Brad's Apartment, 09-22-2013

Attending:  Rick, Brad, Chris, Dev

Opening the meeting with a circulation, Cmajorish with a tonally ambiguous ending.

Rick running calisthenics.  First working with the Hammerhead exercise, to refresh our fingers.  Following this with a modification that adds the pivot in:

--------5---|------5-6---|-----5-6-7--|--5-6-7-8---|5-6-7-8-|
5-6-7-8---5-|6-7-8-----6-|7-8-------7-|8---------8-|--------|

9-8-7-6---9-|8-7-6-----8-|7-6-------7-|6---------6-|--------|
--------9---|------9-8---|----9-8-7---|--9-8-7-6---|9-8-7-6-|

More working with the pivot, and digging into the technique.  Nitpicky, superfocused, and useful.

Eye of the Needle, next.  One false start, and then a full run.  Some discussion about voicing and the octave bass in the re-intro.  Problems with ringing strings.  Some things are really starting to sound nice.

Discussion.

Work with Voices of Ancient Children, next.  Some discussion about interpretive freedom, dynamics, timbre, and ensuring we communicate with each other.

During the break:  movie talk.

After the break, back in with a circulation that becomes an improv.

Flying Home, next.  Lots of work with this one; a lot of looping as a quartet, and in different pairs, to get a feel for who needs what, and what parts need what attention.  Some related calisthenic work as well, to really focus in on physical necessities in our playing (wrist positions, sheer speed, fingering choices).  All this while remaining aware of our time (tending to fall off the metronome at speeds that aren't what we usually work at).  Dev presents an exercise that is focused on speed in the right hand, and being able to hear at a faster speed.  The apparent necessity of pushing to a very fast speed and then bringing in quality/economy of motion, as opposed to approaching through sheer quality, yields some interesting discussion.

Bass work largely focuses on phrasing; the intro seems to sound better when phrased in tandem with the lead, and the main verse in D likes thumping.

A huge change comes about when we look at the lead part's jump from the 5th fret to the 13th fret, and Chris demonstrates how he fingers that interval.  Super useful stuff.

In for the first midweek meeting at Dev's, this coming Thursday.