Extracurricular group workout 2

A Tuning the Air Journal

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 – Extracurricular group workout 2

Mary Beth, Greg, Chris, Carl and Curt met for 2 hours at Curt’s apartment again this afternoon to get a bit of extra work in.

Carl, Chris and I were first, and so we began by running a trio version of “LTiA”. Parts are solid, and it is primarily the ensemble-ness of the feel and phrasing that is in need of work at this point – that and some woodshedding on a couple of dodgy transitions. Greg and Mary Beth arrived and joined in. We looked a couple of timing questions and ran the piece several more times. I demonstrated a pull-off/hammer-on approach to a very quick bit in the bass part, but in practice it was not quite ready to be employed. Personal work for me on that.

We moved on to “Mad World”. Earlier in the week I had emailed part assignments to everyone, so we all arrived more or less knowing the parts, which are not difficult or complex in any case: 2 on the chord accompaniment, 3 on the melody, 2 on the hocketed arpeggio, and 2 on the cello. So everyone arrived knowing their part, and only needing clarity on the arrangement. I walked through it, and we played it several times. Bob and Jaxie are on the arpeggio, but were not at the rehearsal, and I covered that one for today so that we could hear the full arrangement. The most important work that presented itself as we got it up and running was the need for the melody players to establish their feel and phrasing as a group – it needs to be humanized (it is a vocal part, after all) and breathe, rather than and being mechanically in time.

We revisited “Gnossienne”, shoring up the arrangement and reviewing the melody. This is also not a technically difficult piece, but the feel and phrasing are make-or-break. For the next rehearsal, we will begin to incorporate Satie’s qualitative musical indications.

We did 2 or 3 runthroughs of “Space Circus”, tightening up the hocketed left hand. I also caught Chris up on a couple of refinements to the melody that Bob and I discovered at Monday’s rehearsal.

Before calling it a day, Carl began to present his composition, “Little Red Truck”. Without working to memorize parts, or even assign them at this stage, we simply walked through the bits, with everyone trying everything, in order to get a sense of where the piece might go. There is a lot of room for input and tasteful improvisation in the piece, and we will come back to it on Saturday.