In attendance: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Alex Lahoski, Dev Ray.
No Glenn, tonight: he's having a sudden case of the not-feeling-wells.
Beginning at roughly 7:40, with the 28 Bar Exercise. After the first time through, Victor advises that, if we are unable to play it consistently as 32nd notes (current speed at about 50 bpm), to drop down to playing as sixteenth notes, without the tremolo on top. It's okay to play and drop in and out, if necessary, for now. Second time through, there's a bit of confusion--the speed went up slightly, and most tried it as sixteenths, but this was aborted in favor of a slower speed and 32nd notes.
Circulation. Victor begins several times, pausing after each circuit, which has something of an effect of setting a tempo, and then continues. After about 3 or 4 minutes, he stops the circulation, and asks the circle what key we are playing in. The responses seem to be Cmaj, Dmin, or Gmaj. Victor calls for each person to choose a note in Cmaj, and then directs the playing of the chord. He then does the same in Dmin and Gmaj, but none of them seem to match up with what we were just playing. Calling for C7, most people jump for the Bflat, which is interesting in and of itself. This does seem to be the closer match for the key that we'd been playing in.
The general direction that this discussion is heading is something to note: how aware one is of the improvisation. One may have a concept of playing a consecutive series of chromatic notes within the circulation, in relation to everyone else, but the "validity" of the concept won't be known until immediately before one plays--this might be literally the space of a 1/100th of a second. Being sensitive to what the group is doing playing is invaluable.
The further implications of this are extremely important, in the case of a performance. As performers, the ability to set the mood and atmosphere through music can be very powerful, but comes with a great deal of responsibility. Used recklessly, it can be damaging for both audience and performer. But we're not in that business!
Moving into repertoire. Nurse is up, and we play through it once. Some notes about cleaning things up are offered--it's not quite as clean as the week before. The leads get some good work out of observing the very last note in the bar (the 3 of the second 3, or "123-12-12-123") and emphasing that to really nail the "one" of the bar. This work translates over into the basses. One more run at a slightly faster pace.
Growing Circle is next. After the first play through, Victor notices that we played the middle section's dynamics in reverse from what we intended--making the adjustment makes an enormous difference. Some spot work on a couple of sections, and one more playthrough from the bass entrance, and we move on to Calliope. 4 basses and 2 leads, and one of the leads plays the bass part on the entrance, so it's a fairly unbalanced mix. A couple of notes about intonation and letting notes get a little crazy (not always a bad thing), and we break.
After a few minutes, back to the circle. We're working with Thrak, now--a first attempt at playing straight through goes down pretty quickly, and we buckle down to work each section with the metronome. The 1-4s, the 1-3s, and the 5s of the rock'n'roll section each get some quality time, along with the polyrhythm section. As usual, playing to the click track proves useful, and we play it once more through, without the metronome.
Prelude Circulation. Without Glenn, we enlist Alex to learn the Glenn notes of the last four bars. Playing one bar is proving to be a struggle--we get through, but not as easily as we should be able to. We move on to Eye of the Needle--Victor asks the basses to be more assertive, especially in the Dmin section, which really brings it together.
Last piece of the night--Asturias. A couple of arrangment notes (who takes the lead in the twinkle section, who takes it out, who keeps twinkling), and played once. Having a simple piece like this can be helpful, as it leaves everything on a good note, for the end of the rehearsal. With that, some notes on logistics for the gig, and who will be where, this next week. The meeting ends in silence at roughly 10:20.
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