GCNE Meeting, 08-22-2010, Victor's House/Studio

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

All arrive at Victor's place at the same time, shortly after 8 pm. Taking a few minutes to organize, we circle up as Victor tends to domestic matters, and warm up with some very basic 2nd primary work. Eventually, Victor comes down to the studio, and we begin the meeting with a long moment of silence, followed by a free circulation.

After this, Victor presents the night's work, which is circulation patterns using English change ringing patterns. The concept is as follows: the pattern begins with one single pass around the circle. Each person has their note, and it does not change. (For our work, we're utilizing a descending Cmaj pentatonic scale.) Once it has circulated once, the pattern starts over again, but skips the first person and moves directly to the second. It then moves to the first, and then to the third, and continues to the end of the circle. For the next pass, the first person is again skipped, moving directly to the second. This time, however, the second passes to the third, who passes to the first. The first then passes to the fourth, and continuing normally around the circle. The pattern continues to do this through the rest of the circle. So, in a five-person circulation,

1 2 3 4 5
2 1 3 4 5
2 3 1 4 5
2 3 4 1 5
2 3 4 5 1

At this point, the pattern shifts one person. The last circulation could be seen as the first circulation in position 2, and fittingly, the pattern lays out as such:

2 3 4 5 1
3 2 4 5 1
3 4 2 5 1
3 4 5 2 1
3 4 5 1 2

The pattern then progresses through the rest of the circle , and ties seamlessly into the beginning again.

This takes a few times to really sort out, as we are learning the pattern as we play it. After about 25 minutes of playing, we make it through the full pattern one and a half times. The next couple of attempts don't make it around the full circle, prompting Victor into a discussion with regards to our work with the tetrad last week.

Following this, we take another few stabs at the pattern, and eventually succeed with two passes, occasionally shifting the pole positions. We eventually end the night with a solid pass through three full cycles (ending in the middle of the fourth). A moment of silence to mark the end of the meeting proper at about 10:10, followed by gig scheduling talk afterwards.