In attendance, tonight: Victor McSurely, Rick McCarthy, Chris Paquette, Brad Hogg, Glenn Hughes, Andy Cahill, Alex Lahoski (!), and Dev Ray.
As Glenn and Brad arrive at roughly 7:30, Victor, Rick, and Andy are warming up and setting up the PA. Tonight is Andy's first time at a regular circle meeting, with the exception of the TG weekend. A few minutes later, Dev arrives, along with Alex and Chris, who has been absent from the circle for some time. This marks a welcome return for him, and also happens to bring the current count of AADers in the circle to six. Having eight in the circle looks pretty good, too. Some basic circulation for setting levels.
Amid comments of a "full house", and the palpable sense of a good mood all around, Victor asks us to take a moment to reflect and then state what we now see as our aims for being in the circle. The answers range from "wanting to know and experience what it is like to work within the circle," to "preparing and being available for the Orchestra," to "experiencing and understanding process," to simply "needing to play." After hearing these, and pausing for a moment, Victor observes that all of these sound quite real and honest, and then puts forward his own aim of allowing some real and true moments to manifest.
"When ready, begin."
The next part of the night's work involves Prelude 1. This is mostly straightforward; though we now have enough people to truly circulate the piece, we choose for now to stick with the 5+3 formation we'd agreed on, last week: Victor, Rick, Chris, Brad, Glenn, Chris, Brad, Glenn. After folding Rick in (he'd missed the previous week), and addressing some moments of harmonic differences, we make across the first page, and down to the last few bars. This section takes a bit of extra work, due to the change in structure in relation to the rest of the piece. Finally, we take it from the top, and though the end is a little shaky, it's mostly just unpolished and new, and we resolve to return to this at the end of the night. With this, we take a break for a few minutes.
Back in the circle, Victor asks if there's any requests for material to review before we tackle the Nurse again, which leads to Eye of the Needle. 3rd Relation is next, and gets played twice--once just playing it, and once actually paying attention to dynamics ("Ignore what everyone else is playing dynamically, and play it how you think it should be played."). This second time, while not as cohesive, sounds much more dynamic and controlled, which is something to chew on.
Calliope is next. Taken a little slow, intentionally.
Growing Circle, at Alex's request.
Serious work on Where Is The Nurse?. Tonight, we focus primarily on time issues and locking it in, which stretches into picking patterns for both the bass and lead--which, on the surface, sounds like a fairly academic detail, but in reality is very important to how the piece lines up. Get the picking pattern wrong, and you run the risk of rushing, which cuts off the beat and throws the others off. After about 1/2 hour of working this pretty hard, we call it good and move on to Batrachomyomachy, allowing the quartet to work on this for a bit.
Finishing work with Batracho, we end the night with some more discussion of logistical issues, in regards to playing out and making GCNE a viable regular performance venture. There are several avenues to follow, from a regular weekly gig, to playing in different spots on a weekly basis, to running a string of gigs for a week, to busking regularly (which is sort of a summer-or-last-option option), to house concerts. Resolving to put together an e-mail list of venues, as well as beginning the hussle, we list a few charts to be worked on for next week (Lark's Thrak, Flying Home, Intergalactic Boogie Express, Batracho, and Bicycling as extra credit for some), and end the night's meeting in silence at roughly 11:21 p.m.
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