Saturday Rehearsal

A Tuning the Air Journal

Saturday, September 3, 2011 – Saturday Rehearsal

Performance team rehearsal once again at Curt’s place, from 9:30 to 12:30. Chris, Curt, Carl, Mary Beth, Taylor, and Greg; Travis, Bob and Jaxie out of town this weekend.

As we sat down, Carl’s “Little Red Truck” was clearly in the air, having been worked on at a recent Sgt Bones rehearsal, so that is where we began. We reviewed the form. This time Chris picked up the melody, and I moved to the chords. Once the skeleton of the form was in place and reliable, we began playing with additional bits; possible bass lines, places for improvisation, etc. This piece is now substantially in the group’s collective hands and ready for real rehearsal and refinement.

A little time dedicated to staying on top of “Larks II”. This is very solid, but needs to be played as often as possible. Carl and Taylor both observed that one particular transition seemed very weak – we play it well, so it was not an execution issue, but somehow it was harmonically unsatisfying and seemed to lose some steam at that moment. Looking closer, we realized that there was one wrong note being played in one of the guitar parts at that spot. Once that was corrected, things fell quickly into place.

We also ran “Space Circus I” several times. It is also substantially in our command. Keeping the tempo up and the overall feel light and dancing is the primary challenge. We continue to work with the metronome, in order to internalize the tempo.

From Chick Corea on to “Mad World”. Carl, Mary Beth and Taylor are on the melody, and they had done some work this week on both humanizing and standardizing the phrasing. Much improved from last week. Without Bob and Jaxie, I was again covering the arpeggio, so we have not heard the full effect yet. We excised a couple of bars from the first verse, to move the piece along a bit; repeated melodies are always an issue when arranging instrumental versions of vocal pieces – where the lyrics move the piece forward, but there is nothing changing in the melody.

Reviewed “Gnossienne”. This piece is also substantially in our pocket. A bit of discussion on how to articulate the grace notes; looking for the middle way between simple slurs and becoming “sing songy”. Work yet to do on Satie’s indications. We took note of these today, and discovered one or two things, but did not press the matter, electing to wait until we are a full group for that. Mary Beth identified one error in the way one of the melody lines was being played, and that was corrected.

Chris gave us a quick taste of a psycho-surf piece he is working on, entitled “Fallout”. He gave us some bits to play in order to hear it for himself, primarily.

Finally, a first stab at the “Cantina Band Song”. Very funny and silly. Fun to play. Needs to be cranked up a notch or two, tempo-wise, to really work. I began to work on some comping chords to fill out the Sgt Bones arrangement a bit.

In preparation for work we’ll be doing with Nigel next week, those of us who know parts did a very rough runthrough of “Connecticut Yankee”. Taylor has an old score that he will share.

Next rehearsal, Monday evening.