11-7 & 8-2009, GCNE Workshop with Tony Geballe, Victor's House.

11-07-2009 - In attendance: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Tony Geballe, Andy Cahill (our new addition), Dev Ray, Chris Paquette, Glenn Hughes, Brad Hogg.

A couple of late arrivals, this morning, due to a small communication error. Tony Geballe has graciously agreed to come up from New York (though he had just been in Seattle a couple of days before) and work with us for the weekend, to provide some guidance to the circle. Began with a group sitting at 10:30 to 11:00 (no GC course, this!), and then guitar work began.

Tuning, and an opening circulation. Warming up with a cross-picking exercise in G Major, with diatonic chords. D Maj, E min, F# dim, G Maj (all root form, no inversion). First two string groupings

5-4, 5-3, 5-2 &
5-4, 5-3, 5-2, 5-3

then three

5-4-3, 5-4-3-4 &
5-3-2, 5-3-2-3

then four

5-4-3-2, 5-4-3-2-3-4

With this discharged, Tony suggests we work on a piece of music called "Where's the Nurse?", written at Camp Lebanon in 2002. This is an interesting piece of music: it's become one of the standards of the repertoire, but unlike almost all other repertoire, does not have a symmetrical division of the beat. Even the most rhythmically complicated pieces in GC tend to have some relation to the quarter note, or 4 16th notes (though a large amount of the music tends towards 5 or 7 beats, it still divides into a steady pulse). "Nurse" breaks with this tradition by accepting another tradition, that of Turkish music. With a pulse of aksak semai, or 3-2-2-3, one might still attempt to count this with a steady beat, dividing it into 5--this doesn't sit right at all. The asymmetrical approach is best for this, and really gives it the "limping" feel it implies.

We began work with Nurse by first getting the feel of the 3-2-2-3 in our hands, just by clapping and stomping feet, and then playing a basic 5-note bass riff. We then moved on to the first chords of the piece, and the picking pattern (which helps to establish the feel of the piece). Using this, the introductory bassline was taught, which brought us up to 12:45 and lunch, much to our surprise.

Reconvening at 1:30, we slogged our way through the rest of the bass part, as well as starting to work on the lead part's chordal and melodic parts. This work took us up to roughly 3:15, and another break (both for our brains and posteriors). At 4:15, Dev took an early leave, as he had a gig that night with his charge. Another 5 minute break at 4:40.

At this point, we had begun to work on the final section of the lead part, which is made up of a diminished chord run in 3-2-3-2/3-2-2-3, and then a final section in 3-2-2-3/3-2-2-2. The last two chords are both difficult and easy, but the picking pattern jumps around a bit--this eventually produced what was apparently an incredibly amusing (and dazed) facial expression from Brad. We completed the lead part, ran it a couple of times, and closed the night with 3 cued notes from Tony, at 6 p.m., Rick bidding a somewhat hasty farewell--it was his wedding anniversary, and he needed to honor that commitment and undertaking.

11-08-2009 - The two late arrivals from the day before were conspicuously early, this morning. Rick arrived shortly thereafter, with the comment that the rose from the night before was an effective life-saver. A group sitting at 10:05-10:35, with Andy showing up a tad late and joining the sitting in the dining room.

Reconvening with a circulation, and a recapitulation of the warm-up work from the day before, with the addition of playing in triplets against a steady pulse, and always with 4 "bars" to a chord. For example:

x x x x x
5-4-3-2-5-4-3-2-5-4-3-2-5-4-3-2

or

x x x x x x x x
5-4-3-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-3-4

and then change chords, and go on.

We then jumped right into Nurse, with an aim to review, clarification, and tightening of parts. At 12:15, Tony took an opportunity to bring out his iPod and play some traditional Turkish folk music, so that we could get an idea of what this really sounded like. To the circle's scribe, this seemed to help with timing and feel in the group, and certainly helped him. This brought us up to the first true playthrough, with parts, right before lunch at 1:00 p.m.

Small talk at lunch.

1:40, back to work. Now we were working on the closing mirror parts to the lead; once these were established in a few people (not all, as they were quite difficult), we were able to do a full runthrough with all the parts (bass lines with ascending closing notes, and leads with both straight and mirror leads) at 2:45. Victor pointed out some matters of dynamics, so we addressed these, to bring all the parts out, and led up to a break at 3:15.

3:40, Tony plays some more Turkish music for us, with a slightly different feel (the scribe detected a feel of 3-3-2-2, though it could easily have been 2-2-3-3), and mentioned the name of the lead musician in the group (whose name will be posted here, once it can be remembered or acquired).

We switched gears for a little bit, at this point. Tony asked us to play Eye of the Needle, and explained how we need to be able to see it as a moment, beginning first with the basic 13-note pattern. This pattern is a musical gesture; 4 of them together become a longer musical gesture, and then the entire introduction becomes yet another gesture (this is quite redolent of the 4th principle of the performance event, "Any performance is a multiplicity of performances"). Victor appended this with comments on taking this attitude with many other things, and completing gestures. When one takes a musical phrase and plays it, and carries that thought into the next phrase, it carries a weight and purpose to it, and follows through into larger gestures [my paraphrasing].

With this, we revisited Nurse again, tightening the gaping holes in the hull of the vessel, and making a really seaworthy vehicle of it (someone had mentioned pirates, earlier). We then moved to other work, primarily Batrachomyomachy--this brought an aside from Tony, about how he had originally begun writing this piece while at Claymont Court, and had been reading a Polish book with a translated title of The Red King. This would have been the name of the song, but Tony quickly realized that this probably wouldn't be an advisable name for a song in Guitar Craft, so Batrachomyomachy it became. More patchwork, but good work from those who play the piece, and a noticeable improvement in the twenty minutes we spent on it. A short break at 5 p.m.

A few minutes later, we sat back down and ran Nurse once. Tony then pulled out a small recorder, placed it in the middle of the circle, and we then played our one take of the weekend, just in time for Victor's family to arrive back home from Manhattan. We invited them to take a seat inside the circle, where Bridge was happy to tell us about his weekend. We then played Nurse once more, for the newly acquired audience, and then played a final circulation to close out the weekend. With well wishes flying all around, we relinquished Victor and his home back to his family, and all took off for their respective homes. All in all, a well-spent weekend.