04-25-2010, GCNE Meeting, The Loft

In attendance: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Brad Hogg, Glenn Hughes, Alex Lahoski, Dev Ray. Chris is unable to attend, due to a last-minute situation with the day job.

Opening the meeting at roughly 7:45 p.m., with a moment of silence. There is still sound, however--the unit next to ours is playing Ella Fitzgerald quite loudly. Though this could be distracting, it also provides a pointed stick, as it were.

Victor begins by touching on something that RF gave him at the completion course in March, regarding areas of special study (for an explanation of this, RF has posted this on his own diaryhere), and alludes to how "performance" seems to be the direction that this circle is taking. An alternative way of putting this would be that "performance" is becoming very much a part of the circle's direction, along with the available option of "improvisation". Fittingly, several have brought LectroSonic Mouse amps, and busking is a posted option for tonight. Before we choose to do this, however, we elect to warm up and make sure that the amps are working. Victor initiates a circulation to the right, to check levels.

30 minutes later, we come up for air, from a long spontaneous improvisation. Observations are presented. At about 9 p.m., we take a short break, during which Glenn learns how to differentiate between black metal and death metal.

Back in the circle at about 10 after, we approach Morning Has Broken, again. This is the first time in a few months that we've had (almost) everyone here working on this, but progress is clear. We spend roughly 20 minutes with this, working from the intro through the second verse (same as the first), and agree to stop before the second bridge, where the key changes. Moving on, we take a few moments to revisit some repertoire we haven't played for a bit: Where's The Nurse? and Flying Home.

With another very short break, we then put our guitars away and review the morning sitting exercises that Victor gave us, the week before, and discuss some of the more inward work that we undertake. The meeting is finished at roughly 10:20 p.m.

GCNE Meeting, 04-18-2010, The Loft

In attendance: Victor McSurely, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Alex Lahoski.

Victor arrives at about 7:35, and we all head inside and up to the loft. After setting up (and returning Chris's metronome to him), we begin the meeting at about 7:45, with an unspoken instruction: when ready, begin. Delicate playing.

Roughly twenty minutes later, we step into circulation work. The work is very focused around how we organize ourselves in time, and in pitch or key; one circulation that is quickly stopped provides a great example of a clearly defined motif--how might we recognize this, and respond to it? What would follow something as clearly defined as this?

Victor guides us through several exercises. The first is simple enough: sing the note that the person before you played, and then play your own note. This proves to be a little much, so we simplify it to a Cmaj pentatonic scale. After a bit, we move to any note from Cmaj, and then singing the previous note and playing our own note simultaneously.

Next, we continue down this same rough trajectory, by having one person playing a note, and then the next three attempting to play the same note in turn, with eyes closed. (Victor gets a kick out of seeing the self-satisfaction on everyone's faces when they get a note right.) Following this, we play another circulation (key center is E, with an ambiguous key), with a noticeably more cohesive feel.

Break, at about 9 or so.

Back in the circle, Victor gives us an exercise, to be used as an extension/expansion of the morning sitting. We then take another look at Morning Has Broken, and revisit the intro, as well as the first/second verse, and the first bridge. It's clear that the primary challenge is remembering all the chords (and there are a great many chords), but this can actually be more manageable by knowing how the chord sequence fits into the key signatures of this song (Dmaj and Cmaj).

To end the meeting, we revisit circulation work one more time, with an emergent key signature of C ambiguous, and ending on a high G. Silence at 10:20 p.m.

GCNE Meeting, 04-11-2010, Brad's Apartment

In attendance: Chris Paquette, Dev Ray, Brad Hogg.

We get going a little later than usual--some aren't able to attend, and so we have to re-plan the night. Dev shows up around 8 or so, with Chris finally making it in around 8:40.

In Brad's living room, we jump in with the 16 Bar Exercise, to get warmed up. Dev points out, as we play, that we don't need to play a note louder because it's on a different string. Afterwards, he notes that, as he warmed up, he'd grin every time he hit an open string, to just let it go by.

Flying Home, next. The first time we run this feels alright, though with a couple of mistakes--Dev suggests just letting them go, and concentrating on the task at hand. So we play this again, and actually make more mistakes. Chris observes that when he adopts the practice of not dwelling on mistakes, he experiences the reverse effect and tends to be less attentive, thus allowing for more mistakes. Dev then suggests that we play through, again, and apply a division of attention exercise and count the piece out loud as we play it (in 7s, not in 4s). As we play through, this time (discounting a false start), there's a few mistakes that work themselves out, and a few new ones, but we make it through to the end. The time tends towards a rush, due to the nature of this piece, but maintaining a count through the end is a good accomplishment.

Chris then suggests visiting Morning Has Broken, so as to get a little time in on that. Dev has not worked on this yet, so Chris and Brad help him get through the intro, with its picking pattern and chord shapes. They then do a full runthrough of the form of the song (just chords, no melody), with a mind to have this ready for the next week. Dev excuses himself for a moment; in the interim, Brad tests a small arrangement idea with Chris.

When Dev returns, Chris asks to try an arrangement of his own, of a Gentle Giant song. This looks like it will be fun, once all the parts get put together, so we'll be looking forward to it, next week. Brad then asks to do some work with circulation, so we start with a free circulation (C Ambiguous, ending on a Cmin chord). Dev guides this work into some "really fast" circulating with a few choice notes, eventually simplifying into a single Cmaj triad.

"Really fast" quickly becomes 96ish, so not quite so fast, but still pretty quick. Brad quickly gains an appreciation for just how difficult the lead circulation in Opening is to play, especially the 2nd part. We trade chairs a couple of times, to get a feel for the different spots, and figure out the difficulties of each chair.

At this, we decide to call it a night, at roughly 10:40 p.m. We're all looking forward to next week.

GCNE Meeting, 04-04-2010, the Loft

In the circle: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Glenn Hughes, Alex Lahoski, Dev Ray.

Glenn, Rick, and Brad are the first ones to arrive, with Victor arriving shortly after. After setting up, and a moment of silence, Victor shows us a couple of circulation exercises that he picked up while in Sassoferrato. As we are working with these, Dev shows up. And, as things often turn out, we opt to catch up on what happened at the course in Italy, just as Dev is ready to play.

What follows is roughly two hours or so of discussion: with the completion course having completed, and the future of this work wide open, there's a lot to be done and undertaken.

A little after 10 p.m., we take a bit of a break, to give our posteriors a chance to recoup, and then visit a couple of exercises, including reviewing the circulation exercises we tried at the beginning of the night. When asked for requests, Alex suggests Flying Home into Thrak, like we did at the gig the week before. Very good: the spaces in the polyrhythms are really present.

Concluding the meeting at 10:30 or so, we all bid adieu, and look forward to next week.