long-term participation in music is how we use our bodies - if it is physically hard, uncomfortable or painful to play, we won't have fun! The SCGS faculty has a strong background in Alexander Technique. The aim here is freedom and relaxation in the body; release of unnecessary tension; engagement and direction of attention; and the ability to respond to each other, to the situation, and to Music itself.

Where Did All This Space Come From?

In the experience of playing music, sometimes a new world opens up: a world with lots of space in it.

The Guitar Circle

The Guitar Circle embodies a new approach to guitar instruction and music-making as developed over 25 years in Guitar Craft, which was founded in 1985 by Robert Fripp. When a group of people sit together in a circle with guitars, something happens which does not happen any other way, and we can get a glimpse of something magical.

“I wish I had had the opportunity to play this way when I was a child…they are learning how to play cooperatively, listen carefully, and have fun playing together!” - Marian Wagner, 3rd grade teacher, Salmon Bay School