First Tech Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Thursday January 27, 2011 – First Tech Rehearsal

A little early, perhaps, to jump into tech, but Fremont Abbey is a busy working space and we need to take whatever nights that are available. So our opportunities to get into the performance space and work out the details are coming early this season; tonight and next Monday. As it turned out, this was fortuitous. With two new players who have not performed in a circle this large, in this space, lightly amplified, with lights that shift with the music, this was a great opportunity to address the challenges.

All of our gear was in storage at the Abbey, so there was no need to load anything in. We simply arrived at 6pm, more or less like any gig night. We gathered, looked at the tasks, and then went into action. Lights, sound and house materials brought downstairs. We had a basic plan. We would set up the room as if it was a gig night, except that the audience would be represented by just a few strategically placed chairs. A couple of on-the-fly re-thinks. We needed to take a look at the arrangement of the players in the circle. There will be 10 instead of 9, but for the first 2 shows there will be 11. Moving guest artist Tony to a slightly different spot made more sense, and that involved shifting everyone one notch to the right. The other change involved a notion I have had off and on for some time, to move the tech table (lights and sound) as well as Joel from their previous position in the SW corner just inside the entrance to the SE corner adjacent to the green room door. Travis and I tossed the pros and cons around, and decided to go for it, just to see how it would work.

Set-up was a breeze. By 7pm we were ready to soundcheck. That went well, too, although it took a bit more tweaking than usual since none of us are in the channels we occupied last year.

We began the rehearsal by working with Joel on Space Zombies! From Outer Space! With the new setup, Joel felt to me must less set apart from the performance team. We worked on a bit of improv, with the idea of Joel taking part in some of those as well. About 8pm we took a break. Joel packed his gear and headed out to the C3 gig. Charles had completed the inventory of house items and necessities, and so he departed as well.

The performance team worked on Neptune, which has come together quite nicely – not quite ready for primetime, but certainly by opening night! On to Children’s Hour. For the new guys, operating in a circle of this diameter is a challenge, and delivering circulated parts in reliable time is the most challenging of all. It was good to begin addressing this early. Good progress. We played with some of the potential of a reformulated spiral circulation. No final decisions, but some interesting possibilities. That led pretty naturally to a runthrough of Twilight. Nothing particularly revelatory there. Right now neither Carl nor Greg are playing on it, so it is really just a matter of the established performance team adjusting to the new seating (well, standing) arrangement. On a personal level, I’m very happy to be on Bob’s right for this one. We did some nuts and bolts work on A Day In The Life, working in Carl who is taking on Ian’s part. Then we ran the piece. It sounded very good, and the two orchestral sections were positively ferocious. We quickly had a look at the voicing of the final E Major chord. Time was about up, so we ran Neptune one more time, and called it a night. With no audience seating to strike, and the lobby already packed up, we had the Abbey restored to neutral in only about 15 minutes. A quick gathering in the circle for completion, a little feedback, and review of the plan for the next couple of rehearsals.