Thacher Music Room, 09-08-2013

Special Focus Project, Fall 2013 - Spring 2014

Attending:  Victor, Brad, Chris, Scott, Rick, Dev

This evening marks the beginning of a special project as outlined by Dev, primarily involving an approach to quality.

The meeting opens in the circle, with no guitars, for some important discussion, question-answering, and detail sorting.  This takes roughly 90 minutes or so.  Some good points made, and valuable insight offered.  The notion of minimizing "noise" is expanded upon, along with some clarification on the work of the energies.
It is decided that we will take this project on as a group.  More details will reveal themselves as time goes on.

A short break for our hindquarters.

Back in the circle with guitars.  Dev asks Chris to run a few minutes of calisthenics, which can best be summarized as:  applying the 1st Primary fingerings to a lateral movement across the fretboard, while also developing a variation of the lateral movement.

We'll be working with 3 pieces in the beginning of this project:  Eye of the Needle, Voices of Ancient Children, and Flying Home.

Eye of the Needle:  two run-throughs.  After the first, Victor and Brad trade parts, and there are notes about dynamics made.  Some very specific spot-work on the intonation of a harmony in the high lead (it needs to be pulled sharp).

Voices:  Chris takes Scott to the hall to show him the "pulse".  Victor and Dev run over the bass lead part, and Brad and Rick refresh on the "claw".  Two full runs, with a primary directive to the non-lead players to drop volume significantly.  Some other notes about dynamic shaping.

Flying Home would be next, but it is quite late, so we choose to save it for next week.  Next week will also be the first double-meeting week for this project.