Due to the nasty weather (and at least one person having to drive up from Connecticut in said weather), this week's meeting has been called off. With Christmas this coming weekend, we'd already chosen to take next week off, so this means that the next meeting will be held on January 3rd, 2010.
Coincidentally, this also happens to be roughly the same break as the current Guitar Craft AAD course. To all who read, thank you, and we'll see you next year.
jbh
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
GCNE Meeting, 12-13-2009, "The Loft"
In attendance: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Glenn Hughes, Alex Lahoski, and Dev Ray.
The weather is being unkind, tonight, with a fairly strong rain coming down. Brad, Rick, and Glenn all arrive together, and walk up to the loft to find Victor already there, warming up. Some items exchange hands. Chris and Alex arrive a few minutes later, and the word is that Dev is on his way, but running late due to traffic. Andy Cahill will be taking some time for personal practice, study, and preparation for joining the circle proper, so to speak.
After a short silence, we begin at about 7:45 p.m. Victor mentions good wishes sent our way from both Curt Golden and Elan Sicroff, earlier that night. Warming up begins with a subdivision exercise presented by Victor. The metronome set at 48 bpm, we play:
One note to the beat, for four beats
Two notes to the beat, for four beats
Three notes to the beat, for four beats
Four notes to the beat, for four beats
Five notes to the beat, for four beats
Six notes to the beat, for four beats
Seven notes to the beat, for four beats
Eight notes to the beat, for four beats,
and start over.
There is a general understanding that, to begin with, the 7 and 8 beats will sound like an aural soup. And, true to form, they start out sounding pretty murky, and continue to do so. What is interesting, though, is that over the course of maybe five minutes or so, the "ones" begin to really come together and really have a solidity to them.
From this, we move on to a second warm-up, which hasn't been presented in this circle: the 28-bar exercise. This is a chordal sequence in G-minor, with a strict alternate picking pattern of 5-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2 (the number implies the string), with each note being a 32nd note. As he presents this, Victor notes that there are three ways to present this exercise: playing it as sixteenths (5-2-4-2-3-2-4-2-3-2-4-2-3-2), playing it as 32nds, and playing it while visualizing the count of the 28 bars. We play through the sequence once, slowly. Victor then mentions that there is a fourth way to play this exercise--one can play it in honor of the dead. He also notes that, incidentally, it is the 35th anniversary of J.G. Bennett's death. With this in mind, we play it at a more performance-minded tempo, twice through, pause for a moment, and then circulate.
Victor calls Eye of the Needle. Played once.
Victor then calls 3rd Relation. We play this, and there is considerable rushing throughout. In an effort to work on this, we first attempt to play it slower. Failing this, the metronome comes back out. This still doesn't quite work, so we pair off and play the piece. Going through each pair, Victor then asks what note is on count 2, and what note is on count 3. When we hesitate, Victor points out that we need to know the map precisely, and know what note is where, in the piece, so that we can put it right in where it needs to be. He also stresses the relation of that note to the big "macro-beat", and notes how, in the opening exercise, the "one" was impossible to deny (my paraphrasing), and how we need to bring that into other things that we play.
With this, we take a longish break, with a couple different conversations going around, mostly centered on numbers, the Dead String Quartet, and the Bassomatic. Glenn also takes the time to take a picture of the circle, sans players:
Returning to the circle, we revisit the Prelude circulation, starting with the last 4 bars (the trickiest part of the piece). The work on the prelude generally involves playing in time, more than anything; the notes have not been a problem for a couple of weeks. Eventually, the plan is to be able to move this into a more expressive tempo feel (not metronomic), but we first need to be able to nail it metronomically first. After some pretty intensive work with the metronome, this begins to pull together more, and we make it up to somewhere in the vicinity of 88-94 bpm.
Where is the Nurse is next. Played twice, with a little more attention to tempo the second time, but otherwise played quite well. It's not as fast as some versions out there, but it feels right, and it's good to really be able to say that we've essentially got it. Batrachomyomachy, next. Some tuning inconsistencies in the bass, but not much else. This is followed by Bicycling, with some dropping out occuring due to lack of time spent with the piece, but still nothing difficult to address. We next play Intergalactic Boogie Express, and Flying Home. The meeting ends in silence at roughly 10:30 p.m., with some discussion of a slightly earlier meeting time next week following.
The weather is being unkind, tonight, with a fairly strong rain coming down. Brad, Rick, and Glenn all arrive together, and walk up to the loft to find Victor already there, warming up. Some items exchange hands. Chris and Alex arrive a few minutes later, and the word is that Dev is on his way, but running late due to traffic. Andy Cahill will be taking some time for personal practice, study, and preparation for joining the circle proper, so to speak.
After a short silence, we begin at about 7:45 p.m. Victor mentions good wishes sent our way from both Curt Golden and Elan Sicroff, earlier that night. Warming up begins with a subdivision exercise presented by Victor. The metronome set at 48 bpm, we play:
One note to the beat, for four beats
Two notes to the beat, for four beats
Three notes to the beat, for four beats
Four notes to the beat, for four beats
Five notes to the beat, for four beats
Six notes to the beat, for four beats
Seven notes to the beat, for four beats
Eight notes to the beat, for four beats,
and start over.
There is a general understanding that, to begin with, the 7 and 8 beats will sound like an aural soup. And, true to form, they start out sounding pretty murky, and continue to do so. What is interesting, though, is that over the course of maybe five minutes or so, the "ones" begin to really come together and really have a solidity to them.
From this, we move on to a second warm-up, which hasn't been presented in this circle: the 28-bar exercise. This is a chordal sequence in G-minor, with a strict alternate picking pattern of 5-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2-4-2-2-2-3-2-2-2 (the number implies the string), with each note being a 32nd note. As he presents this, Victor notes that there are three ways to present this exercise: playing it as sixteenths (5-2-4-2-3-2-4-2-3-2-4-2-3-2), playing it as 32nds, and playing it while visualizing the count of the 28 bars. We play through the sequence once, slowly. Victor then mentions that there is a fourth way to play this exercise--one can play it in honor of the dead. He also notes that, incidentally, it is the 35th anniversary of J.G. Bennett's death. With this in mind, we play it at a more performance-minded tempo, twice through, pause for a moment, and then circulate.
Victor calls Eye of the Needle. Played once.
Victor then calls 3rd Relation. We play this, and there is considerable rushing throughout. In an effort to work on this, we first attempt to play it slower. Failing this, the metronome comes back out. This still doesn't quite work, so we pair off and play the piece. Going through each pair, Victor then asks what note is on count 2, and what note is on count 3. When we hesitate, Victor points out that we need to know the map precisely, and know what note is where, in the piece, so that we can put it right in where it needs to be. He also stresses the relation of that note to the big "macro-beat", and notes how, in the opening exercise, the "one" was impossible to deny (my paraphrasing), and how we need to bring that into other things that we play.
With this, we take a longish break, with a couple different conversations going around, mostly centered on numbers, the Dead String Quartet, and the Bassomatic. Glenn also takes the time to take a picture of the circle, sans players:
Returning to the circle, we revisit the Prelude circulation, starting with the last 4 bars (the trickiest part of the piece). The work on the prelude generally involves playing in time, more than anything; the notes have not been a problem for a couple of weeks. Eventually, the plan is to be able to move this into a more expressive tempo feel (not metronomic), but we first need to be able to nail it metronomically first. After some pretty intensive work with the metronome, this begins to pull together more, and we make it up to somewhere in the vicinity of 88-94 bpm.
Where is the Nurse is next. Played twice, with a little more attention to tempo the second time, but otherwise played quite well. It's not as fast as some versions out there, but it feels right, and it's good to really be able to say that we've essentially got it. Batrachomyomachy, next. Some tuning inconsistencies in the bass, but not much else. This is followed by Bicycling, with some dropping out occuring due to lack of time spent with the piece, but still nothing difficult to address. We next play Intergalactic Boogie Express, and Flying Home. The meeting ends in silence at roughly 10:30 p.m., with some discussion of a slightly earlier meeting time next week following.
Monday, December 7, 2009
GCNE Meeting, 12-6-2009, "The Loft"
In attendance, tonight: Alex Lahoski, Glenn Hughes, Brad Hogg, Chris Paquette, Rick McCarthy. Victor McSurely, Dev Ray, and Andy Cahill are otherwise committed for the evening, for one reason or another.
Tonight, everyone arrives at roughly 7:35 p.m., independent of each other (with the exception of Alex and Chris, who came up from Connecticut together). Walking into the loft, we find the PA system still ready to go from the previous week, so set up is relatively quick, and technical issues are few.
A moment of silence to start, at 7:45. Moving straight to the Prelude circulation, we ask Alex to read the first chair, in Victor's absence. Work on this is primarily rhythmic, with the notes serving more as placeholders to be played while working on how we slot in. As a result, we never venture past bar 15 (which is a Cmaj/E, or I6 chord, for those keeping score), choosing instead to address rhythmic issues. Our approaches involve clapping in time, looping the same bar, and dropping notes in order to hone in on rhythmic responsibility. One particularly helpful exercise involves looping the first bar, and picking a muted string in semiquavers, playing one's note when appropriate. After about 25 minutes of all this, we return to the 15 bar loop. At first, it seems a little off, but pulls together quickly. Good fodder for next week, and Glenn mentions that it might be a good idea for each to know the piece, so that if we were to play it, we could assign parts at random and be able to play it.
With this, Glenn asks us, if this group were to perform tonight, what we would be capable of playing. The list currently includes Asturias, Growing Circle, Eye of the Needle, a Thrak without the fifth chord, Askesis (with one omission), Where is the Nurse? (a different omission), Calliope, and 3rd Relation. There are other pieces that are being hammered out, as well, and will probably be folded into the working repertoire within a few weeks.
To lead into non-circulation repertoire, we start off with Growing Circle. The first run-through is good, but the tempo drops in direct proportion to our dynamics, which are actually quite dramatic, but aren't necessarily being played--the soft sections seem to be soft in an arbitrary fashion, although we are playing them together. With a mind directly towards this, we play the piece again. The second time around, the feel is much better, and the tempo is much more consistent, though Chris comments that the end of the piece doesn't have quite the same energy as the beginning.
Moving on to Askesis, with Rick, Chris, Glenn, and Alex, with Brad contributing silence. At one point, a small intonation issue in the basses, but mostly good work. Glenn opts to show Brad a couple of parts of the bass--hopefully, this will be sufficiently augmented the following week. At this, we break for a few minutes.
On return, the circle tackles Nurse--Alex is still not sure about all of the piece, so Brad takes him out into the hallway to show him some primary parts of the bass line, while the leads work with the end of the piece. After about ten or fifteen minutes, the sense of being back in the loft leans into the hallway, and Brad and Alex head back in. Some more work with the piece, including switching Rick between lead and bass, and dynamics being mentioned. Alex has a better grasp of the piece, despite Brad's strongest efforts to help, and will probably have the line down by next week.
Next is 3rd Relation--a little bass-heavy, with Chris, Brad, and Glenn on bass, and Rick and Alex on lead. A couple of runs of this, and onward.
The last thing we run for the night is Intergalactic Boogie Express--Rick, Brad, and Alex on lead, with Chris and Glenn on bass. The first attempt crashes pretty quickly, and leads straight to rhythmic work on the opening. The offbeat triplets are pretty challenging, and it's absolutely necessary to have this locked in, so that when the basses come in, there is no question as to where they play their notes. A couple minutes of just this work really helps out, and allows us to move on in the piece. The tempo was definitely quite a bit faster after about ten minutes, but we manage to scrape a couple of complete passes; granted, there are some trainwrecks, but nothing that hard work and personal practice won't take care of.
Bringing us to roughly 10:35, we elect to call it an early evening, and end in a short moment of silence. As we're packing up to leave, Rick adjusts Chris's truss rod--next week will reveal just how much that helps Chris's playing.
Tonight, everyone arrives at roughly 7:35 p.m., independent of each other (with the exception of Alex and Chris, who came up from Connecticut together). Walking into the loft, we find the PA system still ready to go from the previous week, so set up is relatively quick, and technical issues are few.
A moment of silence to start, at 7:45. Moving straight to the Prelude circulation, we ask Alex to read the first chair, in Victor's absence. Work on this is primarily rhythmic, with the notes serving more as placeholders to be played while working on how we slot in. As a result, we never venture past bar 15 (which is a Cmaj/E, or I6 chord, for those keeping score), choosing instead to address rhythmic issues. Our approaches involve clapping in time, looping the same bar, and dropping notes in order to hone in on rhythmic responsibility. One particularly helpful exercise involves looping the first bar, and picking a muted string in semiquavers, playing one's note when appropriate. After about 25 minutes of all this, we return to the 15 bar loop. At first, it seems a little off, but pulls together quickly. Good fodder for next week, and Glenn mentions that it might be a good idea for each to know the piece, so that if we were to play it, we could assign parts at random and be able to play it.
With this, Glenn asks us, if this group were to perform tonight, what we would be capable of playing. The list currently includes Asturias, Growing Circle, Eye of the Needle, a Thrak without the fifth chord, Askesis (with one omission), Where is the Nurse? (a different omission), Calliope, and 3rd Relation. There are other pieces that are being hammered out, as well, and will probably be folded into the working repertoire within a few weeks.
To lead into non-circulation repertoire, we start off with Growing Circle. The first run-through is good, but the tempo drops in direct proportion to our dynamics, which are actually quite dramatic, but aren't necessarily being played--the soft sections seem to be soft in an arbitrary fashion, although we are playing them together. With a mind directly towards this, we play the piece again. The second time around, the feel is much better, and the tempo is much more consistent, though Chris comments that the end of the piece doesn't have quite the same energy as the beginning.
Moving on to Askesis, with Rick, Chris, Glenn, and Alex, with Brad contributing silence. At one point, a small intonation issue in the basses, but mostly good work. Glenn opts to show Brad a couple of parts of the bass--hopefully, this will be sufficiently augmented the following week. At this, we break for a few minutes.
On return, the circle tackles Nurse--Alex is still not sure about all of the piece, so Brad takes him out into the hallway to show him some primary parts of the bass line, while the leads work with the end of the piece. After about ten or fifteen minutes, the sense of being back in the loft leans into the hallway, and Brad and Alex head back in. Some more work with the piece, including switching Rick between lead and bass, and dynamics being mentioned. Alex has a better grasp of the piece, despite Brad's strongest efforts to help, and will probably have the line down by next week.
Next is 3rd Relation--a little bass-heavy, with Chris, Brad, and Glenn on bass, and Rick and Alex on lead. A couple of runs of this, and onward.
The last thing we run for the night is Intergalactic Boogie Express--Rick, Brad, and Alex on lead, with Chris and Glenn on bass. The first attempt crashes pretty quickly, and leads straight to rhythmic work on the opening. The offbeat triplets are pretty challenging, and it's absolutely necessary to have this locked in, so that when the basses come in, there is no question as to where they play their notes. A couple minutes of just this work really helps out, and allows us to move on in the piece. The tempo was definitely quite a bit faster after about ten minutes, but we manage to scrape a couple of complete passes; granted, there are some trainwrecks, but nothing that hard work and personal practice won't take care of.
Bringing us to roughly 10:35, we elect to call it an early evening, and end in a short moment of silence. As we're packing up to leave, Rick adjusts Chris's truss rod--next week will reveal just how much that helps Chris's playing.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
GCNE Meeting, 11-29-2009, "The Loft"
In attendance, tonight: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Glenn Hughes, Andy Cahill, Alex Lahoski (!), and Dev Ray.
As Glenn and Brad arrive at roughly 7:30, Victor, Rick, and Andy are warming up and setting up the PA. Tonight is Andy's first time at a regular circle meeting, with the exception of the TG weekend. A few minutes later, Dev arrives, along with Alex and Chris, who has been absent from the circle for some time. This marks a welcome return for him, and also happens to bring the current count of AADers in the circle to six. Having eight in the circle looks pretty good, too. Some basic circulation for setting levels.
Amid comments of a "full house", and the palpable sense of a good mood all around, Victor asks us to take a moment to reflect and then state what we now see as our aims for being in the circle. The answers range from "wanting to know and experience what it is like to work within the circle," to "preparing and being available for the Orchestra," to "experiencing and understanding process," to simply "needing to play." After hearing these, and pausing for a moment, Victor observes that all of these sound quite real and honest, and then puts forward his own aim of allowing some real and true moments to manifest.
"When ready, begin."
The next part of the night's work involves Prelude 1. This is mostly straightforward; though we now have enough people to truly circulate the piece, we choose for now to stick with the 5+3 formation we'd agreed on, last week: Victor, Rick, Chris, Brad, Glenn, Chris, Brad, Glenn. After folding Rick in (he'd missed the previous week), and addressing some moments of harmonic differences, we make across the first page, and down to the last few bars. This section takes a bit of extra work, due to the change in structure in relation to the rest of the piece. Finally, we take it from the top, and though the end is a little shaky, it's mostly just unpolished and new, and we resolve to return to this at the end of the night. With this, we take a break for a few minutes.
Back in the circle, Victor asks if there's any requests for material to review before we tackle the Nurse again, which leads to Eye of the Needle. 3rd Relation is next, and gets played twice--once just playing it, and once actually paying attention to dynamics ("Ignore what everyone else is playing dynamically, and play it how you think it should be played."). This second time, while not as cohesive, sounds much more dynamic and controlled, which is something to chew on.
Calliope is next. Taken a little slow, intentionally.
Growing Circle, at Alex's request.
Serious work on Where Is The Nurse?. Tonight, we focus primarily on time issues and locking it in, which stretches into picking patterns for both the bass and lead--which, on the surface, sounds like a fairly academic detail, but in reality is very important to how the piece lines up. Get the picking pattern wrong, and you run the risk of rushing, which cuts off the beat and throws the others off. After about 1/2 hour of working this pretty hard, we call it good and move on to Batrachomyomachy, allowing the quartet to work on this for a bit.
Finishing work with Batracho, we end the night with some more discussion of logistical issues, in regards to playing out and making GCNE a viable regular performance venture. There are several avenues to follow, from a regular weekly gig, to playing in different spots on a weekly basis, to running a string of gigs for a week, to busking regularly (which is sort of a summer-or-last-option option), to house concerts. Resolving to put together an e-mail list of venues, as well as beginning the hussle, we list a few charts to be worked on for next week (Lark's Thrak, Flying Home, Intergalactic Boogie Express, Batracho, and Bicycling as extra credit for some), and end the night's meeting in silence at roughly 11:21 p.m.
As Glenn and Brad arrive at roughly 7:30, Victor, Rick, and Andy are warming up and setting up the PA. Tonight is Andy's first time at a regular circle meeting, with the exception of the TG weekend. A few minutes later, Dev arrives, along with Alex and Chris, who has been absent from the circle for some time. This marks a welcome return for him, and also happens to bring the current count of AADers in the circle to six. Having eight in the circle looks pretty good, too. Some basic circulation for setting levels.
Amid comments of a "full house", and the palpable sense of a good mood all around, Victor asks us to take a moment to reflect and then state what we now see as our aims for being in the circle. The answers range from "wanting to know and experience what it is like to work within the circle," to "preparing and being available for the Orchestra," to "experiencing and understanding process," to simply "needing to play." After hearing these, and pausing for a moment, Victor observes that all of these sound quite real and honest, and then puts forward his own aim of allowing some real and true moments to manifest.
"When ready, begin."
The next part of the night's work involves Prelude 1. This is mostly straightforward; though we now have enough people to truly circulate the piece, we choose for now to stick with the 5+3 formation we'd agreed on, last week: Victor, Rick, Chris, Brad, Glenn, Chris, Brad, Glenn. After folding Rick in (he'd missed the previous week), and addressing some moments of harmonic differences, we make across the first page, and down to the last few bars. This section takes a bit of extra work, due to the change in structure in relation to the rest of the piece. Finally, we take it from the top, and though the end is a little shaky, it's mostly just unpolished and new, and we resolve to return to this at the end of the night. With this, we take a break for a few minutes.
Back in the circle, Victor asks if there's any requests for material to review before we tackle the Nurse again, which leads to Eye of the Needle. 3rd Relation is next, and gets played twice--once just playing it, and once actually paying attention to dynamics ("Ignore what everyone else is playing dynamically, and play it how you think it should be played."). This second time, while not as cohesive, sounds much more dynamic and controlled, which is something to chew on.
Calliope is next. Taken a little slow, intentionally.
Growing Circle, at Alex's request.
Serious work on Where Is The Nurse?. Tonight, we focus primarily on time issues and locking it in, which stretches into picking patterns for both the bass and lead--which, on the surface, sounds like a fairly academic detail, but in reality is very important to how the piece lines up. Get the picking pattern wrong, and you run the risk of rushing, which cuts off the beat and throws the others off. After about 1/2 hour of working this pretty hard, we call it good and move on to Batrachomyomachy, allowing the quartet to work on this for a bit.
Finishing work with Batracho, we end the night with some more discussion of logistical issues, in regards to playing out and making GCNE a viable regular performance venture. There are several avenues to follow, from a regular weekly gig, to playing in different spots on a weekly basis, to running a string of gigs for a week, to busking regularly (which is sort of a summer-or-last-option option), to house concerts. Resolving to put together an e-mail list of venues, as well as beginning the hussle, we list a few charts to be worked on for next week (Lark's Thrak, Flying Home, Intergalactic Boogie Express, Batracho, and Bicycling as extra credit for some), and end the night's meeting in silence at roughly 11:21 p.m.
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