Extracurricular group workout 3

A Tuning the Air Journal

Wednesday, September 6, 2011 – Extracurricular group workout 3

“Guinea Pig” day at the extracurricular group workout. Curt, Chris, Mary Beth, Carl, and Greg (just arrived back from Colorado this morning) in place for an afternoon largely of experimentation with new material.

Chris and I had been discussing the possibilities of “I Am The Walrus”. He had an arrangement in place for the intro, ready to hear in the circle. I spent some time yesterday and this morning looking at the voicings of the piano chords and adapting them for the guitar (in NST, that is no mean task). We were able to cobble together a working quintet arrangement of the intro and the first verse. Overall, although this is clearly not the final arrangement, we came away from the work with the clear sense that this is doable. Chris will begin to score the string sections and I am going to dive into the piano, guitar and bass parts. Since we have a special project set for Saturday’s rehearsal, and Chris is out for Monday’s rehearsal, it will probably be next Thursday before we get down to business in earnest, although we will have the next Wednesday extracurricular workout to test arrangements further.

After a short break, we came back together and took a look at a new section of Chris’ work in progress, “Fallout”; a twisted little bit of polyrhythm in a psycho-surf setting.

We ran Carl’s “Little Red Truck”, with Carl demonstrating the new “Bob and Jaxie” part for Greg and Chris to hear. Carl noticed a clash in one place between the new part and the melody, and took a moment to devise a solution. Chris and Carl looked at some improv options for the coda section, and I experimented with some coloration. Definite forward movement.

We ran “Larks’ Tongues” with the metronome several times, just because we really need to play this every time we get together. It is gelling very nicely.

Greg needed to depart. Before he left, we ran “Gnossienne”, once without the metronome and again with it. Some refinement among the melody players regarding phrasing.

We completed the session as a quartet. On to “Mad World”. Carl covered the “Bob and Jaxie part”, and I the chord accompaniment. On Monday I was left with a sense that something was missing in the arrangement, particularly during the verse. This morning I had the idea of Bob and Jaxie improvising a circulation using only chord tomes through the changes, during both the verses and the interludes. Chris and Carl took on the challenge of this circulation, while Mary Beth held down the melody and I the chords. For my ear, it sounded as though we had found the missing link. On Monday the piece felt like a lovely but slightly bright idea to me; today, a viable piece of repertoire.

We ended the day with several passes on “Space Circus”, with the metronome (this piece needs to be played with the metronome every time, for quite some time to come.)

As folks were packing their gear to go, we listened to “Space Circus Part II”, and a lively discussion ensued of the relative qualities of Bill Connors vs Al DiMeola.

Tomorrow, Nigel Gavin’s performance at Good Shepherd. Saturday, we work with Nigel on “Connecticut Yankee”.