D-Day #3 for Gustav, followed by a Music Lab

A Tuning the Air Journal

November 14, 2010 – D-Day #3 for Gustav, followed by a Music Lab

With the Abbey otherwise occupied this morning, we once again used the opportunity for the performance team to focus on Neptune. Bill sat in and leant his observations from the periphery; with a piece of music like this, requiring every bit of attention every player can muster simply to execute, having an independent set of ears in the room makes a huge difference. We were able to dive in today, with only minimal review of the mechanics of various sections. About half the team was entirely off-book, and from what I observed the scores that were out seemed largely security blankets. This meant that we were able to address the entirety of the composition, and the flow from one section to the next; the actual musical considerations rather than the mechanical ones. By the end of the day, when almost all of the scores were on the floor rather than in the lap, there was a definite sense that this is a piece that is realistically possible. The plan is to run it at soundcheck on Thursday and rehearse it in the Great Hall on Saturday, and see how close we can get.

In the afternoon, Mary Beth, Greg, Carl and I gathered for the Music Lab. For this entire season I have been working with this group on gaining an understanding of the subtle effect and repercussions of note choices when improvising and circulating within a particular key or mode. Guitar Craft spent nearly its entire existence with beginners and beginner-intermediate players as its center of gravity. For beginners, playing no wrong notes is a major accomplishment when faced with this challenge. As long as the note I choose is within the scale/mode called, we’re okay. Things sound generally sonorous and, as anyone with any Guitar Craft experience can attest, occasionally miracles happen. Whether these musical miracles are the result of dumb luck or the hand of the Muse reaching down and taking control may be debatable, but there is no question that people with very little experience or knowledge or chops are often the hands through which extraordinary music arrives.

If relying on luck and/or divine intervention is the strategy, we remain beginners. The cost of actually learning about what we are doing is almost always a (temporary) loss of access to magic. Players who begin to understand what their musical choices mean, and can hear what flavor their note choice adds to the meal, often become conservative. It is difficult to improvise freely, while concerning ourselves with these matters. If our frame of reference is “music theory”, or we simply have a more refined set of ears to listen with, we begin to see that, for instance, pounding out a B or an F in the lower register of a C Major circulation is at best a bold harmonic choice, and at worst a clueless hijacking of the tonality. But sometimes it is exactly the right thing to do; and if that is so, a beginner is more likely to do it. They are truly innocent, whereas a slightly more experienced player would have known better and for very “good reasons” chosen to avoid it.

So basically, moving from the cluelessness of a beginner to the evolving competency of an intermediate player very often means getting worse for a while.

Since it was a small group today, I sat in the circle. We worked for most of the first hour on evolving a particular scale/mode. We began with, and always returned to, circulating the notes of the C Major triad – C-E-G – in order to clearly establish the “C Majorness” of the scale to be explored. One at a time, and eventually together, we added to the available notes for circulation the Major 7th, the Major 9th, and the Major 13th, pausing occasionally to talk about the qualities that these notes add to the overall sound, color and feel of the music. Then we added the #11th. Here we moved very clearly from Major to Lydian, and we noted what the flavor of that was. We briefly worked with the perfect 11th in order to experience the contrast. Returning to Lydian, we circulated for some time, always beginning with the C Major triad and then adding the other available notes as the spirit moved, always making the effort to notice what happened when a new note was introduced.

The final step in the process was to introduce the Minor 7th, turning the scale into a Lydian Dominant. A very different texture, highlighting the power of the choice of 7th. When we put it all together we circulated beginning with the C Major triad and added notes as the spirit moved, this time with both the Minor 7th and Major 7th available; listening for which 7th was present at a given moment and making the choice to run with that tonality, to move to the other tonality, or to allow them to coexist in a musical way. Very satisfying.

There was something wonderful about these circulations. We managed to maintain the tonal center of gravity at all times, without any sense of restriction. From time to time we would move off into a related mode, and this had the flavor of intelligent modulation rather than a loss of center. Time spent in this new mode served to strengthen the primary mode, rather than dilute it.

The reason for exploring this particular scale was that it is used in a Chick Corea piece entitled Children’s Song #1. I learned this piece too many years ago to think about, and it flew by for me seemingly out of the blue yesterday. It is a simple little piano composition that could easily be played by 2 guitarists, but for this I divided each “hand” into two interlocking parts. On the surface it is a very simple little 6/8 lullaby, but the timing is not quite what it seems. So while all of the “parts” can be learned in just a minute or two, playing it is another matter – doze for a moment and it goes off the rails. The melody includes both the Major and Minor 7th, as well as the #11th; on the one hand rather exotic – “ethereal” is the impression one gets hearing it – but so beautifully constructed that there is absolutely nothing odd, contrived or radical sounding, even to western ears.

Wonderful.