Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday October 9, 2010 – Full Team Circle and Performance Team Rehearsal

Sitting at my place. A drizzly Seattle Saturday morning. Then off to Fremont Abbey Arts Center for rehearsal.

The first hour or so was for the entire guitar-playing team, making sure we have a continuous exchange of experience and information within the group as a whole. The obvious motivation is to give the guitarists not on the performance team a regular and reliable opportunity to work with the performers in musical situations that are not beginners circles or open circles or the music lab; to stretch and challenge the entire group. That the non-performers benefit from this is the obvious hope. The actual result is actually a lot more bilateral than that. At last week’s circle we played a bit with some cascades using the augmented scale, and that exploration led very directly to the introduction the Performance Team is using for Vrooom. Not only good R&D, but good music.

Today we began by moving wordlessly into an improvisation. I cannot speak for the other players, but my intention was to work with introducing, hearing and developing themes within the composition. I opened with a little statement in C Lydian. This was answered, in shape and spirit if not perfectly in the tonality. The composition took a number of turns as it developed, and I was able to recognize a certain amount of thematic material that appeared and reappeared at crucial moments.

Next we moved onto the de Hartmann piano piece that Chris has been introducing. We worked with everyone learning the melody together (two parts in parallel harmony), and getting a handle on overall form. Before we wrapped it up, Jaxie, Carl and I took a shot at the bass line as well. There are a couple of internal parts that need to be fleshed out, but the piece is substantially there for us. At some point, we may be able to include a full-group rendition of the piece in a performance. We shall see.

A short break, and then the Performance Team, with Bill sitting in as listener/advisor, reconvened to have a look at some of the things we learned from Thursday’s performance. An observation and decision quickly made about the end of Space Zombies! From Outer Space! and a change we can make that will tighten up the end of the show considerably. Then on to Vrooom. Thursday was our first ever performance of the piece (much to the delight of our resident Audient), and we had plenty to look at in detail based on the experience. Some clarifications, a bit of tightening, and a whole lot of metronome work.

Another, even shorter break, and on to Ninth Guitar E which, we learned at the end of rehearsal, will be in next week’s set. Bob presented a modified arrangement that felt all the way around to be a very definite improvement. Again, mostly metronome work. Bill and Bob mixed and matched the sections, with a lot of work on better understanding the timing and phrasing of the parts, and how they interact, compliment and contrast one another. This was nuts and bolts work of the most basic and necessary kind, and very clearly moved us out of the learning phase and into the performance phase. The need for some serious personal practice is evident before we reconvene on Monday, when we will do section work to pull it all together for next Thursday’s performance.