GCNE Meeting, 09-27-2009, "The Loft"

This account will also be anecdotal in nature.

Meeting was begun at roughly 7:40pm in silence. In attendance: Victor McSurely, Glenn Hughes, Chris Paquette, Rick McCarthy, and Brad Hogg.

As a warm-up, we began with the 16-bar exercise--this was played for roughly 10-12 minutes. Leading from this, we then looked at a particular piece that will be on the setlist of the October gig, looking only at the intro. The triplet circulation was split up between Victor, Chris, and Glenn, with Rick and Brad taking on bass duties. Continuing on to Third Relation, we then worked with this for a bit, playing it through once or twice, followed by fairly intensive spot work on tightening up certain sections (the middle section and outro in particular, with an eye on bringing out the "dancing" polyrhythms).

This was followed by work with Eye of the Needle, addressing some minor issues of volume differences, and then breaking for a short period. After the break, instead of working out logistical issues of self-advertisement for the gig, we spent some time learning Growing Circle. This was played first by Glenn, Victor, and Chris; we then all learned the bass part. Rick and Brad took on the bass part "for keeps".

After playing through it twice (and once more on the ending for Brad), the Circle then worked out some small but important issues: updating the homepage for GCNE, selecting a minute-taker, updating the Myspace page and uploading recordings, creating a facebook group, and a couple of other small items. Ending in silence at roughly 10:15, we tore down and bid each other adieu for the night.

GCNE Re-Inaugural Meeting, 09-21-2009, "The Loft"

With no notes taken, this account will be largely anecdotal.

Meeting began with silence at roughly 7:40pm, Monday, 09-21-2009. In attendance were Victor McSurely, Glenn Hughes, Rick McCarthy, Brad Hogg, and Dev Ray.

Following silence, some discussion followed. Both Victor and Dev commented that, with two new members in attendance, there was a sense of a new beginning for the Circle. A performance challenge was announced, as well, with the upcoming date of October 30th, opening for Your Move at the Cambridge YMCA. It was also mentioned that Victor, Dev, Chris Paquette (not in attendance this night) and Brad were participating in the current attending-at-a-distance online GC course, with Victor taking a special aim to working with the presented material in the Circle. Various other minutiae were discussed, such as possible and likely guest players for the upcoming gig, logistical issues, future circle meeting exercises, possible collective sittings, et al.

We then warmed up with some circulation, followed by beginning work on Eye of the Needle and Third Relation. Rick didn't know his newly assigned part to EotN, and Brad wasn't clear on the form of TR, so groups were split, in order to learn these parts. After rejoining, EotN was played through twice, and then work began on TR, with a couple of full play-throughs. At this point, we took a short 10 minute break.

After the break, the AAD course was mentioned again, specifically with regards to the current Developing Variations exercise. We worked with circulating and playing through the exercise (on a G blues scale, for those keeping score), as well as through chord sequences, and followed this with work stemming from the Hammerhead exercise, and leading into circulating A Harmonic Minor ascending and A Phrygian descending. We ended the night with a final run-through of Third Relation and Eye of the Needle, and ended in silence at roughly 10:25pm. The meeting adjourned, with Sunday nights becoming the preferred night for meeting.

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