In attendance: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Dev Ray.
The meeting commences at roughly 7:40 p.m., with Victor, Rick, Chris, and Brad running the subdivision exercise (1 to 8 and back again). Dev arrives a few minutes later and joins in, once he's sitting in the circle. There is still a tendency for the 7s in the progression to sound like soup. Victor stops it for a moment and brings everyone's attention to the picking action, which should be immediate and fast, no matter what speed the tempo or subdivision is. This firms everything up a little bit. Victor pauses again and asks everyone to begin on an upstroke. The difference is night and day, to these ears: it is considerably tighter and more focused.
Moving on to bringing the left hand into play: the primary C Melody section of Calliope, looped. First attempt at counting is 6 bars of 4, which is abandoned for 4 bars of 3, to focus. We then move to 3 bars of 4. This is difficult for most people, especially if it is on something that they haven't previously divided attention with. After working this for a bit, Victor tells us to leave the counting and just play it. Dev stops playing, while we continue to go on. When we finally come to a halt, Dev explains that he had begun to experience quite a bit of tension in his left hand while trying to count, and that it was still there when we left the counting, so he had stopped, to bring his hand back into a less tense state.
Victor looks at him for a moment, and then says, "When ready, begin."
Then, "Circulation."
After the circulation ends, Victor asks the circle what they are passing. Brad: "Intention." Dev: "A quality." Rick: "Tension. It's been a rough week." This leads into a discussion of What We Play, and What Informs Our Playing, and what role our outside life has in what we play. Some interesting things are said.
Calliope in full. The first attempt to play becomes a case of "runaway tempo", and is stopped quickly. The second time is a full runthrough, and sounds much better.
A break for a few minutes.
Back in the circle, Flying Home. Dev points out to Brad some notes that are being played a touch too long (in this case, a touch is definitively too long), which is worked out a bit. This piece also brings up something from Victor: FH is a particular piece, in that there is essentially one rhythm that is played throughout the entire length. In fact, even with the very clear key changes, the subtlety of the section changes is what really make the song work. The circle is still treating each change as "a section", though, as opposed to moving into the next section and letting it speak for itself [my paraphrasing, and as concise as I can make it].
Third Relation, twice. The first time is not so good, and some sections are dropped by players. A second time is better.
At the request of one of the younger members, Askesis. This falls apart somewhere in the middle, and after some clarification on parts, is run again, from beginning to end.
What follows is a somewhat long (but somewhat necessarily so) discussion of Guitar Craft Face, or the necessity of both controlling what registers on one's face while performing and being able to have an intent to one's expression. The fact that we will be playing for children in a bit less than a month is very important to remember: they don't care about what our hands are doing, and will mostly care about the music, but it's our faces that they'll be looking at, which will color the entire experience for them.
Calliope played once more. Much tighter than at the beginning of the meeting.
Silence, and the end of the meeting. We draw up a setlist (order to be determined), discuss some logistics for musical decisions (how certain pieces will be played, in terms of who plays what), and what will be coming up in the next rehearsals. There is also mention of possible studio time coming up, but that is a discussion to be saved for the future. Adjournment at roughly 11:00 p.m.
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