Extracurricular group workout 11

A Tuning the Air Journal

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 – Extracurricular group workout 11

Seven on hand this afternoon: Curt, Greg, Chris, Mary Beth, Carl, Jaxie, and Tony.

“five-five-Five” is on the setlist for tomorrow’s show, so this was our opportunity to get it up to speed, as it were. “Speed”, in this case is still about 85% or our eventual target tempo, but still fast enough to achieve escape velocity. We began by running it at about 80% of that, listening and exploring the relationships between the parts, and identifying points of timing, picking technique and phrasing that need to be clearly articulated as we take the tempo up. We worked up to the target working tempo, with and without the metronome. When an area of concern appeared, we slowed it back down and focused on that until we had cleared it up, and then pushed ahead.

We moved on to several runs through “Tango Apasionato”, looking a details of phrasing and tempo.

Just before the break, Jaxie and I ran through the newly rearranged “I Will” several times. Some discussion among the group about matters of phrasing, and a general consensus that the changes are a definite improvement.

Greg departed, and we reconvened with a runthrough of “I Am The Walrus” with metronome. Tony has been improving through the outro, but Jaxie saw a part that he could take on, which doubles Bob’s part, and we worked a bit on that.

On a lark, we took a shot at the first half of the B Minor Fugue. Jaxie and Carl hold down the largest parts of this section, and had spent part of the morning rehearsing it together, so they were well warmed up. With the staggered entrances, simply keeping track of long tacits may in the end be the biggest challenge of this piece. With a little help from Tony counting bars, this came off remarkably well, even with 3 parts missing.

Tony requested a runthrough of “Fallout”, as he is still working at mastering the melody, and its rather idiosyncratic timing. We went through the entire piece once, and then looped the main section a few additional times so that he could get some time in on that melody in context.

One more “five-five-FIVE” and we called it a day.