Extracurricular group workout 4

A Tuning the Air Journal

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 – Extracurricular group workout 4

Once again, Greg, Chris, Mary Beth, Carl and Curt in the house for a couple hours of work on current and new repertoire.

We began with “Connecticut Yankee”, as Chris had not been able to be at Monday night’s rehearsal. Continuing to clarify and embody the parts. Some discussion of the various arrangement choices on the available recordings, and which ones we might adopt. We ran the piece several times, with and without the metronome.

We moved on “Little Red Truck”, which has not yet appeared in the full performance team rehearsals. Continued establishment of parts, as well as further refinements. This will probably be presented on Thursday.

“Larks’ Tongues” was next, at Greg’s request, just keeping it fresh. We took a little time to look at the cross-faded section, and a way come out of it with clarity and definition. Also, a decision about who to look to for the various cued entrances.

Curt suggested Chris’ new psycho-surf composition, “Fallout”, next. We had done some test runs on various sections last Wednesday, and with that information Chris had gone back to the drawing board. This week, although still in skeletal form, the shape and basic elements of the piece were in place. Chris reminded us of the parts that had survived the edits, and taught us the new parts. Through this process, a number of ideas flew by, and by the time we were done a working arrangement was beginning to emerge. Several big holes yet to be filled, and details to be decided, but the piece has clearly moved from sketch-of-an-idea to work-in-progress.

We touched, once again, on the intro to “I Am The Walrus” and ran it several times. Chris and I then did a rough-and-ready runthrough of the piece, as far as we could on the fly; Chris on the vocal line and myself on the guitar part.

With only a few minutes before Chris and Greg needed to leave, we ran “Gnossienne”, with a little discussion of the performance we did of it for Nigel on Saturday, and the next steps necessary to arrive at the right arrangement.

As Greg packed up his guitar, Carl, Chris and I to a stab at “Bicycling to Afghanistan” at a brisk but manageable tempo. Crashed and burned at F#. Personal work to do on this one.

Carl, Mary Beth and I spent another 20 minutes firming up the parts we had learned for “Fallout”, and running the coda to “Little Red Truck”, and then called it a day.

Full group rehearsal Thursday even