In attendance, tonight: Dev Ray, Rick McCarthy, Glenn Hughes, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg.
Straggling in tonight--Brad, then Rick, then Glenn with the keys to the building. A few seconds of hemming and hawing, and the choice to play plugged in. While setting this up, Dev and Chris arrive, with Glenn noting that that Victor will be taking the night off, citing slight fatigue and a strong desire to ensure that it doesn't progress any further than that. After plugging in, turning on, and turning up, with some basic circulation to set levels, we're off!
Following the basic game plan of running the set list, we warm up with Growing Circle--generally pretty good, but some tuning issues throughout, and the scribe forgetting part of the bass part. Moving on to Batrachomyomachy, with timing and rushing being the primary issues. Some quick section work for the basses, and then on to Calliope. Poor Glenn is currently the only lead on several pieces, but is pushing on mightily. Bicycling to Afghanistan is skipped, since Victor is not present, so we move on to Askesis. There are several issues of timing with this piece, with a tangible increase of 10-15 bpm within the first couple of beats after count-in. Glenn urges the circle to pay attention to the groove and lay back a bit, which to the not-currently-playing scribe's ears seems to help noticeably.
Third Relation comes up next--the theme of timing is becoming a popular one, tonight. A moment to address and eliminate the tuning issues, and then playing 3rd Rel. both slowly, to drive home accuracy, and then quickly, to bring it up to performance tempo while not rushing. We choose to skip Intergalactic and move straight on to EotN. As we play this, the scribe notices a curious sensation of trying to hold back and not rush and yet still rush the tempo. Timing is emphasized yet again. Brad also mentions a difference in dynamics that several people at the recent OCG II course chose, regarding the end of the piece; both Glenn and Dev point out that every circle plays it differently, and also bring up the visit with the circle from Elan (a link to his page is here) last year, and how he really wanted the last note of the piece to pop, and the difficulty of bringing out that build without overplaying the dynamics.
Skipping both Moving Force and Derailed, as well as Lark's Thrak as an entity, we play Asturias, with some quick basic arranging and explaining of a couple of parts. After this, we move on to simply working with the 5s and the polyrhythms in Thrak, instead. We initially try this by standing and stepping in time, in order to get the pulse into the body. This probably ends up resembling the worst of your high school marching band experiences, as playing in 5/16 over a steady pulse of quarter notes is quite difficult. Bringing it back to the stool and simplifying to feeling the pulse in eighth notes has a substantially greater amount of success. At this point, we start to really work on feeling the pulse and hearing the music of both the 5s and the polyrhythms. Glenn and Dev both mention how they don't really count it anymore, because they're listening to the actual sound of the 5-against-7 feel, i.e.:
X--x-X--x-X--x-X--x-X--x-X--x-X--x-X
X--x-x-X--x-x-X--x-x-X--x-x-X--x-x-X and continue as necessary.
After about ten minutes of this work, the change is really clear, and there are several points where you can hear the space between the notes, and know that everyone is on the same page. With this discharged, we choose to break for a few minutes, before working on Where is the Nurse?. A bit of small talk during the break, with Brad mentioning and explaining some of the work that he saw and took part in, at the OCG II course, including some new circulation and whizzing techniques.
Diving in with Nurse, we run the piece, with Glenn and Chris on lead, and Dev, Rick, and Brad on bass. The week in between the workshop and this meeting hasn't really derailed the piece, though there's a couple of spots that everyone will have to address in personal practice--it's definitely feeling like a pair of pants that fit well, look great, and are mostly comfortable, but not quite lived-in, yet. Rick moves to lead, and Dev and Brad take to the hall for section work. Upon return, the focus work clearly pays off.
We then move to circulation work. Dev chooses a key (G Major), and we move to free circulation. At first, the key is actually quite ambiguous, but then slowly emerges. Moving on from this, the issue of time comes up again, and Glenn chooses to work the circle on having a steady pulse and flow. Taking the issue of what note to play out of the mix, we work with assigned notes in C Major/A minor, and simply making sure that the note sits in a time frame. We then choose to add another note, giving ABCDEFGABC, and circulate this pattern several times--this works quite well, and eventually, timing is no longer an issue, and it just simply flows through the circle. Glenn says that it feels like the note is moving through him, when it really works.
We move this on to a sort of controlled whizz with a standard Eb magic chord, and circulating it in a steady pulse rhythm: 1-2-3-4-5, and then 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5. Eventually, this becomes 1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a-4-e- - -1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a-4-e- -. Succeeding with this, we move it to a chromatic movement, so Db-D-Eb-E-F-Gb-G-Ab-A-Bb-B-C-Db-D-Eb, and then back down again, with a slowly increasing speed. This is both easier and harder than it looks, and by the end of the night, we manage to get a few really good circuits under our collective belt, and call it a night in silence at roughly 11pm.
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