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.