Curt Golden

2025-04-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 13

Monday April 7 2025

11:15am
This is going to be the final “Eye of the Needle Project Diary” post of the course. I completely let go of making entries toward the end of last week, in part because life simply got very crazy, but largely because my ongoing daily practice was not specifically EotN-oriented. I continued going into the Practice Room and doing my work there, staying in contact with the course. But the actual practice was a combination of general calisthenics and specific practice on repertoire that the Seattle Guitar Circle is currently focused on as we ramp things up in preparation for Italy, and then Seattle Folklife, and then a potential high-profile gig/tour in the Autumn.
That said, it has become manifestly clear to me that “how” I look at any piece of music I am addressing has been irrevocably changed as a result of the process I put myself through on this piece during this project. I suspect I’m going to be irritating some of my bandmates in upcoming months, as one of the manifestations of this shift is that what once might have been deemed “good enough” simply ain’t anymore. The standards I am holding myself to, and consequently those around me and the group as a whole, are kind of intense, and I expect there will be interesting consequences.
But, to wrap this up…
Up quite early this morning. Morning business, which now includes in addition to my usual yoga-based stretching exercises a set of exercises designed to deal with this damned sciatica that has been dogging me. Breakfast before practice. Into the Practice Room for 45 minutes, on my feet, alone the entire time.
Just a couple minutes of general calisthenics, primarily right hand, to get things moving.
For the rest of the time, I played Eye of the Needle along with the recording we posted today from OCG II. Played my copy, on endless repeat, using the long Silence at the end of the recording to decide which part I would play the next time around as well as which variation of the polyrhythm in the Coda I would take (ascending 4s, ascending 5s, descending 4s, descending 4-4-5).
The primary focus was staying with the Rotation of Limbs throughout, while holding myself to a performance standard for my playing. Consequently, I skipped Guitar 2 entirely, because performance standard is not available for me. I followed my impulse each time, choosing one of the following

Bass – Guitar 4
Lead – Guitar 1
“Burbles” – Guitar 3, as presented in the score
“Burbles” – Just the running lines, otherwise tacit

I was a little surprised when I noticed how lightly my left hand was able fret the notes. I was also pleasantly surprised at how well I was able to jump into the various Leads considering they have not been much in my practice rotation for the past week or so, and how consistent I was with the left and right hand choices I adopted for this project. Staying with the Rotation was more or less what I have come to expect over the years. I’m right there right up until the moment I’m not and then I notice I’m not (often noticing what irrelevance my mind has wandered to) and then I jump back in. Rinse and repeat. Funnily, the version that was most confusing and most difficult to stay with consistently was the one with all of the tacit bars. You’d think that since all I needed to do for large sections was to listen and follow along it would be easier. But apparently I really need the distraction of moving my fingers to help keep my mind from wandering.
Giving myself 15 minutes to switch gears in preparation for my first student of the day, I stopped the playback of the recording and took a couple minutes of stillness for completion and recapitulation before exiting the Practice Room and moving into the rest of my day.
I have some concluding thoughts about this process that are swirling around a bit, but that’s for a little later.

Tuesday April 8 2025

1:30pm

And so, in conclusion…
Just need to summarize for myself some of the places I’ve come to in this process.

Parts
Nice to tear this sucker down to it primal form and put it back together. Renewed appreciation for the piece. In the end, I feel comfortable with my ability to have most of the parts performance-ready if required.

Bass – Guitar 4. Still my go-to, and the part I think I bring the most to.
Lead – Guitar 1.
Burbles – Guitar 3, with or without the unison sections with G1.
Harmonies – from Guitar 2, the harmonizations for the A and F# sections.

The high octave parts of Guitar 2, the Intro and Midtro above the 12th fret, are still where I am not comfortable and don’t see myself ever performing. I understand them better, thanks to these 13 weeks, and in terms of technique and fingerings I have made my decisions as if I was going to perform it. But having it playable at a performance standard is not likely. Never say never, I suppose, but this one feels pretty obvious.
And even if I stay with role as a “Bass Player” on the piece, I have observed that when playing along with a recording or in a rehearsal, I am more in touch and integrated with the other parts and the ensemble as a whole. That alone makes the project a success. Haven’t performed the piece lately, so the jury is out on that one. But I feel confident I will see the same thing there as well.
Technique and fingering
Where all of these notes fall on the guitar fretboard is one of those things that is as close to inviolable for this piece as it gets, so I changed nothing. With one exception: the very last note of the piece when playing in the highest octave on a guitar with no high E available. That one just presented itself one morning and had that “Duh! Why on earth hadn’t I noticed that before” flavor.
In terms of the initial questions about pivots and accented picking, I am comfortable with my choices. After consistent practice they come quite easily and effortlessly for me, and so for now I will stick with them unless I am in a situation where the more “conventional” forms are required.
The Accented Picking I have chosen to employ is very basic, and really pretty obvious. For the Intro and Midtro in 13, 3+3+3+4, with a downstroke initiating each rhythmic group. For the 4/4 melodies, it is only the second group of 3 that I’ve inverted. Everything else is strictly alternate. This is the one that flows most musically for me.
In terms of the application of Finger Pivots, I mostly let nature take its course. I looked and all of the options for pivots, giving each one a “fair” audition. In the end, anything that felt forced or would have clearly needed a lot of practice to train my hands to do well was discarded. Since that early exploration, my choices have become a consistent part of the way I finger the piece. Although the “high lead” is not something I’m likely to ever put myself in the position of performing, it is interesting that in the parts above the 12th fret I actually abandoned the pivot entirely. It may just be that the action that far up the neck on my 40-year-old Ovation guitar is just not conducive. Or my fat calloused finger tips just don’t work that well in the tiny fret zone. Or something.
The Guitarist Inside
Ugh. I don’t know if I’m every going to get any better at this. I made the observation in one of the buddy meetings that it could be argued that the value of the practice is in the effort made to do it well. I do hope that’s not just one of those things that people say to make themselves feel better when they are failing miserably.
But I persevere. What else can I do?
Composition – Convention – Arrangement/Adaptation
This may be the best thing that I’ve gleaned from the work I’ve done on this project.
The material Guitar Circles and ensembles play falls into three categories:

Material specifically written for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
Formal compositions written in other contexts, particularly classical works, adapted for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
Works from recordings – all manner of music recorded over the past 60 or 70 years transcribed, adapted, and arranged, for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.

3:30pm

After 90 minutes of sitting and writing, my sciatica is driving me crazy. Therefore...

TO BE CONTINUED

Wednesday April 9 2025

9:25am
Back to Composition – Convention – Arrangement/Adaptation
Three categories of music played by Guitar Circles and Ensembles

Material specifically written for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
Formal compositions; written works from other contexts, particularly classical works, adapted for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
Works from recordings. “Covers”, in the vernacular. All manner of music recorded over the past 60 or 70 years transcribed, adapted, and arranged, for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.

And the three elements I’ve been considering when looking at Eye of the Needle, and consequently all repertoire I am working with, are:

Composition
Convention
Adaptation and Arrangement

COMPOSITION. For me, this is what might be considered immutable. Obviously, compositions evolve. EotN is a case in point. It was out there and in the performance repertoire for almost 3 years before it settled on its current form, with all of the elements we know. And while some of the elements added along the way may have come from various players experimenting with things not expressly in the composition that were later adopted as part of the piece, what is and is not part of the composition is up to the composer. (Go ahead, play an improvised "twinkle" or drop into the low octave during the A section when performing Asturias with Bert in the room... I dare you). With Bach, there is no one to petition with a potential change. Either way, one changes or adds a new part, a new section, or a new note, in Eye of the Needle or a Bach fugue, at one’s peril.
CONVENTION. This is a bit different. And throughout this course it has been a bit of a theme for me. Tearing Eye of the Needle (and consequently every piece of repertoire) back down to the studs and beginning again. Separating what is actually part of the Composition from a long list of acquired Conventions regarding how it is played. Presumably, a Convention is adopted for a sound musical reason, rather than just being a collective habit that no one remembers acquiring. And it honors the spirit and intention of the Composition and its Composer.
ARRANGEMENT/ADAPTATION. These are the musical choices a particular group makes regarding how they will present the piece. Something written for piano and voice Adapted and Arranged for a guitar ensemble, for instance.
Since Eye of the Needle has been the focus for this course:

The sequence of notes, the harmonic rhythm, the form, the tempo (range), are Composition. I would not mess with this unless there was a really compelling musical reason, and even then not without running it by Robert.
Beginning the piece with a soloist on Guitar 2. This is an Arrangement choice that has become so much of a Convention that it is in the score.
Alternate picking for the leads. This is a Convention, intentionally adopted very early on in order to help a bunch of amateur guitarists reliably play the piece in time and in unison. And when an entire group is playing the part using the same picking pattern it helps unify the musical phrasing. So dropping the Convention is not something I undertake lightly.
Pivots were originally a formal part of the piece, but eliminated early on, again for the same reason that alternate picking was adopted. Not many players can actually execute the pivot well. Baby barres masquerading as pivots can slow a player down and interrupt the flow. On the other hand, some of the fingerings that were adopted to eliminate the pivots make no practical sense to me. So there is orthodoxy (no pivots), heresy (aka, the original orthodoxy), and somewhere in between there is practicality. But whatever choice we make, it is Convention, not Composition. The work I did during the course focused on making sure there was intention, decision, and consistency, in my personal Convention regarding pivots.
Harmony parts played by Guitar 2 is a Convention.
Burblers playing in unison with Guitar 1 is a Convention, and an Arrangement choice.
Fives moving up and fours moving down in the Coda is a Convention.
Basses moving down and leads moving up in the Coda is a Convention.
The only pure Arrangement option I can think of with Eye of the Needle hasn’t popped up much in my experience for years. But the way it has occasionally been Arranged when only 3 players are available is for the Bass player to move to the Burbles in those sections. Not awful, the spirit is there and it’s certainly workable, though something is missing.

Sometimes Conventions are something from the outside that we bring with us to the performance of a piece or part. It is very common for someone who is learning to play Thrak for the first time to fill in the rests with muted string percussive strokes. On the practical side it helps someone not accustomed to playing one half of a polyrhythm stay in time. And besides, it also makes the part sound a little like Larks II, doesn't it? That's fun. Either way, it’s not part of the Composition.

Working with compositions and covers that were not originally written for a bunch of guitars relies heavily on Adaptation and Arrangement first.

Christopher Parkening plays the G Major Cello Prelude in D Major, to make it fit within the range of a classical guitar in a Drop D tuning.
One reason the Guitar Circle arrangements I did of the “39 Series” never really took hold was, I believe, because the guitar simply doesn’t have the range of a piano. The Adaptations necessary made for a very interesting set of Guitar Circle etudes in the most basic sense of the word, but ultimately the compromises were too much and the Arrangements lacked much of the power of the original Composition.
The Guitar Circle arrangement of Red has an entire section omitted (with the composers permission), largely I think because a bunch of acoustic guitars really can’t sustain the Rock for that long. There is a ceiling for the intensity of the Composition that is reached quite early and it becomes repetitive, which the original most definitely is not. So it’s an Arrangement choice that honors to spirit of the composition.
The RF String Quintet added a second “middle section” (E♭-C-E♭-C) and A-F# section to Bicycling to Afghanistan before going to the coda, because “that middle section is just too good to play only once.” (Not my words)
Seattle Guitar Circle extends the Brouwer Etude similarly and for the same reason.

The thing that I primarily find myself doing in Seattle as we are working with expanding the repertoire through both reactivating older material and acquiring or writing new material is to examine as critically as I am able what is actually part of the intended arrangement and what is an artifact of Convention.
The question, in its simplest form, is why am I (are you, are we) playing it like that? When the answer comes back as some variation on “I don’t know” or “because that’s the way we’ve always played it” I get uncomfortable.
If my experience digging into Eye of the Needle on this course is any indication, as often as not I’ll find that the answer is actually “because it best serves the Composition”, and the Convention is retained. Nothing gets changed but everything is different.

And if part of the aim is to put together a performance team in which the standards are up another level or two, I don’t think we can avoid this kind of scrutiny on our way there.

2025-03-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 12

Monday March 31 2025

9:00pm

Completely topsy turvy day. Up early, and into the practice room. Acknowledged the beginning of a week of limb rotation for the IAAD. For practice, moving on from Eye of the Needle. Instead, using my IAAD informed eyes/ears to approach material SGC is considering for Italy, as well as a serious challenge in the Autumn.
All good, except that the replacement for my expired oven arrived at 8:30am. That’s good news. Haven’t eaten anything cooked in my own home for almost a week. But by the time the installers left it was time for my first student, and I was well into my day. Continued my personal practice at every available break in my schedule, although a lot of that involved comparing GC-approved arrangements with the original material and questioning some of the choices. The whole “composition vs convention” question, and considering an approach we might take to this process in our process.
Cooked dinner on a new and wonderfully functional oven.

Tuesday April 1 2025

7:00pm
Very busy day. I was actually up early enough to get my IAAD practice in before my first student arrived, but since then it has been non-stop boogie. I finally have a couple of minutes to reflect while my (brand new) oven pre-heats.
Usual morning routine, with the addition of beginning a course-related rotation of limbs, pausing to remember the team. To this I have also added an oldie-but-goodie. That is throughout the hour, to the best of my (admittedly pitiful) ability, returning to that limb and that little bit of remembering the team, every time I pass through a doorway. Just as humbling as it was the first time I was given this challenge almost 40 years ago.
Into the practice room. Began with some solid generic calisthenics. Then moved on to addressing some of the music that Seattle Guitar Circle is playing with as we begin expanding our repertoire from the Simple Songs-centric music we’ve been focused on the past couple of years. I’m applying some of the insights, or ways of approaching, material that is familiar, that I have learned from the work I did on Eye of the Needle for this course. And it is very interesting. There are three things I’ve identified about a piece of music that I want to explore more. This goes back to the questions I asked a couple of weeks ago, though I have since added a third category.
When I look at a piece of music, presented for the Guitar Circle, I want to understand as well as possible three things:

How much of what I’m seeing/hearing is actually the composition?
How much of it is convention? The way Circles have settled in to playing the material.
How much is adaptation or arrangement. These are choices made to make the composition work in a Guitar Circle.

I have many more thoughts on this swirling around, but that beeping sound indicates the oven is ready.

Wednesday April 2 2025

9:05pm
Up bright and early, and no students until this afternoon. Through the morning routine. Made some oatmeal on the new stove. Ate it with fresh raspberries and a little Greek yogurt. Arranged my workspace and signed into the Practice Room.
Began right at 8am by initiating today’s limb rotation with the AAD team. Upped the metronome a little and put in 20 minutes of warmup calisthenics, mostly focused on the vertical form of the First Primary. Kim popped in with her fiddle for a few minutes.
For most of the rest of the hour I focused on one of the pieces the SGC has in rotation for possible inclusion in the expanding repertoire. A very active piece that I played for a very long time. Played through it slowly, noting the places where both my memory and muscle memory failed me. Pulled up the score and filled in the missing bits, as well as verifying (and in a couple of cases, correcting) the parts that I do remember. Some rote practice on a couple of sections that are particularly tricky. Then played through the entire piece several times at gradually escalating tempos. By the end I was playing it competently, but I have serious doubts that I’ll ever have it back up to performance tempo.
Several runs through Eye of the Needle to complete the hour. The inner work on the piece was kind of cooking, so much so that on my first iteration (Guitar 1) I actually got lost. Chuckled. Tricky business, rationing attention. I also noticed that after all the work I’d done earlier in the hour, I was seriously over-playing this one. Played through Guitars 1 and 3, adding the intention to play more gently. Interrupted the final Guitar 3 halfway through the first D Minor section, as the clock rolled over to 9am. Paused. Moved to the next limb. Saluted the team. Then picked up where I’d left off and played the rest of the piece. Signed off, and into the rest of my day.

Thursday April 3 2025

4:00pm
Oddball day. Only one Thursday lesson this week, a zoom lesson at 9am. Up very early, with plenty of time for all my stuff, and some breakfast, and an hour of AAD practice, before the lesson. After the lesson I had a little time to do the annoying stretching exercises that are giving me some relief from this bout of sciatica I’m enjoying. Then out into the world for such exciting errands as getting my covid booster. Home in time for a little lunch, a couple of office-related tasks, and it was at this point that it struck me what an incredibly beautiful day it was. Whatever I thought I was about to do, I dropped it and headed out for a 2hr/6mi walk. Now home with my feet elevated.
Practice more or less followed the “moving out of the course into the future” mode that has evolved for me the past two weeks. But that’s not totally accurate. It’s more along the lines of “carrying the spirit of the course out into the world.” Signed into the Practice Room at 7:45am. I was alone throughout. 15 minutes of pretty demanding calisthenics. While I am painfully aware that my chops will never again be what they were “in my prime”, 11 weeks of very focused and regular practice has definitely helped me to get them closer to where they can be.
Paused at 8am for several moments to begin the limb rotation, inwardly saluting the team. The practice that focused largely on a couple of the pieces that we worked with at last night’s SCG rehearsal. This doesn’t look quite like practice in the more methodical sense. In some cases it was as simple as digging up the scores to make sure I’m playing the part correctly. Often it involves drilling passages or transitions that I noticed I was stumbling over last night. In one case it was playing along with the original recording of the piece, only to discover we had be playing one note incorrectly last night. Sent out a text on that one. So, practice in the most general sense, but really just a musician getting his shit together in order to bring the performance of this material up to a new standard. And to me, that involves the kind of work I’ve been doing with Eye of the Needle for this course. I want to take what I’ve learned here and apply it to all of the material we play. To a certain degree this means taking pieces back down to their essence to understand what the music is requiring of us. Asking questions like “why did we arrange it that way?” I suspect that with many of the pieces, in the end I’ll have worked my way right back to where it was, and conclude we got it right. But in the process, understanding it on a new and deeper level. Something like that.
Departed the Practice Room at 8:45am, and switched gears (and tunings) for the upcoming lesson. Took a moment to remember where I had left things with the student last week, and consider our next step. Had a minor inspiration. And it really worked.

2025-03-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 11

Monday March 24 2025

7:00am
Contact at a very great distance with an old friend.

11:15am
Busy weekend. Morning IAAD events on Saturday, and then SGC flash-mobbed the afternoon CGT show (by invitation, of course), followed by a little socializing with the trio. Food and drink was involved. Sunday SGC rehearsal, moving into a new phase.
Up at a reasonable hour this morning. Hit the Practice Room for 30 minutes. 15 minutes purely calisthenic. 15 minutes of Guitars 1,3,and 4.
Found myself contemplating what elements of this piece are the composition, and therefor necessary, and which are convention, which can vary from group to group or performance to performance. Reminded of Frank’s observation about how often when he is presenting a game for a group to play, people begin playing by rules that were never part of the instruction. How much of Eye of the Needle is played that way because we just do.
Example: bringing the piece in a solo player on the high lead, and the rest of the parts entering halfway through the first A minor section. It’s a very satisfying beginning, musically. Plus it doesn’t require an audible count-in, which is particularly effective for this piece. BUT, it’s not in the composition. It’s a convention. The most stunning live recording I have of the has Robert counting it in and everyone in on the downbeat.
The “burble” players jumping in and out of Guitar 1 is another. It is entirely reasonable for those players to simply bring in the running lines where they belong and remain tacit elsewhere. With a large ensemble this is especially effective. Orchestral players do this all the time.
Another convention is having the “high lead” players be the ones who go to the harmony part in the A and F# sections. Why shouldn’t a high lead player only jump in the Intro and Midtro, and play it straight the rest of the time, and someone from Guitar 1 cover the harmonies?
The division of 4s and 5s in the Outro? Why shouldn’t a “bass” player take the ascending 5s?
Part of this has evolved, I think, as an artifact of scoring the composition. Economy for one thing. It is a fact that it takes a minimum of 4 players for the piece to be complete, so grouping the bits consistently in 4 parts keeps the score as uncluttered as possible.
But this also has a kind of circular self-fulfilling set of rules. The score is designed to contain all the necessary parts, and it is a reflection of the arrangement that had, at the time the piece was being transcribed, become common practice.
But the result seems to be that over time the arrangement has become more and more fixed, because “that’s what’s in the score.”
So before heading into my work day I played through a hybrid version of Guitar 1, in which I also played the harmony part in A and F#. Take that!

Tuesday March 25 2025

7:00am
My contact-at-a-distance for the morning sitting. Not in this order, and there were several people I couldn’t remember and so kind of lumped together in an “and all the rest” while visualizing the very first circle in the ballroom the morning of the 26th.

Robert Fripp
Roy Capellaro
Randall Chiurazzi
Chris Cousineau
Richard Drews
Chris Ebneth
Andrew Essex
Claude Gillet
Curt Golden
Mac Hart
Bryan Helm
James Hines III
Chris Kirby
Marvin Meng
Jeff Mercer
Peter Racine
Scott Robbins
Frank Simes
Mark Vermette
Barbara June Appelgren
Yoga Teacher
Frank Sheldon (I didn’t know his name yet, but his presence in the audience was remarkable)
Residents in the Kitchen and Dining Hall.

12:15pm
Topsy-turvy day. Up at a good hour. Sitting a meditation on Guitar Craft. Instead of Going straight to practice, elected to join “Tea Time in Europe”, where I ate my breakfast. With the 30 minutes I had after that I did some First Primary work on the NST electric, as my first student was bringing her electric in preparation for a school of rock style performance. So, for most of that hour I worked with her “Fox On The Run” by Sweet in NST, and counting while singing a tricky background vocal. That was new.
After the lesson, I had an hour or so to get in my workout, which I’ve been neglecting. Wrapped that in time for “Dinner in Europe”, so I was entertained while I made and ate my lunch. Now to clean my dishes. And then finally get in the rest of my practice.

Wednesday March 26 2025

12:00 noon
Day of Distraction. Last night my oven basically blew up while I was cooking dinner, so I’m waiting for my landlord to come by to assess the situation. Also, I should just never check my email before I plan to practice in the morning. Found correspondence regarding a dispute with Medicare that requires immediate attention. Associatively I remember another health-related appointment I need to set up, as well as a related issue I need to follow up with. And at that point a task I’ve been putting off adds itself to the list of chores I can’t avoid but really don’t want to be bothered with.
So practice was proforma. Calisthenics first. Playing sucked. Counting forced. Only spotty success with remembering Sensation. Ended with several renditions of Eye of the Needle that I hope no one overheard.
Put the guitar away and began to address the irritating to-do list, still distracted. Slow going. Fortunately the time for Level T arrived and I put all of that away for 15 minutes. Gathered with 4 others in the Practice Room. Kim suggested a limb rotation, moving every 5 minutes. As it happened, today I had literal Level T lined up. My toiled needed cleaning. Off we went. Easily completed. After 15 minutes a quick gathering, and we were all off into our days.
This helped a lot. Afterwards I was able to focus on gathering the materials needed to move the issue with Medicare along, and uploaded them to my insurance rep. Stupidly convoluted system. Made the phone call I’ve been procrastinating about, setting that process in motion. And as I was typing this my landlord called. New oven ordered.
So not a lost day, just a mundane one. Rehearsal tonight. At least that’s something to look forward to.

Thursday March 27 2025

10:00am
Fun to have an evening rehearsal in the calendar now. I love the contemplative energy of our Sunday mornings. Evenings have a different flavor. And in the case of last night it doubled as a couple hours of challenging calisthenics as we revisited some older repertoire that is, shall we say, a little busier than most of our current material. Last night was punctuated by flashes of lighting and claps of thunder. Unusual for Seattle. We also used the Practice Room which meant Eric could join us from Eugene.
Up early enough today to start a load of laundry while I had breakfast, and get it into the dryer in time to allow for an hour of AAD practice before my first student at 9:00. In the Practice Room, on my feet. First Primary related workout, into refreshing myself on the details of a couple of the pieces we touched on last night. Again ended the hour with 3 iterations of Eye of the Needle at performance tempo: Guitar 1, Guitar 1 hybrid with harmony parts (see Monday March 24), and Guitar 3. All of them very reasonable. Not sure they would have passed the audition, but I wouldn’t have been embarrassed either.

Friday March 28 2025

2:45pm
It wasn’t a particularly late one, but after a night of conviviality, oysters, and a couple of adult beverages, I allowed myself a little latitude regarding when I got up this morning. Only a little late, but enough to muck up my usual schedule.
Went into the practice room a little after 9am. Found Brad helping Kim with her Eye of the Needle for the mandolin. Left the audio on while I got my practice space arranged, then turned the sound off. Happened to flip it back on a little later just in time to butt in with a comment about counting, then audio off again until I noticed them exit the room.
As with all of my practice sessions this week, aggressive calisthenics to begin with. 5-note First Primary variation with counting in 5 and then 4. Today I worked vertically, up one string and down the next, through all of the first finger combinations. From there to the Third Relation and Calliope bass lines focused on accuracy in the string skipping and the fullness of each note.
Ended with Eye of the Needle; G1, G1-2 hybrid, G3, and G4. Okay, but not as satisfactory as yesterday. Noticed that when I’m playing the bass part for Intro and Midtro in 13, with only the metronome and no musical context, my timing gets very wonky. Ironically it is worst during the C and F# bars where I’m just playing 3 single sustained notes. But even the descending lines sound a little unsure. Most of the time my tactic for this is to sing the G1 part in my head or even under my breath, and while useful it isn’t reliable. I have the note placement mapped out in my head (and on a little cheat sheet on my desk) that works if I’m counting in 13/8 rather than 13/4. Eliminates the subtle sound of hesitancy. So I practiced that for a while, and then ran G4 through the entire piece several time, making sure there is no startle in the moments when my internal count has to move from a quarter note pulse to an eighth note pulse, or the reverse. Improvement there. I never need this stuff when playing with an ensemble, which is how it ought to be. But I think the next few times the piece gets called in rehearsal or I’m playing along with a recording I may engage it intentionally just to get a better sense of how it slots into the other parts. And so, one more available strategy.
Both of my acoustic guitars really need new strings. Going to do that now.

Saturday March 29 2025

SGC – Monthly Open Circle
IAAD – House Meeting (which I will miss due to the Open Circle commitment)
IAAD – EotN Check-In Meeting (which I should make)

Sunday March 30 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

2025-03-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 10

Monday March 17 2025

4:30pm
Good night’s sleep last night, but my back is still nagging me. Up early enough to get all of my morning business done, including an hour of IAAD practice, before the arrival of my first student of the day.
Kept things simple. Into the Practice Room. I was alone for the entire hour. Metronome on at a reasonable clip. Nothing but my most current First Primary variation. Made it through 18 of the 24 possible iterations, so I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow morning. Throughout counting and sensing, looking to clear out pathways for the Guitarist Inside. Took a couple of minutes at the end to revisit the bass part to another piece from the early repertoire that came up in conversation yesterday.

Tuesday March 18 2025

3:45pm
Up earlyish, which was good as I had just enough time to take care of my morning routine and get in a solid IAAD practice hour before my first student at 9am.
Into the Practice Room at 7:45, remained alone for the hour. Camera on. My back, which is still not 100%, reminded me of the plan to do my practicing standing up. And so I did. Picked up the First Primary work where I left off yesterday. Completing the cycle I began yesterday, I worked for some time on a slight variation, increasing the tempo and adding counting. First in 5/4, which sits very obviously over these patterns, and later in 4/4, which I found remarkably challenging. It eventually clicked, so I moved to counting while sensing the soles of my feet and observing my breathing.
After 40 minutes, I played through Eye of the Needle 4 times at performance tempo, once on each part. Guitars 1,3, and 4, are serviceable. I don’t think Guitar 2 will ever be ready for primetime.
In the final 10 minutes I worked Asturias at escalating tempos to see where my breaking point currently lies. Better than I expected, but since I had just been doing calisthenics for 40 minutes I probably should not have been so surprised. But still not great.
Paused for a moment and departed the Practice Room. My 9am student plays NST, so In a way I was able to ride the energy into the next hour.

Wednesday March 19 2025

2:00pm
I’m looking at two late nights in a row. Tonight to attend a performance, and tomorrow to take part in one. So I allowed myself rise later than usual this morning. While a completely reasonable decision, this always leaves me a little off balance, with the feeling that I’m perpetually running late.
No early AAD practice. Did make it to Tea Time after breakfast, and then Level T. Then used the free time before my noon Zoom lesson for a few chores around the apartment, and then practice.
In the Practice Room and on my feet. First Primary work actually went quite well. The counting aspect also settled in more quickly, and I wondered if perhaps that might be because I was on my feet. I was not animated, but I found I was gently shifting my weight from one foot to the other, which felt very natural and unforced, and aided me in following the time better than foot tapping.
From there to practicing Guitar 3. In particular the transitions in and out of the sections where it is in unison with Guitar 1 parts.
So far so good.
Then I ran Guitar 3 several times, and while the transitions I had been practicing were, indeed, much smoother, overall my performance of the part sounded kind of unmusical. Small accuracy errors. Wobbly time. I know I’m hard on myself when assessing my own playing, but I don’t think it was imaginary. And willing my hands to play better definitely wasn’t working.
Ended with Asturias and some supporting calisthenics, and this did nothing to lighten my mood, and I was getting impatient.
The hour was up, and I was off to my day job.

Thursday March 20 2025

3:30pm
Ah yes, the 3rd Thursday of every month. It’s magical.

Awoke reasonably early, again. Just early enough to take care of the morning business and 45 minuters of AAD practice before my 9am Zoom student. Breakfast would have to wait until afterward. In fact I made and ate it over Tea Time. By my calculation 10am is tea time somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. But what the hey?
Into the Practice Room about 8am. Spent my time alone except for a brief visit from Kim. On my feet the entire time. Except for the final 10 minutes, it was all Asturias-related calisthenics. Pushing tempos. Definitely an improvement from yesterday’s grimness. I’m still running up against some inevitable realities with respect to the limitations of my chops. But still, better.
In the final 10 minutes, with a little trepidation, I ran Guitars 1 and 3 at performance tempo. Unlike yesterday, these were renditions that did not embarrass me. Sat quietly for a few moments and then signed off.

Friday March 21 2025

1:15pm
Last night was a really, really late one. Got home well after 2am. And after a performance I’m too amped to go straight to bed, so I chilled for an hour or so. Made absolutely no attempt to force myself to get up at anything resembling my normal hour. Fortunately, I had a moment of prescience yesterday and decided to do most of my normal Friday “office” tasks ahead of time. So what morning was left after I got up was low key and unpressured. “Buddies” meeting at 11. I mostly listened from my easy chair, at least until there was something that felt necessary enough to say to get me up off my ass.
After that meeting I headed into the Practice Room for 30 minutes of raw calisthenics. Jaime was in the room, camera off. I worked while standing again, with camera on. I will probably come back for a bit more of that later today, as we have our stealth gig tomorrow afternoon and I need my chops to be as sharp as possible. Once again ended with run-throughs of Guitars 1 and 3. Not as satisfying as yesterday, but not awful. I sounded tired, and I was making tired mistakes. It was feeling kind of either/or between The Guitarist Inside and technical accuracy. Not quite enough attention to go around.

Saturday March 22 2025

Busy, busy, busy.

Sunday March 23 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

2025-03-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 9

Monday March 10 2025

Noon
Switching to daylight saving always messes me up. It’s just tough for me to get out of bed in the morning until my circadian rhythm adapts, and that takes a week or so. So up not so early, the morning routine, breakfast. Not enough time before my first student to get any serious work done. Warmed up with some OST electric; a little Mystery Train and, for some reason, Rebel Rouser. Why Duane Eddy on an overcast March morning? No idea.
After my morning student, to project work. But for today and maybe several days, that’s not on the guitar.
Yesterday at SGC rehearsal Greg sneezed, and the words immediately out of my mouth were “Bless you.” A conventional response, and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought except that for the past week I’ve had a perpetually open document in which I’ve been collecting common phrases and idioms that contain religious references, particularly ones that I use at least from time to time. So when I heard my voice reflexively wishing blessings on Greg, the question I’m holding came back to me in a very concrete way. What does a crusty old atheist mean by that?
I spent my “practice time” going through my list and kind of cataloging these phrases. Most are simply colloquialisms in common use in the culture I grew up in. Many are vulgar. Almost all of them are simply ordinary thoughts or exclamations, punched up with a religious reference. “I’m tired” becomes “I’m tired as Hell.” Something surprising comes along, “Holy cow (or crap or shit or moley)!” or “Good Lord!” Something goes wrong, “Damn it!” Am I thinking of the actual constructs of “Hell”, “Holiness”, or “Damnation”, let alone using them in their original meaning?
I can go on and on in this vein, and have a tendency to do so. But the underlying question for me is: What do I mean when I casually speak these terms?
And what do I mean when I earnestly say, “Lord have Mercy”?
This isn’t going to be answered today. And I have work to get to.

Wednesday March 12 2025

10:00am
The switch to Daylight Saving is really kicking my ass this year.
Yesterday I again slept too late to do my AAD practice before my first appointment. And as the day wore on, the best I could do was 45 minutes of generic, slightly Asturias-oriented, calisthenics.
This morning I did a much better job of getting going early. But after doing my daily morning 10-minute yoga and stretching routine, while I was sitting on the side of my bed putting my socks on, I felt an ache creeping into my lower back. Sat still for a few moments to see if it would pass. But it remained. Hobbled into my day.
“Lord have Mercy” is a whole lot less theoretical today.
Did get my morning guitar practice in. But it was wobbly and unfocused and unsatisfying in general. Tylenol. An AT lie-down. So far nothing is helping. It’s going to be a long day.

Thursday March 13 2025

10:05am
A little more human today. My back thing has improved but it's not gone. At least I can pay attention to other things now. In spite of Daylight Saving I was up early enough to get my morning routine as well as an hour of AAD practice in before my 9am zoom student.
Remembered to go into the Practice Room this morning. I was alone. Right hand warm-up on open strings, testing the waters. After such a miserable practice yesterday, looking to see if my lower back would permit me to actually pay attention. As I write this, I’m wondering why I don’t practice while standing more often. Most of the time when performing I am standing, so wouldn’t practicing that way make sense. Plus, whatever this spasm action in my back is all about, it’s actually happier when I’m moving than when I’m sitting (or lying in my bed – the first 5 minutes or so after I got up this morning were pretty exciting). I may give this a shot tomorrow morning.
Thankfully this morning was a vast improvement over yesterday. I was able to remain engaged and not just going through the motions. Stayed with pretty basic stuff. Moved from open strings to Guitar 1, playing through it several times. Then to more of a left hand focus. Since I’m going to be doing a Burbles Redux guided practice on Saturday morning, I went back to the 5-note version of the First Primary, moving through a couple of the possible variations. Once settled in, added counting in 4/4 to this. From there to a short refresher of the sequence I’m using in the presentation, practicing various fragments while counting in 4/4. Ended the hour with several passes of Guitar 3.
Departed the Practice Room. I had completely forgotten that I was in it in the first place. Had a half hour to get out of my chair and stretch, make a cup of coffee, get the OST guitar tuned up, and put some thought into what I’d be doing with my 9am student. Interestingly, as we were checking in on the stuff he’s been practicing he asked a couple of technical questions that took us down a very GC path, and the net result was that the lesson had something of a quality of continuation from my personal practice.

Friday March 14 2025

9:30am
I have a project for the weekend that is more or less Level T on steroids, so I let myself arise at my leisure. Which is to say, about 6:45am. The project begins right after the IAAD team meeting this morning, so a short report.
The usual morning routine. But instead of diving into guitar practice I decided to cook and then enjoy a real breakfast. After clean up I jumped into the practice room. Work this morning was purely about the EotN sectional meeting I’m leading tomorrow. 5-note first primary, while counting in 4. After about 5 minutes I remembered my thought yesterday about practicing while standing. My back has almost fully recovered so I wasn’t getting constant reminders. Went for it, and spent the rest of the session on my feet. After working through a number of variations on the primary, while counting, and breathing, I moved to the succession of Burble exercises I’ll be presenting tomorrow. For this I turned on a loop I created of the A minor section, which I plan to use instead of the metronome tomorrow. About this time Kim joined me in the room. Went through the sequence, though not spending as much time on each iteration as I will in the session tomorrow. 1 beat, 2 beat, 3 beat, and 4 beat sequences, beginning on each of the 5 notes of the pattern. 1 bar patterns, separated by a bar of rest. 4 and 8 bar patterns.
Waved to Kim as she departed. Wrapped up my work and left the room. Before completing I began a short personal zoom meeting, where I recorded myself along with the loop, just to check the audio balance on the playback.
Ironically, all of this felt good enough that I could have gone on for much longer. Oh well.

Saturday March 15 2025

5:00pm
Short and sweet:

Morning:

An hour of Warmup
Lead Eye of the Needle sectional
An hour of prep for Part 2 of a massive Level T project
House meeting

Afternoon:

5 hours Completion of Part 2 of a massive Level T project

Sunday March 16 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

AND..... CONTINUE.

2025-03-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 8

Monday March 3 2025

8:30am
A crowded calendar today. Set my clock to get up early, and awoke just before the alarm. Slightly modified morning routine, and to the guitar.
No solid agenda as I sat down, but while I was going into the Practice Room I heard my voice just under my breath, “back on the horse.”
The two things I have on my plate are 1) a continued and deeper dive into The Guitarist Inside. Something about this has been rolling through my mind all weekend, which I need to write about when I’m not so pressed for time. And 2) lots of continued calisthenic work, particularly for the right hand, as there are some gigs coming up.
Began with 20 minutes of right-hand warmup, moving toward and ultimately landing on the main D minor and A minor theme of Asturias. This is the piece we’ll be performing in 3 weeks. It is really tough for me to play these kinds of parts without a lot of warmup, and in this performance there will be absolutely no warmup. Hands this morning felt pretty good, but performance tempo is a problem.
Throughout the calisthenics I worked with the Circulation of Sensation. Let go of synchronizing it with the breath as that often causes me to fall into an forced and artificial respiration rate. During the morning sitting I can work with this more successfully, but as soon as there’s a guitar and a metronome it gets to be too much.
Moving to Eye of the Needle, I worked with Guitar 3 exclusively. I’ll be leading a “burble”-focused guided practice on Saturday and I need to be sharp. Began with the running 5-note line in A, simply as a calisthenic, also getting my left hand a little involved.
Played through the part several times, in several ways. For this work I came back to the Rotation of Limbs as prescribed for this piece. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it flows a bit more naturally for me. Besides playing the part as it is presented in the score – basically Guitar 1, moving to the running 5s at the right time, and then back to Guitar 1 – I did several performances of the piece simply sitting in silence, metronome on, hearing the piece in my head, attending to the inner work, only actually playing the burble parts. It’s an interesting and revealing exercise. I am just as likely to lose track of the Rotation when sitting in silence hearing the piece in my head as I am when my fingers are wiggling, for one thing.
For the final 20 minutes I moved to some purely practical work with the part. Contemplating how best to present this material on Saturday. Practicing the various approaches for learning to count the part that we could work with, and practicing those to make sure I feel comfortable and competent demonstrating what is going on inside for me when incorporating the count in a purposeful way.
Sat in Silence for the final 2 minutes. Looked up at the screen and waved to no one. Departed the room and headed into my day, a (big surprise) overcast and drizzly Seattle Monday.

Tuesday March 4 2025

11:00am
Up even a little earlier than usual, before the alarm. Escaping from some very unsettling dream imagery. Morning routine and to the guitar.
Began alone in the Practice Room, but was later joined by Peter and Kim. They had their cameras on. Mine was off.
Mostly pure calisthenics this morning, heavily focused on 5-not patterns. Still thinking ahead to Saturday’s guided practice on the burbles . Right hand work, ala the Second Primary, beginning traditionally and then gradually morphing into the 3+2 pattern of the EotN part; 3 on the D string, 2 on the A. Struggling to even remember to maintain some kind of contact with the Circulation of Sensation. The smallest distraction and it’s gone. Added counting, first in 5 but later in 4 since that’s what the piece requires. It is much more difficult for me to maintain the 4 count when the I’m hearing are just generic open strings that just outline the rhythm rather than the actual melody. Eventually moved to playing the actual burble part, but just on open strings, which was tough, but interesting.
To get my left hand moving, went to the First Primary, but with 5-note combinations, to continue the counting work.
For the final quarter hour came back to necessary prep work for Asturias. Worked on the basic 6/4 form, focused on the A minor pattern on the middle 4 strings. For some reason even when I’m cooking on the D minor, moving to the A minor is where I falter. It’s the same pattern just one string over, and yet I find it difficult. At nearly the last minute it dawned on me I won’t be performing this sitting down, and in fact we rarely do. So I got on my feet and played through the piece several times (just the basic form, no twinkles) and progressively quicker tempos. I do play it better when standing, but it sure ain’t there yet.

Wednesday March 5 2025

3:00pm

My schedule this week is kind of scattershot complicated this week. I’ve been successful at getting my practice in early, but I end up having to wait until later in the day to write my summary, and so it is not quite as fresh in my mind.

Up quite early, alarm necessary today. Had to shake off some peculiar dream remnants again.

Into the Practice Room, camera on, all alone for the entire hour. I focused on counting, while circulating Sensation, while playing guitar. I was a little surprised yesterday by the amount of difficulty I had counting while playing the picking pattern for the burbles on open strings. So I began there. Glacially slow tempo. In some ways this is harder than playing fast, in that there is no “momentum”. It is more linear, and less about the character and quality of the rhythmic feel. But I could actually be somewhat present within the sequence and see where the pulse lined up with the pattern. Sort of a musically practical application of the Division of Attention Exercise. I put this same kind of work into the piece nearly 40 years ago, but it hasn’t been much necessary since then. Stayed with this slower tempo for longer than I had planned, before clicking back up to performance tempo. But it paid off. I still found myself losing it in baffling ways from time to time, but in general it was there except when I wasn’t.

Next, the 5-note variation of the First Primary I found yesterday, adding the open string to the beginning of each of the finger combinations. Circulating Sensation as much as I was able, when I remembered. Again let go of synching the circulation with the breath, as it was one iteration too far for me to really attempt. Counting here was easier. In contrast to the open strings these patterns have, if not much of a “melody”, at least a recognizable sequence of tonal relationships. Groups of five notes played as a unit, and a recognizable sequence of relationships with the pulse.

I find I’m enjoying that one.

I ended the morning with a number of run-throughs of Guitar 3, again coming back to the limb rotation. Ultimately worked the tempo up through the high end of performance tempo, and dipping my toe into “that’s not musical anymore.”

Time for a little breakfast before my first student arrived. Then a few hours of work outside the office, getting something together that Hernan needs for the League box set project. Just enough time to type and post this before going back to work.

Thursday March 6 2025

3:00pm
Overslept. Very unusual for me. Don’t remember an alarm, or maybe I didn’t set it. Consequently I didn’t have enough time to practice before my work day began. At noon I had a break and joined Tea Time while I had a little lunch. At 1 o’clock I was at my workstation and preparing to practice.
Into the Practice Room, camera on. Alone for the first 15 minutes, before Peter popped in for half an hour.
Purely practical work today, preparing for Saturday morning. Nothing but burbles with the metronome. I had an idea yesterday about a way I could present the material at that meeting, keeping in mind that it is billed as “guided practice” as opposed to a class or lesson. Thought I ought to do some viability testing, and I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow just in case it turned out to be a bright idea. Glad I did. The concept wasn’t flawed, but the specific exercise I had envisioned really wasn’t practical and it needed to be tweaked. Several of the patterns would have required finger pivots that aren’t actually in the piece. Besides being an unnecessary technical challenge, it would have introduced an element that would later need to be forgotten. Experimented with a couple of options until I found a sequence that will be useful. So for the rest of the hour I ran through it, practicing each element for five minutes or so to see how it might go.
At the end of the hour exited the Practice Room.
Short break and then I came back to deal with some Zoom-related technical matters. Began a new meeting, hit record, and played short snippets along with both my metronome and my looper at various volume levels to get a good balance for the call. Then ended the meeting and watched the video, making some crib notes for Saturday morning about how to set the gear up. Later today I’ll probably scribble out a general outline of what I want to work through on Saturday. I can’t be terribly detailed with this since I have no idea what the experience level mix will be for the group, but I do want to internalize the general arc. I’ll probably use my daily practice hour tomorrow for a basic run-through, so that I don’t have to totally make it up as I go the next morning.

Friday March 7 2025

3:15pm

Up and at it at an early but civilized hour.

Coffeed up and headed to the guitar. Alone in the Practice Room, camera on. Basically, ran through the material for tomorrow morning’s burbles Guided Practice in one possible scenario of real-time, limiting myself to 45 minutes, and even that may be generous. Made some mental notes about things that took longer or went more swiftly than I imagined. How simply we begin or how deep we go will depend on who turns up. No matter what, it will be as much about exploring and practicing counting as the mechanical challenges of the part. Five notes. Once you’ve figured out that every other repetition begins with an up-stroke, and you’ve spent a little time with the metronome getting it reliable and accurate, mechanical challenge over. Playing it well, and in time, and making the changes reliably and on time and without an audible startle, a little more difficult.

The final 15 minutes were several run-throughs of the full Guitar 3 part, with limb rotation. Left the room, set down the guitar, and launched into a busy day.

Saturday March 8 2025

10:45am
Again up at a reasonable early hour. Morning stuff. Coffee. Set up my gear for the guided practice session at 9am. Into the Practice Room at 8:15 to warm up. Ran into Peter there. Got my right hand going on open strings. From there to the 5-note First Primary, getting my left hand involved. This also allowed me to settle into counting in 4 while playing 5-note patterns, keeping my breathing relaxed. Kind of important any time, but in the guided practice this morning I’m going to be talking, counting, and playing, pretty much nonstop for 45 minutes. So, extra important. Ran through a very short version of the sequence I’ll be presenting. Said goodbye to Peter and then departed the Practice Room.
Six of us in the Guitar 3 Breakout room. Brought in the metronome at 60bpm. Off we went. I think it went well. Thanks to the prep work I managed the time pretty well; we didn’t get quite as far as I had hoped, but we ended at a very logical completion point, so I wasn’t left with the feeling of being rushed or interrupted.
Hope it was useful.
Preparing for this all week has definitely allowed me to go a little deeper into this part of the piece. It seems to me that it also gave me the structure and focus I needed to work my way through the middle. Happy about that. For the next week though, I need to get serious about wrestling with an aspect of the Guitarist Inside that I’ve been avoiding. In preparation for that I’ve had a document open all week. In it I’ve been listing all of the common phrases I can think of - phrases that I have used, myself - that are derived from religious concepts, and asking myself what I mean by them. So I’ll begin by organizing them into categories and take it from there.

Sunday March 9 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

ONWARD------->

2025-02-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 7

Monday February 24 2025

5:30pm

“Assume a Virtue, if you have it not.” – William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Fake it ‘til you make it.” – Startup company founders with big ambitions, everywhere

‘Ol Bill was the more eloquent.
Having completed my review of the Seven Themes at the end of last week, I allowed myself to ponder the next phase at my leisure over the weekend. To be honest, I already knew what it was, because I knew I had been avoiding it. So there is an element of resignation in this step. So far I have been frequently touching on The Guitarist Inside, but only fleetingly. And as soon as some guitar challenge gets my attention it gets left behind. I know how to tackle guitar challenges. The challenges of The Guitarist Inside, not so much. Plus, tackling guitar challenges is fun.
I recognize that there are a couple of things holding me back.
The first has to do with the nature of the task itself.
The Hands. I get this one. The state of my guitar playing is what it is. I’m pretty clear about where my technical strengths and limitations lie. And I have had a lot of practice in addressing them. So the part of the practice of The Guitarist Inside that involves Sensation and bringing a part of our attention to this or that is the part I have the most experience with. I have no illusions about how easily distracted I am, especially when the guitar part I’m playing requires a lot of attention. But when I’m successful I recognize and know it.
If the task is simple – bringing part of my attention to the soles of my feet while I play through a piece of music, for example – I have a pretty reasonable shot at success.
The Head. If the task involves moving the attentions through a particular sequence of limbs or points, in a way that moves with the music – the Rotation of Limbs as it is applied formally to Eye of the Needle, for instance – I can find success. I can apply the 60-point Exercise to a piece of music I’m playing, as long as I predetermine how often I will move; a certain number of bars for each point, say. With a little practice. The movement of attention in combination with the musical element of time always has at least a chance before I doze off.
Where I really fall short is in applying these organized patterns improvisationally. “Hey, let’s circulate, and move through the rotation of limbs each time my note comes around.” I can sort of do it, but my note selection and playing go to hell.
The Heart. So, when we add this element, I’m toast. All those years ago when I was first formally introduced to work with Sensation, it took time and practice for me to learn to recognize the difference between “bring a part of your attention to the sensation in your right hand,” and, “think about your right hand.” In the same way, to this day when I am asked to “hold the feeling of Wish,” I am pretty sure I’m just thinking about Wish, or about some idea I have about what something called Wish might be. Or worse yet, what some word, Wish, might even mean.
Certain feelings I have at least a grip on. Gratitude is one I can access pretty well. But most of the time what I’m doing is substituting some kind of trite affirmation for the actual feeling of the Feeling.
And pretty much whatever impression of feeling a Feeling I employ when engaged in The Guitarist Inside, I very quickly lose any connection to Sensation, and/or my playing goes off the rails.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Up and out of bed intentionally early. Morning routine, coffee, to the guitar.
While I really am happy with the progress in my playing since the project began, I’m determined that for this next phase (which may last to the end of the project) will be centered on The Guitarist Inside. Much as I’d rather just practice pieces.
On with the metronome, and 45 minutes of calisthenics. Roughly based on material from the themes, but keeping them simple and achievable enough that I can have at least a little free attention for something else. To these I brought some of the options for work with Sensation. A little limb rotation. A little 60-points. But largely worked with the Circle of Sensation. It’s an interesting one. Deceptively difficult, since it is about Sensation in Motion rather than focusing on a series of points. It’s movement, sometime connected the breathing, but not always. And not metronomically tied to the tempo of the music the music I’m playing. Tough for me. But at least it’s something that I can practice.
For the final 15 minutes I brought it back to Eye of the Needle, replacing the Limb Rotation with the Circle of Sensation as I played through each of the parts. Letting go of the rotation was surprisingly difficult since it has been woven into my playing of the piece for so long.
This strikes me as a good model for my practice for the next little while.

Tuesday February 25 2025

11:00am
Settling into this “early to rise” groove. Didn’t need to rely on my clock. Up for the morning routine. Still darkish out, but noticeably more predawn light than even a week ago. Lots of wind last night and this morning. As I was sitting it occasionally sounded like a freight train going by my window.
To the guitar. More or less a repeat of yesterday. 45 minutes of solid calisthenic work, but nothing terribly complex. In addition to the cross-picking exercises that have been part of my daily routine lately, I put in some solid time with both the first and second primaries. The idea is to keep the guitaring simple enough that I can be consistent about keeping the focus on practicing elements of The Guitarist Inside, preferably without my guitar playing going totally to hell.
The 60-point exercise along with the second primary was pretty functional, except that even on my best day there are sections where I tend to doze off or lose track. I’m also not completely clear about whether or not locking the progression of the 60 points to a metronomic tempo is the way to go. It’s handy, because it kind of becomes a musical exercise and I know how to do musical exercises. But when practiced as part of the morning sitting, the timing is less strict. “Two or three breaths” was the instruction I was given for how long to pause on each point, so there is a more organic “rhythm” to movement of attention. It would be a very interesting kind of division of attention to be playing music that needs to be in time while doing this inner work in an non-directly-related mode of time, simultaneously. I wonder if it’s even possible.
Also worked with the Circulation of Sensation. This one is also associated with the breathing cadence rather than a hard count. But it is a continuous movement rather than hitting a sequence of marks, so that makes it a little less daunting.
Not that I’m even vaguely successful at any of it, other than in small flashes.
At one point I simply stopped playing guitar and worked on this movement through the body on its own, and then adding the guitar back in to an exercise that was already in motion. Kind of reversing the way I usually approach it. This feels promising.
I have a document in which I’ve collected all of the references to The Guitarist Inside from Robert’s book. It also includes something I wrote down right after coming out of a meeting with him in Tepoztlán in 2015. It is a list of nine particular exercises that can be used as part of this practice, and I go back to it often. The list is not strictly sequential, but it does include a short series of practices that are additive; do this, now to that add this, and so on.
I took a moment to pull up the document and refresh my memory, because I recalled that it began with the Circulation of Sensation and then added holding wish in the breast, I wanted to double-check. The document is in my words, not Robert’s, as I was recapitulating a discussion for some future purpose. Maybe this.
The question of what is Wish, and how do I tell the difference between Wish and merely the idea of Wish?
As with yesterday I completed the hour by playing Eye of the Needle through 4 times; G1, G3, G2, G4.
Practicing the Circulation of Sensation with each, it is still strange to dislodge this piece, albeit temporarily, from the Limb Rotation. During the second time through – playing Guitar 3, aka “the burbles” – specifically in the long F# section, as I struggled to have a little continuity with the movement of sensation while executing the part as well as I am able, I had some small sense of “something” in the center of my chest. It was fleeting, but not imaginary. Pretty sure I actually chased it away by thinking about it, which is a pretty good way to remove myself from the experience. Attempts to find it again didn’t yield much, and I heard myself writing off what I thought might be the reappearance of the “something” as wishful thinking.
Pausing a moment to complete my practice, the term “wishful thinking” came back to me. I kind chuckled at the thought that the path to Wish might begin by wishing for a wish.
Had time for a quick breakfast before the arrival of my 9am student.

Wednesday February 26 2025

10:30am
Resistance day, evidently. The petulant child is in ascendance.
No morning students, so I let myself sleep in just a little. That was the first sign, I suppose. Still, kind of nice to not get out of bed in total darkness.
Picking up a little from yesterday, during the Exercise of Contact at a Distance at the end of my sitting I elected to practice the Circulation of Sensation. Perhaps practicing the combination of these two without the guitar might set something in motion that I could carry into guitar practice. As I got up from my chair to head for the kitchen I thought to myself that the “good wishes” I was sending out to the IAAD team kind of reeked of a Hallmark greeting card. The second sign.
While making coffee I had to admit to myself that I was experiencing a minor state of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get up in the morning, or that I didn’t want to honor my commitment to the sitting, or that I didn’t want to practice guitar, although my enthusiasm was definitely minimal. It was more along the lines of, “Why the hell are you doing this? You’re a 72-year-old man with almost no responsibilities. You could do whatever you feel like, and no one would know the difference.”
To the guitar anyway.
Logged into the Practice Room, which I realized I had forgotten to do yesterday. Patrick was there. Neither of us had our cameras on, we didn’t speak or message. Just nice to know he was there.
Sat quietly for a couple of moments to reconnect with the Circulation of Sensation. Much like yesterday, mostly very straightforward calisthenics today. 15 minutes of Second Primary-ish work. About that time Patrick departed. 15 minutes of the First Primary. All the while moving through the circulation, coordinated with the cadence of my breath. Once again noticed the challenge of the guitar playing moving in time with the metronome while my attention is moving at an utterly unrelated and far more organic tempo. My attention wanders. I haul it back. It wanders again. Seems like that never ends. Now I’m getting positively grumpy.
Moved into 15 minutes of arpeggio work, which increases the complexity, which demands a little more attention, which means my attention for the inner work is stretched even thinner. And I have to admit that I’m not doing a very good job of either task. The “Why are you doing this?” voice is back.
As with yesterday, I closed the hour by playing through Eye of the Needle 4 times, once on each part. Decided to go with the limb rotation for this. Today’s order was G4-G1-G2-G3.
During the second run-through, the basic lead, something remarkable happened. My zoom screen is basically black, with a little color picture of me in the center and a little bit of color across the top and bottom where the controls are. And I’m not looking at the screen anyway, other than occasionally turning my head to check to see if anyone has entered the room. My eyes are closed, or nearly so, when there is suddenly a very bright flash of white. It is genuinely startling. I manage to continue playing the piece, but I look at the screen and see that zoom is gone, and there is a message saying that the event ended after 40 minutes. This makes no sense. For one thing, there is no time limit on these. And for another, it has been longer than 40 minutes since I logged in. The message disappears.
At this point I my left hand leaps up to the second D Minor of the piece, heading into the final stretch, and I realize with more than a little alarm that I have absolutely no memory of playing through the previous 16 bars, maybe more.
Completed it, continued on to the final 2 run-throughs, all in a bit of a state.

Thursday February 27 2025

10:20am
Actually forgot to set my alarm before I went to bed last night. Still awoke promptly at 6am, which has been my target of late. With a 9am Zoom lesson in the calendar this gave me just enough time to take care of my morning routine, get in my hour of practice, and have a little breakfast, before getting down to my professional commitments for the day.
Signed into the Practice Room, where I was alone. Decided to turn my camera on, if only to see how that experience compared to my usual camera-off mode. It’s a little disconcerting, to be honest. I don’t stare at my computer when I’m practicing, but the occasional glance in that direction I did find a little startling.
The focus for today was to be pretty straight skills work. I had worked with the Circulation of Sensation while doing the at-a-distance portion of my sitting. And here again before launching into practice I paused for a couple of minutes, with the aim of engaging with sensation, and the hope that I could carry at least the flavor of that with me into my practice.
I have a possible gig in a few weeks that will likely involve performing Asturias, and as it is a piece that utilizes the same cross-picking skills as I’ve been working with for the IAAD it made sense to use it as material for today’s practice. Generic Second Primary warm-up for a couple of minutes at a gentle pace, moving into the specific string combination required for the D minor 5/4 section, still on open strings.
With that established, I moved into 45 minutes of practice on that section, melody and picking pattern, but minus the planted pinky note – not something I wanted to hold for an exercise in endurance. Every 5 minutes I cranked the tempo up a notch. Even though I have a metronome app that can be set to any tempo I choose, for some reason I still go to the standard tempo notches from a traditional metronome. I don’t know why.
At the 30-minute point, Patrick entered the room, camera off. Interesting, the feeling that I might be being watched. Toyed with the idea of turning my camera off, but decided to ride it out.
With about 10 minutes to go in my hour, as I was wrapping up the Asturias work at what for me was a pretty brisk tempo, Kim entered the room as well. She had her camera on. She was slightly obscured by the icon for my metronome app. But I could mostly see her and her mandolin, and I let things stand.
Once again, ended the hour with Eye of the Needle, four times. Today was G4-G1-G2-G3. With all of that fast and relentless right hand warm-up, kind of funny to suddenly be playing a part with long notes played with the thumb, short phrases, and lots of rests. My warm-up had moved outside of EotN performance tempo, so playing the lead parts had a nice easy feel, like slowing down and relaxing into the parts. I still can’t play Guitar 2 for beans.
Signed off, and moved into my day.

Friday February 28 2025

9:30am
Office day at Golden Music Enterprises. So no students.
Up early, but not as early as usual. Morning routine. Made a cup of coffee and headed to the guitar.
Fired up the Practice Room, camera on. Took a few moments to get the Circulation of Sensation in motion. Peter entered the room, also with camera on. The first 30 minutes or so was entirely about chops. Still in Asturias mode, today I focused on the 3-string “twinkle” cross-picking form. Open strings at first, and later the actual tone clusters. Accelerating the tempo at intervals. Not sure what performance tempo is going to be, but I’m not there yet. And working in the grey area just above my tempo comfort zone is profoundly unsatisfying. Necessary, but no fun.
At one of the pauses to adjust the metronome I grabbed a sip of my coffee. It was nearly cold. It occurred to me that this happens every day. Maybe not the best plan to bring a cup of coffee into the practice hour.
For the past couple of days I’ve been noticing that playing the Eye of the Needle bass part out of context is really tough. The Intro especially, but really the whole thing. So I keep making mental notes to practice counting it. And today I remembered I had made mental notes. So I put on the metronome and worked for a while with counting. Many years ago I made a project out of being able to play the bass Intro while counting in 13/4. It’s tough. The other parts are all moto perpetuos, so counting with the slow quarter note pulse is easy for me. But the timing of the bass line against that pulse is really tough, and even when I was well practiced and could do it, I really didn’t see the value in it, musically. However, when counting it as 13/8, while maintaining the quarter note pulse in the body, makes all kinds of sense to me. I totally feel the on-off-on-off-off-off-on-off-on rhythm, and the line suddenly makes musical sense. So this is what I’ve adopted, even when playing the leads.
So I spent the next segment of my practice hour playing and counting the bass Intro and Midtro parts with the metronome while counting. Felt it begin to settle in.
About this time Peter departed, and almost immediately Patrick checked in, camera off.
And as has been my practice this week, ended the hour with a run through of each of the four parts of Eye of the Needle. G4-G1-G2-G3, all while counting out loud. It turns out the choice to count the 13s as 13/8 adds the extra challenge of changing the count cadence in and out of quarters and eighths. Hadn’t anticipated that one. By the time I was going through the 4th rendition that challenge had been remedied, but it surprised me a little.
Before wrapping up the practice, I played through the bass part one more time, with the count. One of the things I noticed about my first time through was that I was neglecting the precision of the release of the bass notes, and that’s kind of important. It’s not something that happens in performance, but evidently adding the audible count was just enough of an attention drain that not only had I been inaccurate the first time, but I didn’t realize that I was neglecting this detail until after I played the part and was reflecting on how it had gone.
So, one more time through the bass part. A few moments of stillness. A wave to Patrick’s avatar, out of the room and into my day.

10:54am
Happened to glance at the clock and saw “10:54”. Noting that 24 years ago at this very moment the earth under Seattle moved alarmingly, and simultaneously BootlegTV came to an end.

Saturday March 1 2025

Mental health day. More like mental health 36 hours, since I declared it last evening.
No IAAD music. Instead figured out a really cool Pops Staples groove last night. Then “Boom!”, the documentary about the Sonics. Today, a fantastic podcast about Alex Chilton, which naturally resulted in Big Star ringing through the apartment the rest of the day.

Hadn’t planned on attending the House Meeting, but that felt like a bridge too far. Very glad I went.

Sunday March 2 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

ONWARD TO WEEK 8, AND OUT OF THE MIDDLE

2025-02-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 6

Monday February 17 2025

2:15pm

The 20th anniversary of “Performance Zero” of Tuning the Air – the trial run exploring the viability of building a show based on guitarists sitting in a circle with the audience in the middle (spoiler alert: It was, and seven years later we brought down the curtain on the final performance) – and I find myself a little consumed with one of the nuttiest ideas I’ve ever had for a circulated arrangement of a classical work. There is also a Plan B should it prove unworkable, but I really want Plan A to work. Total madness.

But that’s not part of this project in any relevant way, other than the fact that any time I begin working on it I am in danger of going down the rabbit hole for hours, which makes ensuring I stay up on my IAAD commitments a bit more of a struggle.

Up reasonably early. Morning routine and directly to the guitar. Gave the Practice Room a shot, and found one other person already there, and within the hour two more joined in. Still experimenting with camera-on vs off. Not sure. I notice that with the camera on I am a little more aware of the performative aspects and find that distracting, and at the moment that isn’t feeling useful. But it also may just be something I need to work through and past. We’ll see.

Began with the collection of IAAD-material-based cross-picking calisthenic warmups. Good stuff and it is clearly showing improvement, if glacially slow.

From there, back to Calliope. This was not practice, but research. Turned off the camera, opened the score, and went through it bar by bar taking note of precisely where the mirrors in the lead appear. It is all there, back in some dusty corner of my memory, but pulling it up at will with precision not so much. Ran the WMMR performance at 85% tempo, and when listening I pretty much always hear these details coming and know where to expect them. So I think for the purposes of this inquiry I’m good. Back to the guitar, I played the bass part along at 85%, 95%, and 100% tempos. Mostly there on the actual bass parts. By the time I was up to 100%, though, the high bits up in the lead range were pretty ugly. Considering the fact that whenever I hear this piece played these days it’s even faster than that, it is pretty clear that I’m not going to be in a performance team for Calliope any time soon. If ever.

Closed the book, turned the camera back on, and back to calisthenics for the remainder of the hour.

Breakfast, first student of the day, and then a doctor’s appointment. Consequently writing up my notes about 5 hours after the fact. Not ideal, but whatcha gonna do?

Tomorrow on to Askesis.

Tuesday February 18 2025

3:30pm
As of today, the guy on the left is officially retired. And the lovely sunburst 1968 ES-335 he is cradling is his wife’s “happy retirement” gift to him. A bunch of his very jealous guitar playing friends wanted to see it, and more importantly hear it, and much more importantly, play it, so I hosted a small gathering at my place last night for that purpose. There was pizza. There were vintage amplifiers turned up real loud. And there was tequila.
All of which is to say the today began a bit later and a bit more slowly than usual.
Consequently, my IAAD work for the day was segmented. After the morning routine I only had about an hour before the arrival of my first student. Made a cup of coffee, tuned my guitar, pulled up the pdf of Askesis that I got my hands on yesterday, and logged into the Practice Room.
I was alone in the practice room, but elected to keep my camera off for today. Did a little generic warmup and then went to work on the Askesis parts. This is a fascinating one. For this half-hour session I worked my way through both parts on the score, simply remembering how they go. Along with Third Relation and Calliope, this is part of a trio of GC Themes in which the distinction between “lead” and “bass” parts is academic at most. Both parts are all over the place. I also seem to have known both parts equally well, though in performance I was almost always on Team Bass. For every section and every figure, regardless of which part, the relearning curve was short. I’d slowly work my way through the pattern, and on the third or fourth clumsy and awkward repetition my hands would suddenly take over. So it’s all in there somewhere. This score has quite a lot of picking indications, a couple of which surprised me a little. But in thirty minutes I had everything back in accessible memory. Even found one or two mistakes in the score. And there is one bar that is either wrong in the score or I used to play it incorrectly. I need to consult with the composer to determine whether the score or my is wrong. We didn’t work from scores when this material was emerging. Basically we used one another as living breathing loopers until the composer was satisfied.
The most surprising thing I encountered during the reacquaintance session was the time signature changes. I am willing to bet that if I ever knew what the time signature of a given passage was, it was fleeting anecdotal information that I tossed aside once I could play the part.
Back to the Zoom screen, where I found someone had joined me. Extra glad I left my camera off. Signed off, changed to a Telecaster in the old tuning, fired Zoom back up, and headed to suburban Chicago.
After the lesson, a quick and late breakfast, and on to Askesis part two.
In the earlier session I really had not done a whole lot of actual guitar playing, so for this half hour I used two passages from the lead part that have always tripped me up, and used them as practical material for what was basically 30 minutes of calisthenics.
Afterward, checked my phone and saw a message from Igor that he was out and about with Fernando, suggesting we get together to grab a coffee in the neighborhood. Called him, made a plan, and headed out the door. Always a joy to see Fernie.
Have gotten zero real exercise in the past two days, and this is something that makes my doctor cranky, so now heading out for a long walk while there is still daylight.

Wednesday February 19 2025

3:00pm
Up early enough to get my hour in first thing this morning. Shared the Practice Room with Patrick Smith. Camera off.
A short warmup with material from Invocation, Third Relation, and Calliope, at a medium tempo.
After double-checking and confirming the accuracy of the score for Askesis, I chose several sections, primarily from the “lead”, that have always been problematic for me, and used them as material for calisthenic practice. Two birds, one stone. Amped up the tempo as I settled in. I will still never be a guitar speed demon, but I am getting stronger and more reliable at the faster tempos that I can manage.
For the final quarter of hour it was back to Eye of the Needle. Through each of the 4 parts at performance tempo. While Guitar 2 is still not ready for prime time, it is beginning to sound more musical; less tense and fraught. Back through Guitar 1 and Guitar 3 again at a pushed tempo.
Tomorrow on to The Moving Force for a couple of days, and that will wrap up the recapitulation of the original Themes.

Thursday February 20 2025

11:20am
Allowed myself to sleep in just a little this morning, as I have a 10pm gig tonight. That meant that I didn’t have time for IAAD practice before my first student at 9am.
After signing off of that lesson, I picked up the Guitar Craft guitar and began. For the first time since this project began I really really wasn’t in the mood. My warmup was sloppy and didn’t really improve much. Resistance was very high.
But I stayed with it, as one does.
Opened the book to The Moving Force. This is a piece that I never, even on my very best day, played at tempo. And that certainly isn’t going to change right now. But, as with all of this material, I did learn it and was able to play it through, more or less as an etude.
So the first thing I did was to read through it slowly section by section, which really means bar by bar, playing the cross-picking pattern on open strings. This is a little odd, as you never really get a feel for the flow this way. The first thing I noticed was that I don’t really remember it changing time signatures at almost every bar. Or rather, I don’t remember learning it in terms of counting at all. I knew it had lots of tricky little twists and turns, but I always experienced them as melodic twists and turns rather than meter.
Then I read through it again, still bar by bar, slowly, actually playing the part. Clearly at one time in my life I put a great deal of work into this, because this came back more or less immediately. That is, my fingers knew what to do, albeit only rudimentally. And at that point all reference to “the count” went completely out of the picture.
Then I moved to the bass part, which is very sparse and only appears briefly in specific phrases to add color and a bit of harmonic depth. To look at it on the page, it made no sense to me. So I pulled up Show Of Hands, and just played along. Bang. All right there. I did notice one place where I hear a couple of the bass notes an octave lower than they appear on the score. This is the only “real” recording of the piece. It appears on Get Crafty, but that recording is a bit raw. I also have a ton of bootlegs of shows where we played it. So I just played along with each of them. And the low octave is audible in all of them. It’s possible that just one player is taking it down, much as the bass for the midtro of Eye of the Needle is often doubled at the low octave – it’s not really part of the composition, but rather one of the arrangement variations that are available.
What strikes me most about the bass part for this piece is that it takes the EotN approach to another level. In order to play it you really must KNOW how the lead goes. The bass is not holding the pulse. It is not driving the piece (compare it with Calliope or Third Relation). To say it is “decorative” would far understate its importance, but it is something like that. Whether someone working to learn the bass part learns the lead just by hearing it a million times or actually takes the time to learn to play it, that level of understanding is mandatory. It honestly can’t be counted. An isolated bar of 13/8 at 240bpm? Followed by a bar of 5/4, a bar of 2/4, a bar of 9/8, a bar of 3/4, and finally a bar of 4/4. Not really in the cards, at least not for me. But you still need to know where the downbeat of those bars are in the melody. And every bit as important, you need to know where the end of those bars is, because a long note that hangs on through a harmonic shift is enough to kill the piece – something that is also true of Eye of the Needle.
Not sure how much more work I’m going to put into this piece, but I anticipate cycling through all of the themes for another week, focusing on the guitar practice/calisthenic side of things, and there is certainly plenty of stuff in here that I could dig into.

Friday February 21 2025

5:45pm
How I spent my Thursday night:
And by that I mean, from 10pm Thursday to 2am Friday. Came home, had a little snack, made myself a hot toddy (people don’t always realize how hard playing the harmonica is on your throat muscles). I cannot come home from a gig and just go to sleep. So I chilled and watched a little TV, and read a chapter of a book, and by about 4am I was ready to go to bed.
I absolutely did not set an alarm. Very deliberately and intentionally.
When I did climb out of bed it was after 9. Through the morning routine. Made a cup of coffee. Took a quick look at a very long to-do list for my regular Friday office/clerical day. Took care of a couple of items that could be checked off quickly, and then it was time for the 11am IAAD Buddy meeting. Some really good stuff came up there.
At noon, as we signed off, I noticed I was hungry, so I made a little lunch and another cup of coffee and then “headed off to work”. A scintillating afternoon of paying bills, confirming the lesson schedule for next week and setting up necessary zoom appointments, chasing down and matching medical bills to Medicare statements, taking another dive at researching my flight options for Italy in April, etc, etc, et-freaking-c.
It was almost 4pm by the time I could put all of that away. I was grumpy and totally not in the mood for guitar practice, and since a commitment to daily practice was not something I took on as part of this course I was completely at ease with that. Except I wasn’t. So, after some hemming and hawing I sat down for what was to be 30 reluctant minutes, but which stretched out to 45 highly engaged minutes. Go figure.
Right hand warmup on open strings at a reasonably brisk tempo meant to be for 5 or 10 minutes turned into almost 30. Nothing fancy. But it gave me some time to contemplate the Guitarist Inside, along with a couple of things discussed in the meeting this morning that felt related. At one point I took a shot at the “circulation of sensation”. Didn’t get very far. Sensation is something I have a strong relationship with, so the part of any of these exercises that involve bringing a part of my attention to some part of my body comes pretty readily. But I am still terrible about combining them with the task of playing Music, or even with a simple repetitive exercise. Sooner or later either my attention wanders away from the exercise, or my guitar playing begins to falter in tragic ways. With the limb rotation through Eye of the Needle I am constantly blanking on which limb is supposed to be active, and rely heavily on knowing where the exercise lines up with the composition to get myself back on track. I don’t think if I’ve made it through the piece with clear continuity in the limbs from beginning to end more than a handful of times since I was first introduced to the practice in late 2009.
Tomorrow my guitar work for the day is likely to be the Seattle Monthly Open Circle, and on Sunday an SGC rehearsal, and I did want to wrap up The Moving Force this week so that I can move on to something else beginning Monday. Getting the lead back into my hands is not part of the plan, other than to borrow bits as material for calisthenic practice. But the little flashes of insight I had yesterday are still intriguing to me. I played the bass line along with the Show of Hands recording, without referring to the score, and it was more or less there. A couple of times through and it was good. I recognize how I know “where” these lines are played; that is where in the form of the composition they appear. I know the piece well, and understand the harmonic rhythm of the composition. So know which harmonic segments include bass lines. But how I know precisely when, and for how long each note sounds, is still kind of mysterious to me. Something I wrote yesterday about note durations sticks with me and I pulled the score back out to double check my accuracy. I must have practiced the hell out of this thing at some point in my life because all of my note durations were spot on. Except for the very last note, and in exploring this today I realized that I didn’t really understand what the lead was doing rhythmically in that bar. So I slowed the recording down (they make software for that) and spent a couple of minutes playing the lead through the final 3 bars of the piece until I was confident I could hear and feel the downbeat that the bass needs to release just before, and voila. Deficiency eliminated. At least until the next time I play it.
I can’t believe it, but I really really need to begin dinner preparation now. Where did the day go?

Saturday February 22 2025

4:00pm
No specific IAAD/Eye of the Needle work today, although I find that all work in a Guitar Circle qualifies as IAAD/Eye of the Needle work or at least supports that work. Instead, three hours of work in the Seattle Guitar Circle Open Monthly Circle.
Small group this month. Brad and myself, Taylor made it, and two folks from outside the SGC. Both are regulars to the Open Circle. Both use the standard tuning, which always means a certain amount of real-time translation for whoever is leading the group at a given moment. We circulated freely, we worked on improvisation (C Minor), we talked a LOT about the nature of modes, body beat with and without guitars, some structured circulation working with the Circle of Fifths, and some more circulation. All in all a very good morning.
For me then, home to life’s necessary mundanities. Grocery shopping. My federal tax submission arrived in the mail from the accountant, so I got to review it for accuracy, which is always a joy. My folks are very good, but CPAs can still make the occasional mistake. And as I always need to remind myself when I feel tempted to just sign it, send it out, and be done with it, if there is a mistake it will be ME the IRS wants to have a word with, not my accounting firm. So, review it I must.

Sunday February 23 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on, headcount tbd

ONWARD TO WEEK 7

2025-02-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 5

Monday February 10 2025

11:30am
An intentional day off yesterday. Interesting night’s sleep. I did awaken at about 3am, and had that “oh, no, not this again” moment of dread. Fortunately, was able to get back to sleep in a matter of minutes (2 songs from my Robert Johnson playlist). The second half of my night’s sleep was a jam-packed dream extravaganza with heavily surrealistic overtones. Woke up early, with my alarm, and lay in bed an extra 10 minutes in a state of gentle bewilderment.
Up. Morning stuff. Time for my IAAD guitar practice before my first student’s arrival. As I made coffee I pondered what that practice might be. The little voice I heard on Saturday about paying attention to what I was avoiding was still hanging about. What I’m avoiding is The Guitarist Inside. Not because I don’t like it or don’t want it, but because I’m really very bad at it, and I don’t have a clear sense of how to practice it. What are the Guitarist Inside Primaries, please? Because that’s the level I’m on with it.
The other option for Phase 2 that I was pondering was to revisit all of the early GC repertoire. Not necessarily with the same kind of detailed attention that I’ve been applying to Eye of the Needle, exactly. But bringing it back into my hands. There is a very clear continuum to the material that emerged in those early years. Theme I led into Theme II, which led into Theme III, which was Eye of the Needle. And that in turn led into Theme IV and so on.
So as I sat down, still not sure what I was going to practice, it occurred to me that this was actually one single practice. The early repertoire can give me practical material to work on, and while I work on that material I can practice the Guitarist Inside – specifically the holding Wish in the breast, and lord have mercy, but also reminding myself of the larger pool of practices – and just see what I can notice. From that perhaps a path forward might present itself.
Last week when pondering all of this I had been thinking specifically of beginning with Third Relation, but as I sat down this morning it occurred to me to begin at the Beginning. So, Theme I, then. I have never been particularly adept at the high melody bit, so a good piece of practical guitar work there. Pulled out the score briefly to make sure I remembered all of the bits. Good. Warmed up a little with the basic arpeggio. Took a quick look at the bass – a part too easy to overlook, just 4 whole notes, but much to take into consideration when playing it.
Then onto the melody bit. Warmed up my right hand on open strings in the cross-picking pattern this part uses. Then played the part slowly. Some question about where to play one note – the score says one place, common sense says another. Ultimately stuck with the score, but I’m open to a change.
Once up to tempo, brought in the Exercise of Contact At A Distance, specifically connecting with the participants on the IAAD, as a way to facilitate holding Wish in the breast.
Then something remarkable happened. The face of Frank Simes popped into my awareness. Not part of the course. Not someone I ever think about. In fact the last time I saw him was March 30, 1985, at the final meeting of the first Guitar Craft course. Frank was the one real “player” on that course. And for our final performance, in the original “ballroom” at Claymont Court, it was Frank and Robert playing this part. What followed was a flood of faces, some with names but others not, the 19 participants (including Robert) of that first course.
There I was playing this part, pretending to hold Wish in my breast, and a direct connection to 40 years ago arrived. A few more Presences, some with faces, one in particular with a name, followed along. The Claymont residents supporting the course in the Kitchen, in the House, as well as more direct contact.

After I completed my practice, I retrieved the names of the guitarists on that course. Some missing names to go with faces I had seen, some names I still can’t place.

Thinking I may be onto something here.
GC US1 – March 25-30, 1985

Robert Fripp
Roy Capellaro
Randall Chiurazzi
Chris Cousineau
Richard Drews
Chris Ebneth
Andrew Essex
Claude Gillet
Curt Golden
Mac Hart
Bryan Helm
James Hines III
Chris Kirby
Marvin Meng
Jeff Mercer
Peter Racine
Scott Robbins
Frank Simes
Mark Vermette
Barbara June Appelgren
Yoga Teacher
Frank Sheldon (I didn’t know his name yet, but his presence in the audience was remarkable)
Residents in the Kitchen and Dining Hall

Tuesday February 11 2025

7:30am

Up exceedingly early, by design. Who books a student for 8am?

Morning routine in the dark and cold. A cup of coffee and straight to the guitar. Warmed up with the melody bit from yesterday’s work on Theme I. Feels like something worth putting into rotation in my practice. All of the cross picking I’ve been doing during this project is beginning to pay off. Then on to Theme II. Other than reviewing the bass line to be sure I remember it correctly, not much new here. It’s the Fourth Primary, something that quite regularly shows up in my warm-ups. Remembering it in context a bit different, though. If I were to put it on a looper, it would be a good place to practice improvising, but at the moment that feel a little outside the Phase 2 work. Beginning tomorrow I’ll be tackling considerably more technically demanding material and I don’t know how much time that will require. Moved on to Eye of the Needle. Once through each of the 4 parts, straight in at performance tempo. A couple of days off from it seem to have brought it back to life. Guitar 2 is still not performance-ready. But all in all it felt rather solid.

Moving on to the Guitarist Inside, I went back to Theme II. It felt that this was simple enough that I could practice working with a number of the forms that have been discussed. As I repeated this simple musical pattern, playing each note with as much presence, intention, and care, as I was able, I experimented with several of the possible modes of the Guitarist Inside. The limb rotation a pretty obvious one and it works quite nicely. Even so, I still get distracted and my mind wanders, and I rarely make it through one complete cycle without at least one “wait, where the hell am I?” moment. But I persist. The Sixty Point exercise was an interesting one. Unless I plan to play the piece for a very very long time, this one needs to move at a pretty quick pace. And I got lost in all the same places I do when practicing this as part of the sitting. Certainly worth looking further into. Touched on the Collected State exercise. I found that the simple form settled in pretty easily, but the more traditional form as it is presented for the morning sitting would be a big challenge.

As with yesterday, I used the Exercise of Contact At A Distance as a vehicle for holding Wish in my breast, and breathing out Love. And again I began with whichever names and faces from the IAAD I could easily call up.

Obviously, surprises are only surprising once, but yesterday’s surprise appearance of the characters from the first Level One was much on my mind as I worked. As Theme II had arisen shortly before the first Level Two in 1985, and it was on that project that I encountered it for the first time as anything more than just the Fourth Primary, I intentionally brought that performance team to mind as well today. This manifested in the form of a near-cinematic collage. Because of the intensity of that course, all of the players are firmly burned into my memory. Their faces and most of their names came to me readily. And, to be honest, finding a little Love to exhale was no effort whatsoever. The folks contributing from outside the Circle were a little more difficult for me to conjure. Barbara June and Toyah were obvious. Eric (the Hero) Kahan as well. Pretty sure that Debra and Susy were part of the support from the community. But I can’t specifically remember if Frank was active on that course. Did we still have yoga? What other community members contributed? I’m a little sad I can’t remember more detail.

Time to go to work. First student shortly, and it will involve both Patsy Cline and T-Rex in NST.

GC US9 – December 1-14, 1985

Robert Fripp
Terry Blankenship
Roy Capellaro
Jon Diaz
John Durso
Andrew Essex
Tony Geballe
Claude Gillet
Curt Golden
Mike Gorman
Trey Gunn
Bryan Helm
James Hines III
Danny Howes
David Mazza
John Miley
John Novak
Mark Tomacci
Barbara June Appelgren
Eric Kahan
Toyah Wilcox
Debra Kahan
Susy Hawes
Frank Sheldon*
Residents in Kitchen and Dining Hall

* 2:15pm – had to get confirmation from Tony on that one.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

11:30am

After the lesson, a short laundry list of to-do’s. Some involving preparation for lessons later in the day (like refreshing the slide solo in What Is And What Will Never Be). But pertinent to this project, unloading a bunch of “notes to myself” that come up while I’m practicing, for things I need to do “later”.

The first was to dig up the video of the GWU show in 1985, where I know there is a close-up of Robert playing Theme I, in order to put to rest the nagging question of where that one note is actually played. Hint: the score is correct. Now I can practice the part without that question hovering.

Another was to go into my files, find what writings I do have about The Guitarist Inside, and collect them all in one place. I found this morning that I was grappling during practice time with questions about the details of the exercise, as well as the available forms and variations. Things I should be clear about before I begin. Most of what I have in disparate forms has been collected in The Guitar Circle, so I went there first and did a little cutting and pasting into a single document that I can have open at all times for reference. The only other useful thing I found were some notes I scribbled down after a meeting in Tepoztlán in 2015.

This should make the Guitarist Inside aspect of practice in the coming days a little less fuzzy.

Wednesday February 12 2025

11:00am
Already and oddball day. No professional obligations until the afternoon, so I allowed myself to sleep in a little, which is to say I arose at what would generally be my normal time rather than the much earlier beginning I have adopted for this project. Went through my morning routine as usual, pushing away the feeling that I was running late and needed to be in a hurry. Breakfast before guitar, which is also something of a divergence from my practice on this course.
Began with a little gentle right hand, and then moved on to the Theme I “melody” which I am adopting as part of my warmup. It’s beginning to come along. Still takes a few repetitions before my right hand settles into the pattern, but it is more or less there and improving. From there to the exercise known informally as the Third Relation Exercise, an A Minor triad arpeggio played with cross picking over 3, 4, and 5 strings. As my work for today is a review of Theme IV, aka Third Relation, it seemed prudent. Plus it’s a good exercise and one that I am going to add to my warmup going forward during this project.
All in all, about 15 minutes of that. I then pulled up the music stand and opened the book to Third Relation. It has been some time since I’ve played the piece, and in the case of some to the lead variations, perhaps decades.
Guitar 4, the bass, first, since this is the part I most often played in performance, and the easiest doorway back into the music for me. Simply read through the part, reminding myself of the details, transitions, and nuances. While motoring through the rocking D Minor bass line I caught myself using a different fingering in one particular place than indicated in the tab. And while my ancient muscle memory would be happy to default to the indicated fingering if I asked it to, the 72-year-old guitarist addressing this piece in 2025 is pretty sure his fingering makes more sense, and for the time being I’m going to listen to that guy. If I’m going to do more with this piece than merely work through it as material for this project’s study, I will in all likelihood come back to this part as the one I’m most likely to be able pull into performance shape.
Then to the various leads. There was a time when I had all of these available in my hands, but there are multiple layers of rust on them now. Didn’t make any attempt to actually play through these parts, but simply read through it section by section. At almost every turn the same sequence of events. Read through it, phrase by phrase, figure out the fingering, the rhythmic timing, and right hand requirements, puzzled because none of it seems familiar. Eventually get it well enough that I can hear something that I recognize. Then my hands suddenly take over and I have this cheerful feeling of “Oh! There it is! I remember that.” Finally the inherent technical challenges of each phrase reveal themselves and I have this gloomy feeling of “Oh… There it is… I remember that.”
Went through this cycle over and over, working through all of the variations of the part. Some come more readily; the “dancing 5’s” and the descending sections. Others feel like I have never heard or seen them before in my life; the upper octave variations in particular.
I was in the house when this piece was born. Some part of me knows all of this stuff, but damn it is buried deep.
By the time I completed all of the parts, the hour was gone and I felt like I hadn’t really gotten any actual practice other than the warmup. And absolutely no Guitarist Inside. I was feeling like a slacker. So I put on the metronome and worked on the bass part for another 15 minutes. That was enough to get it into the world of the possible.
Going to put this bass part back into my regular practice rotation, although I have a lot of doubts that these old hands will ever be able to get this material back up to performance tempo. Fortunately, for Phase 2 at any rate, that is not part of the aim.
At least another day on this one before I move on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

4:15pm
Had a free hour this afternoon, so I decided to make up for the lack of calisthenic work this morning. Jumped into the Beta-test version of “The Practice Room” just to see what it’s like. I think it’s going live today or tomorrow. In any case, it was odd to see myself on the computer screen as I practiced. I mostly ignored it. I can report back to the team that it works, but I’m not sure I grok what exactly it’s for. Maybe that will become more obvious later.
General workout began with an old standby octave scale exercise, since the bass part of Third Relation requires a bit of that. Began with the generic version and then tweaked it to mimic some of the picking patterns the bass part requires. From there to an extended workout with the “Third Relation” exercise, cross-picking over 5 strings. After about half an hour of that moved into running the part, looking at shaky transitions, and in general cleaning it up and speeding it up.
I like getting the workout, and I sure need the workout. But I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that “Phase 2” isn’t about getting parts up to performance condition. It has more to do with reexperiencing this material that I haven’t played in some time, as I did this morning. And then putting some aspects of it into my practice regimen to use as material to practice the Guitarist Inside with. The “Third Relation” exercise, for instance, with the 60-point Exercise. Or the descending sections with the Circle of Sensation. I need material to play that is challenging enough to imitate actual playing situations, but uncomplex enough to give me a fighting chance to observe something about how these practices work on me when I’m actually engaged with them.

Thursday February 13 2025

1:30pm

The way my schedule is laid out today, I had to split my practice time into two half-hour sessions. The first just before my first student of the day, and the second after lunch. Early morning remains my most productive practice time, at least for the material I’m working on now, by far.

For the early morning session, began again with the melodic line from Invocation. It is getting easier for me to jump into this one, which is good, but it is also just quirky enough that it doesn’t respond well to autopilot, which is also good. Followed up on the plan formulated yesterday, to work with isolated segments from the repertoire I’m looking at, and experiment with the various forms of the Guitarist Inside. So once I had this one up and running I added the limb rotation. Dismal. It seems I can do one task or the other, but not at the same time. When I stick with the rotation, my playing goes to hell. When I correct my playing I completely lose track of my limbs. The Sixty-Point Exercise was the same – only worse… I get lost on that one even when it is ALL that I’m doing. The Collected State has promise, as it moves in its own time. I suppose that’s technically true of the rotation and 60 points as well. It is not necessary to marry them to the time set by the tempo and arrangement of the music. Eye of the Needle does include that wrinkle, but that level of precision may only be necessary when a group is doing the exercise in unison. More study needed.

Moved on to the “Third Relation” cross picking exercise. I’m okay with this a very moderate tempos, but as I approach performance tempo it gets pretty painful to listen to. Once in the groove, again experimenting with the same three forms of the Guitarist Inside, with pretty much the same result. Only worse since I’m less reliable on this guitar part. Switched to the bass line in D, which I am comfortable with, and had a bit more success, but only incrementally.

Fired up Zoom and into my day.

The session after lunch was more or less the same. Same musical material, but experimenting with different forms of the Guitarist Inside; holding the feeling of Wish in the breast, the circle of sensation, and a bit of the Exercise of Contact at a Distance, sending good wishes to the IAAD team. That last one isn’t exactly part of the Guitarist Inside, although I don’t know of any reason it shouldn’t be. But I was using it as a kind of surrogate for the practice of extending the feeling of Wish out to my friends in the circle.

All in all the results were the same as the morning. No real success in maintaining quality in my guitar playing while giving the inner work the attention it needs. Plus, my playing is worse in the afternoon, evidently. I think that once professional obligations and the noise of the world in general creeps in, focus is just a lot harder.

Tomorrow is another day.

Friday February 14 2025

8:45am

Happily back in the early morning groove today. Up at 6am, morning routine. Brew a cup of coffee and head for the guitar.
Largely academic morning. The first 15 minutes was the Invocation and Third Relation warmups. Moderate tempo, but very solid right out of the gate, which is encouraging. Throughout the warmup I worked with the Circle of Sensation as a way into the Guitarist Inside. As with yesterday, this one shows some promise for me.
From warmup into Calliope. The book on the stand, and I read through it slowly. Began with the “Bass” parts (G3 and G4); bass in quotation marks since, like Third Relation, that part leaps about between the high bits in counterpoint with the leads and the growling low bits of definite bass. I find the score for this a bit confusing. Or, alternately, I’ve always found this piece a little confusing and the score doesn’t help that. Either way, it took me a while to find my way through this. Muscle memory definitely present as it all came back. Something that isn’t in the score that I have a very distinct memory of is a mirror part in the bass line of the E Major section. I really don’t know if this is something that was toyed with and dropped during the composition’s evolution, or if we just missed it when doing the transcription. But my hands play it readily enough that I clearly put some time into practicing it at one point or another.
Consulted some recordings, but the only “official” recording of this piece is on Get Crafty, which is distinctly lo-fi. Everything else is bootlegged. Settled on the WMMR recording. This was the League shortly after returning from the first Level 3 in Cranborne. Dragged the mp3 into “Transcribe!” so that I could slow it down a bit, which allowed to play along even with my rusty chops. This definitely helped to get me back inside the piece.
Then on to the Leads. As with all of the material I’ve looked at so far, when this music was first emerging I learned and practiced every part. And at one time or another I have played every part in an ensemble of one kind or another. But early on I found myself more than a little irritated with the prevalent undercurrent of that very common guitarist conceit; that the “leads” were for the high flyers, and if you’re not up to that you should play the bass. Anyone who has ever heard Invocation or Aspiration or Eye of the Needle with the bass line butchered knows what nonsense that is. So at some point during this period I decided I was going to become Master of the Bass Lines.
But I digress. As I worked through the Lead parts they came back to me swiftly. I also remembered very clearly why I knew from very early on that they were not my destiny. Ingenious, but treacherous. Fun, up to a point. And certainly a great workout for the hands. But the aim of this particular phase of the work is to reestablish the music for myself, which means knowing how all of the parts go. Whipping all the parts into a state of performance readiness is not really part of the plan. I’ll spend another day with this, focused on guitaring rather than analyzing, and then move on.
Office day at Golden Music Enterprises, and there is lots of tedious but unavoidable work to be done. Also need to go over the presentation I’m making for the IAAD tomorrow morning. And then of course, it’s Valentine’s Day. Off I go.

GC UK1 - September 1-November 16, 1986 - Red Lion House, Cranborne, Dorset

Robert Fripp
Terry Blankenship
Randall Chiurazzi
Andrew Essex
John Garbarczyk
Tony Geballe
Curt Golden
Ralph Gorga
Trey Gunn
James Hines III
Adam Lieb
Lindy Auberry
Elizabeth Bennett

Saturday February 15 2025

2:30pm

Summarizing my practice a number of hours after the fact, which is not ideal. But I had to go from practice straight into preparation for presenting the Exercise Of Contact At A Distance, and from there into the House Meeting, and finally a number of essential errands. So now I’m back, and the task of remembering.

Up early, but not excruciatingly so. Took care of the morning routine, made a cup of coffee and headed to the guitar. Paused and considered my plan, which was to have a morning largely of calisthenic work, but utilizing material from Calliope. Seemed like a solid plan, so I tuned my guitar.

Noticed that it was just coming up on 8am, and remembered that Mika was hosting a guided practice at 8. Thought it might be an opportunity to test out the Practice Room concept, which as of this morning had not yet gone public. I logged into the meeting, muted and video off, muted my computer’s speakers so I wouldn’t hear the material Mika was presenting, but just see a bunch of guitar players practicing. Turned on my metronome and set off on my warmup, the Invocation and Third Relation cross-picking forms I’ve been using all week.

Warmed up for 15 minutes, hands feeling generally good. But I found the activity on screen distracting. This hadn’t been a problem when I hosted the warm-up hour before my Eye of the Needle presentation. But for that one we had all turned our video off, so I knew people were there but I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me. I simply knew I was not alone, and we were all practicing. I also think the fact that they were all doing something together and more or less in unison, while I was clearly not also contributed to this sense of discord. So I stayed online, but turned on my screensaver so I couldn’t see them. In that way this became less a test-run for the Practice Room, and more a specialized application of the Exercise of Contact at a Distance. Whatever it was, though I knew they were there working, I was no longer distracted by them.

Worked primarily on three bits of Calliope. First, the insane 9/8 lead line from the Intro, played on the highest frets possible on an Ovation guitar. This part is simply cruel. And if it was ever possible for these hands on this instrument, both are now far too ancient to do anything but flop about. Took it down a fourth to B♭. Although this makes the stretches even stretchyer, it was at least playable for me. The 2-string skips of the cross-picking are certainly challenging, but not insurmountable. So good work there.

From there I moved on to leads in the whacky interlude. Here again, the string skipping makes it hazardous, and the rhythmic scheme is pretty eccentric. But it is not conceptually difficult. Once I broke it down into 4 discrete bars it became quite clear. I think back in the day when I was playing this more regularly, my approach was to put my head down and crash through it. This morning it became more of a dance, as I believe it was meant to be. Left hand fingerings are tricky to the extent that position shifts need to be swift, precise, and clean. But really nothing anyone who has ever played Killing Floor or Soul Man in the old tuning would find daunting.

Then on to slay a personal dragon. The mirrored bass line in the 5/4 bar at the end of the Interlude. For some reason this has always eluded me. It’s just twisted enough, and enough unlike anything I would play if left to my own devices, that it has always frustrated me. So I tore it apart and looked at the places I always screw it up, and applied all of those little practical techniques I’m always on my student’s backs to work with. And by the end of the hour it was pretty reliable. A little like the Invocation melody line, I think I just need to get this into regular rotation in my daily practice for a while. So I’ll add it into my warmup going forward.

By then in was 9am. Turned off the screen saver and returned to the team on Zoom in time to close the hour with them.

From there: breakfast, a little quiet review of my plan for the EoCaaD presentation at 10. The presentation. The House Meeting. Into my day. And now, into the day off.

Sunday February 16 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on in a trio format

ONWARD TO WEEK 6

2025-02-03T15:47:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 4

Monday February 3 2025

3:15pm

Sunday was a much-needed day of doing absolutely nothing. Rest and recuperate so that the cold doesn’t linger interminably. Watched college basketball, read books, watched movies. Preparing meals was about the only thing I did on my feet. Feeling very much better today. Slept until my alarm went off. So I again lost those quiet pre-dawn hours for EotN practice. When possible, I am going to get up early (preferably, on purpose) until this part of the project has been completed, and reclaim those hours. Today my schedule kept me from getting down to this work until midafternoon, and by that time it was almost too late.

Moved on to Guitar 2 today. The final section of this inquiry. Though as it is the part furthest from my comfort zone it may stretch out a little longer that any of the other three. Warmed up the right hand. This was where the disadvantage of practicing in the middle of my work day was most apparent. More difficult to get my hands loose and relaxed, and my patience considerably thinner.

Then a review of the part. I “know” it. But I have not played it for a long time, so after several slow run-throughs I went to the score to confirm some of the details, in particular the transitions. Walked through the piece section by section, noting these details, experimenting with fingerings that are unique to Guitar 3. Made preliminary pivot decisions, one of which I changed (removing a pivot, and finding a fingering option) after practicing it for a few minutes. Noted the decisions in my “Practice Notes” doc. Played through the part beginning to end one more time, with the metronome at 60. Then called it a day. For this project I have made no practice time commitments, but somehow 45 minutes feels like not quite sufficient.

The student arriving shortly, however, may have something to say about that.

Tuesday February 4 2025

3:20pm
Once again slept through the night and woke up to my alarm. This gave me just enough time for my morning routine and then an hour of EotN work before students begin arriving. Hosting IADD Tea time at 4pm, and this is my first break in the day to collect my thoughts on this morning’s work.
Began work in earnest on Guitar 2. Cycling through the Intro changes at a slow tempo served as my warmup. Confirmed the transitions, which are challenging. Isolated each with just a few notes leading into and out of the shifts, so that in context they do not cause a lurch or startle in my playing. In the process of this I reversed yesterday’s decisions regarding pivot in the high register and eliminated all of them except the first finger between the 1st and 2nd string. With these same fingerings low on the neck, the pivots are a piece of cake. But in 14th and 17th position, I think it comes down to the fact that on this venerable and ancient instrument I play the strings are just too high up there. Alternate fingerings determined and practiced, and a hint of the smooth legato-ness I am striving for began to appear.
The only other “new” arpeggio that this part has is the major triad harmony that accompanies A’ and F#’. I double checked yesterday’s pivot decisions just to make sure, but ultimately left these alone.
Played through the piece a number of times, still at the slower tempo. Never convincingly. I find that the first bar after every transition, tends to be a scramble of improvised fingerings that generally settle down to the prescribed fingering by the second bar. Even when my “improvisation” just happens to be the right fingering, this gives every transition the sound of uncertainty. Which is absolutely true.
By the end of the hour I was more or less up to performance tempo, fewer mistakes but still lacking the sound of authority. Played along with the Show of Hands and Tuning the Air recordings. Context helps.
Even the simple rotation of limbs remains wishful thinking on this part at this stage.
I think this will be an all-week project.

Wednesday February 5 2025

8:45am
Slept through the night, but woke up about 30 minutes before my alarm would have gone off, coming out of a slightly bizarre and possibly course-related dream (included a cameo of Bill in his “Mr Grumpy” role). Decided to go for it and just get up and going. No students until noon, so my first opportunity this week for some EotN work that wasn’t constrained by outside obligations.
What we in Seattle call a bit of snow outside, with the promise of more throughout the day. Put the metronome on at performance tempo and launched into 15 minutes of generic arpeggio work, all above the 12th fret, since that’s where the tough part of Guitar 2 lies, and where I am least skilled. This was very good. Even got in a little Afghanistan, which actually began to approach fun.
Noticed something yesterday that, while not a brand new seeing, came back to me with a certain impact. That is… when fretting notes high up on the neck, the pressure applied by the left hand materially changes the height of the string under the pick. So I keep hearing these god-awful clanging open strings where they don’t belong, and which almost never occur when I’m playing down near the nut, and realize that this is the result of having to dig a little deeper down with my right hand to get solid contact and tone, and in doing so banging into adjacent string that under other circumstances my right hand technique would have navigated over. As trying as this part is for my left hand, I believe that making intelligent adjustments to my right hand technique is going to be the principle challenge here for me.
Focused largely on the Intro again. The fingerings I settled on yesterday still feel and sound right to me, so that’s good. Began by doing the grunt work of cleaning up the transitions, and made solid headway there, isolating and practicing each transitional moment. Cycled through the A-C-A-F# sequence for about 10 minutes, convincing my fingers that this is how it goes and beginning to find the continuity through the part.
Played through the entire piece front to back several times. Made a mental note that in my next session I need to do the same kind of work with the major triad “harmony” form, both solidifying the fingering and clearing up the transitions in and out.
When playing this part solo, I have a hard time hearing the familiar harmonic movement. The transition from the C Major harmony bit over A Minor to the unambiguous F# Minor part always sounds shocking and is a little disorienting for me. When playing along with the recordings, which I did several times at the end of the hour, this is not a difficulty. Even managed at least sporadic connection with the rotation of limbs. So there is Hope.
On to breakfast.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

4:30pm
Noon student needed to cancel, which opened my day up into the afternoon. While tempted to jump back into practice mode, there were two emails in my inbox that required more than a terse response and it sort of felt like this was my best opportunity to take care of them. I was also painfully aware that I was very late with my Week 3 Report. Wrote and posted that first.
The first, a request for advice and perspective from a Crafty considering taking up offering guitar lessons as a source of a little part-time income. It required a great deal of thought and precise articulation. And a lot of time. Happy to do it, but it is a lot of work.
The second was a response to a potential student, referred to me by another Crafty. On the mundane business side of these correspondences I have boiler plate responses. But in terms of asking the right questions in order to evoke the information I need to determine if this is a relationship worth pursuing for both of us, everyone is different and that part of the conversation is always improvised. I had sent him a request last night for a little history of his experience so far, as well his sense of what he needed help with, and his very responsive response had come this morning. So I had a good idea of who he is what he wants. Part of my response needed to be a clear description of the pros and cons of the Guitar Craft tuning and the standard tuning. That also takes a little time, and requires simple clarity. Turned out he had his email program open because he responded very quickly. And determining that the GC tuning is what he wants to pursue, a flurry of emails laying out next steps, scheduling options (he’s on the east coast), and a whole lot of stuff about string gauges for acoustic and electric options.
Exhausting. Clearing those obligations it was time for lunch. Still had some open time and so I sat down for more practice, looking at the things I mentioned this morning. Slow going. Low energy and my attention all over the map. After 30 minutes it dawned on me that I had basically been sitting on this stool since 6:30am.
Dropped the practice and moved on to an hour of vigorous cardio; hand weights and all that stuff. I used to do this so that my doctor would stop nagging me, but I confess that at this point any day I don’t exercise feels like a mistake. It does indeed reinvigorate me. And then a shower further brought me back to life. Unfortunately (no, I shouldn’t complain about abundance) it reinvigorated me for the students who begin arriving in a few minutes, rather than more fun with EotN.
Tomorrow is another day.

Thursday February 6 2025

10:45am
Since I have a 9am Zoom student on Thursdays, I set my alarm for earlier than usual so that I could have my morning EotN hours. Arose with ease. Still quite dark out. Morning routine. Peeked outside through the blinds and saw that it had snowed last night. The temperature out was just below freezing. Quite often here in Seattle, what happens is a couple of inches of snow fall. Then during the day it warms up enough to turn it into slush. Then it dips back below freezing and the slush turns to ice. I have a steep driveway, then a half dozen steps up to the building, then 10 or 15 yards of walkway to my door. If one of my students takes a header in my driveway or on my walk, I really have no idea who is liable. And I’d rather not find out.
So I bundled up and headed out into the dark. The snow was damp and heavy, but still cold enough that I could use a push broom to clear everything away. And I still had some salt from the last time it snowed. Slippery on the driveway, but negotiable.
Back inside in time for CET-appropriate tea time, along with breakfast.
After tea time, I still had a solid hour and a quarter to practice. So I can say it was a productive morning.
After a little right and left hand warmup with an arpeggio exercise I launched into Guitar 2. For the most part today, I played the piece all the way through, beginning at a modest tempo and by the end of the hour I had graduated to a tempo that is really a bit too fast for the piece. But I wanted to see how my chops were progressing. Through all this I noticed a couple of things.
The first was that regardless of the tempo, I begin the Intro with a lovely light and legato touch, but by the end I’m a mass of crackling tension. I played through Guitars 1 and 3 a couple of times to compare and contrast, and while this is a little bit true on those parts, it is not nearly as audible, and I am more able to let it go and reestablish the sense of ease and flow while in motion. The high octave parts of the Intro and Midtro are partly the issue, for sure. But also the amount of extra leaping about this part has, combined with the newness of the fingering choices I’ve made on the sections unique to this part, means I’m constantly one or two beats away from forgetting where I am. So while practicing and improving the bits and pieces and transitions in Guitar 2 is still necessary, I really feel that playing it through is most important right now, getting it to the point where moving from position to position and reliably using the fingerings I’ve worked out doesn’t occupy so much of my attention.
The second thing I noticed was a realization that If I were called upon to perform this part right now – that is, play it cold without the benefit of an hour of warmup and detail work – it would be a bona fide tragedy.
Went back to Afghanistan – Lead 1, specifically the running 11s into the long arpeggiated descending line of the C Phrygian section – for the final 10 minutes. In some ways this is a bit of a diversion, but it really does put my hands to work up in the same section of the neck that Guitar 2 requires, using fast moving but very similar arpeggios, so I still think it’s useful.
Plus, it’s fun.
My two in-person students for the day have both cancelled due to the weather. It’s probably overly cautious, but safety first and all of that. One I’m actually very relieved about. It’s an older woman, and I worry a little about her, out on the driveway and the stairs, even in the most pristine weather. I had sent her a message earlier about the state of the driveway, intentionally giving her an opening for an out. Originally, she was going to see how it looks in the afternoon, but 30 minutes later she realized that the wise choice is just to cancel until next week. The other is a young coder dude from Southern California, and I don’t think he has any idea what to do with snow. That one’s a little silly, but I don’t want anyone taking risks they are not comfortable with.
So, the universe has handed me more time to practice.
But I believe I’ll take a walk first.

Friday February 7 2025

10:00am
I can’t quite decide if my guitar playing has actually gotten worse this week. Or the slightly more terrifying alternative; my playing has always been this bad, but my critical listening chops have improved this week.
Very happy that the cycle of insomnia seems to be behind me. Once again up early, but by design. No snow to shovel this morning. But it is really cold out.
About an hour and a quarter on Eye of the Needle. The first 30 minutes entirely cross-picked arpeggio exercises at 10th position and above. Sloppy. Better after 20 minutes or so. But still.
It feels to me that at this point I have completed the preliminaries. Since the beginning of the IAAD I’ve worked through each of the four parts, picked them apart, and reassembled them employing intentional left hand fingering and right hand picking pattern choices. I have practiced each part, and gotten them up to performance tempo. Of the four, Guitar 2 is still the weakest, but I know what I’m working to accomplish.
So today I simply played through the piece many times, rotating through each of the three "lead" parts: G1, G3, and G2. The first cycle was at a gentle practice tempo. The second closer to real life, by the 3rd time through I was at a respectable performance tempo. For the final cycle I played all four parts along with the Tuning the Air recording.
So that’s Round 1. Going to take the weekend to ruminate on what a good next step might be.
One thought is to take a cue from today and spend a few weeks simply playing the piece. Practice the Music, rather than the part. This kind of repetition could open up space to focus on the limb rotation, as well as taking some time to look at the other aspects of the Guitarist Inside.
Another approach is to drop the piece entirely for a week or so, and instead use this time for calisthenics designed to improve my accuracy, reliability, and speed, and so have a little more to bring to the piece when I come back to it.
A third possibility would be to spend a couple of weeks revisiting other pieces of the early GC repertoire that I have rarely touched in years. Dipping my toes into Afghanistan this week inspired this notion. And since all of the material that came out of those earliest years was conceived to explore and utilize the same technical approaches, and involves many of the same challenges I’m working with in EotN, it could only help.
Or there’s something else entirely that might present itself. I’ll spend the weekend with an open mind.
IAAD organizational meeting in about an hour. Then some open time for I don’t yet know what. Getting off this chair and doing some exercise comes to mind. With the cancellations yesterday I took care of the office work that is usually what Fridays are for, so that’s already out of the way. Picking up Julie Slick at 3:45 to head down to West Seattle, where a quintet formation of the SGC, Julie, and a number of other performers, will be taking part in a Greg Meredith Birthday Hootenanny.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“All the scholars in Toronto who could read German seemed to haunt our rehearsals, and sometimes their hissing disputes at the back of the theatre were so distracting that the director had to threaten to turn them out. Art is always in peril at universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican* on which scholars love to chew.”
Robertson Davies, from The Cunning Man

*"Pemmican: a food made from dried meat mixed to a soft mass, originally made in some native North American cultures and later used by Europeans travelling in Arctic and Antarctic regions.": The New Oxford American Dictionary

Saturday February 8 2025

Noon

Fun gig last night at the Meredith celebration. A short set from a quintet formation of the SGC. Only 3 prepared compositions presented. The rest impromptu and improvised. Circulations, improvs, and one (Merideth-coined term) “Romp” that had us parading around and through the audience, up and down stairs, through various rooms, creating a glorious cacophony, ending with us encircling the audience, where we remained for the rest of the show. Very loose and relaxed. Some mistakes that in a different life might have sent me into a rage, shrugged off. The audience was delighted and that was sufficient. The host reports this morning that the guests couldn’t stop talking about it.

This morning, the perfect way to wrap up the week as well as the first phase of Eye of the Needle work. I haven’t yet settled on what the character of the next phase needs to be. So, rather than sit down to my established morning hour of practice, which would have felt like just a proforma rehash, I got to let Horacio and Luciano do the work. Two EotN-focused IAAD presentations allowing me to just sit back and play.

While making a cup of coffee before Luciano’s presentation, I looked down at the water draining through the coffee filter and heard my own voice, almost inaudible under my breath, say, “Pay attention to what you’re avoiding.”

Sunday February 9 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – day off

NFL – I heard a rumor that there’s a game somewhere

TO BE CONTINUED - ONWARD TO WEEK 5 AND THE MIDDLE THIRD OF IAAD VII

2025-01-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 3

Monday January 27 2025

9:00am
Up before dawn. Evidently this is what I do now. Morning routine. To the stool and my hour of Eye of the Needle.
Listened to the recording from Show of Hands that was posted today, twice. While hearing it as if for the first time remains a hopeless fantasy, on the first time through I did find I was listening to it through the lens of last week’s work, so there was some small intangible shift in how I heard it. The second time through I listened with a focus on Guitar 3, which is what I’ll begin addressing today. The moving 5’s give the piece an interesting mysterious quality. I confess, though, that by the end of this second listening I had drifted off into reverie. I’m back in Manhattan Center Studios; the look and feel of the recording room and the control room, remembering the people I’m working with, some of whom I have not seen in many years and others I saw just yesterday.
Strapped on the guitar. Began by playing through the part once, no metronome, simply noting what the addition of the burbles to the part I worked on all last week entails. Noting transitions, primarily. I know this part well, and have performed it many times.
To the metronome and a short warmup. Right hand on a pair of open strings playing the 3+2 combination in alternate picking that this part requires. No huge challenges here, other than the fact that my right hand ain’t what it used to be. Moved on to the basic 5-note pattern on F#. Simple warmup calisthenics, shaking off the cobwebs.
Next systematically going through each of the places where the part either departs from unison with Guitar 1 or rejoins the unison, making sure I am clear about the fingering combinations and the open string transition notes. Work with the metronome on each, generally the last 4 notes of one part into the first 4 notes of the next, on repeat, isolating the moment of transition. One consistent concern I uncover is that moving from unison on D into burbles on A, and again from the Midtro unison in 13 into the burbles on D, involve not only a significant position switch, but also moving from a part centered on the high strings to one centered on the low strings. Consequently I have a tendency to accidentally mute the open transition note prematurely when as my fingers reach further across the fret board. I also notice an audible startle at these transitions which means I tend to slam the transitional note, as though I am using it to catapult my hand to the next part. Together, these two things tend to make the transition note pop out, where should be just part of the flow.
My remedy for this turns out to be twofold. In terms of the accidental muting, I realize that I spend so much of my time working on electric guitar playing blues/rock&roll based material that I am not using the tips of my fingers to the degree this piece requires. In terms of slamming transition notes, it really comes down to the observation that by the time I get there my energy has already moved to the shift and the next part. I’m not actually completing the phrase. A little “where am I now” insight.
With all this in mind, I run through the piece a number of times, all at 68bpm, remembering these adjustments.
In that context I notice one other thing. It is very familiar and generally not a problem except that I’m just out of practice. That is, every time I move into a burbling section, including when I move from one to the next, I realize too late that I’m counting in 5 instead of 4. There is nothing that will take me out of the Music faster than suddenly having to solve an arithmetic problem in the time it takes for 16 beats to go by. I have done this on stage more times than I care to admit, and it is terrifying. I have over the years come up with a few strategies. It would be nice not to need them.
Managed to make it through my final play-through without falling into this trap, but it completely took me out of the Guitarist Inside. Much work to do.
As a side note, in playing through the piece today I made the decision to abandon one place where I altered the picking last week, as it felt like it was interrupting the flow. So on the 4/4 sections of Guitar 1 I’m going back to strict alternate picking for the last 7 notes of each phrase.
Now to breakfast. My first student arrives in an hour.

Tuesday January 28 2025

8:30 am

Today felt like a minor breakthrough day. Began with right hand work on the open D and A strings. Various combinations, until I landed on the 3-2 combination that the burbles require. Counting at all times. Gradually increasing the tempo, ultimately landing at 76. Frankly, if I didn’t have professional obligations coming up this morning I could have stuck with that for a long time. Right hand is beginning to return. As it was, I did stretch this part of the hour out longer than originally planned.
Counting in 4/4 while playing the 5-note open string combination was curiously difficult. It is, after all, exactly what I’m doing when playing the burbles. But as I left the calisthenics behind and moved into working on Guitar 3, counting it in the context of the part was a piece of cake. I think it’s something like… at this point what I’m actually playing in the burbles sections is a melody as it wends its way through the underlying rhythm of the piece. Not a rhythmic pattern. Whereas in my warmup it’s just an abstract exercise of division of attention in which the notes themselves have no particular significance.
Something like that.
The calisthenics are definitely helping. Worked on Guitar 3 focused on the transitions at first and then moving to larger and larger contexts until I was running the entire piece. All at performance tempo, and by the end of the hour pushing that up into the “too fast” region. Played along with the Show of Hands recording for the final 10 minutes. The tempo of that recording, after practicing somewhat faster, had the desired effect of the feeling that I’m settling down into the correct tempo rather than racing to catch it, and the relaxation that goes with that is audible to me. I feel like I have all the time in the world.
Limb rotation still a little shaky on Guitar 3, but getting there. Mostly I think that I get distracted when anticipating the transitions, and it flies out of my mind. One or two sections later I suddenly think, “oh wait a minute, where am I supposed to be?” And at that point I’m no longer taking as much care of the Music. It will come.
Current plan is to stick with the calisthenic warmups for the rest of the week, as they benefit whatever part I’m playing, but move my focus to Guitar 4 for a few days. I’ll be doing a presentation of the Bass Part on Saturday. Even though it is the part I usually play in performances, and certainly the one I am most confident in, I feel like I’ll need to be extra sharp for that.

Tuesday January 28 2025

8:30 am
Today felt like a minor breakthrough day. Began with right hand work on the open D and A strings. Various combinations, until I landed on the 3-2 combination that the burbles require. Counting at all times. Gradually increasing the tempo, ultimately landing at 76. Frankly, if I didn’t have professional obligations coming up this morning I could have stuck with that for a long time. Right hand is beginning to return. As it was, I did stretch this part of the hour out longer than originally planned.
Counting in 4/4 while playing the 5-note open string combination was curiously difficult. It is, after all, exactly what I’m doing when playing the burbles. But as I left the calisthenics behind and moved into working on Guitar 3, counting it in the context of the part was a piece of cake. I think it’s something like... at this point what I’m actually playing in the burbles sections is a melody as it wends its way through the underlying rhythm of the piece. Not a rhythmic pattern. Whereas in my warmup it’s just an abstract exercise of division of attention in which the notes themselves have no particular significance.
Something like that.
The calisthenics are definitely helping. Worked on Guitar 3 focused on the transitions at first and then moving to larger and larger contexts until I was running the entire piece. All at performance tempo, and by the end of the hour pushing that up into the “too fast” region. Played along with the Show of Hands recording for the final 10 minutes. The tempo of that recording, after practicing somewhat faster, had the desired effect of the feeling that I’m settling down into the correct tempo rather than racing to catch it, and the relaxation that goes with that is audible to me. I feel like I have all the time in the world.
Limb rotation still a little shaky on Guitar 3, but getting there. Mostly I think that I get distracted when anticipating the transitions, and it flies out of my mind. One or two sections later I suddenly think, “oh wait a minute, where am I supposed to be?” And at that point I’m no longer taking as much care of the Music. It will come.
Current plan is to stick with the calisthenic warmups for the rest of the week, as they benefit whatever part I’m playing, but move my focus to Guitar 4 for a few days. I’ll be doing a presentation of the Bass Part on Saturday. Even though it is the part I usually play in performances, and certainly the one I am most confident in, I feel like I’ll need to be extra sharp for that.

Wednesday January 29 2025

8:45am
Awake even earlier than usual, but arose a little later than usual. I don’t understand what is going on here. Actually, I have a theory, but it’s not germane to an “Eye of the Needle Project Diary,” so I’ll leave it at that. Late yesterday afternoon my last student of the day had to cancel at short notice, so I suddenly had a free hour. I decided to follow up on the calisthenic work that had been so useful in the morning. The more of that, the better, I say. It was great. I was really cooking and finding at least a taste of the effortless, fleeting though it may be, that I wish for at faster speeds. More flow. Less audible tension. It was great. At the end of the hour I was very enthusiastic about my progress. Put my guitar aside and began to look at some practicalities, mostly dinner related, when I realized I was exhausted. Climbed into the easy chair, wrapped myself in a blanket, put my feet up, and then crashed completely for an hour. Life is weird.
This morning, after taking care of all the normal morning business, I sat down to practice. Began with right hand on open strings, as I’ve been doing for the past two weeks, beginning at 60bpm, but kicking it up to 68 in short order. The rhythmic patterns, played on two strings, evolved into combinations that mimic the melodies implied by the lead parts of EotN. The downbeat of each dominant sub-rhythm on the A string, everything else on the D string, all played with strict alternate picking. I counted this metronomically, first in eight notes and later in quarters, observing my breath. The aim is to have my right hand play the sub-rhythms musically, while remaining reliably in time with the metronome. These sub-rhythms are what the bass part needs lock onto in order for the part to “sing”. I counted the rhythms in all of the ways one can, while checking in to see if at any time I was adding tension to my body, or holding my breath.
When I play the bass part with a group, it really is the subdivisions I that I am most attuned to. Somewhere in there something is keeping a traditional “count”, and I can always access it when necessary. But the inner rhythms are what I am playing with, and when it is “happening” it is because my part isn’t just in time with the leads, but actually playing WITH the leads.
Ended the session with several runs through along with the Show of Hands recording, counting it all of the various ways one might. Partly self preservation, as I’ll need to be able to do this with authority on Saturday.
Now out into my day. A light one, work-wise, but there are several technical/practical tasks I need to do in preparation for Saturday.
That, and maybe a nap.

Thursday January 30 2025

10:30am
The good news: I finally slept through the night. The bad news: the cold I was feeling a hint of yesterday arrived with a vengeance.
Up at the normal early hour, rather than the abnormal early hour. That meant I didn’t quite have the luxury of all kinds of time for practice before my work day kicked in. Did get in a solid 45 minutes of work.
Primarily right hand calisthenics again, entirely on open strings in combinations that mirror the rhythm of the arpeggios in Eye of the Needle, in particular the 13/4 arpeggio. Once established, began to look at counting strategies. For me, counting these bars when I’m playing the moto perpetuo of the lead parts is pretty much a piece of cake. The bass part, on the other hand, is a little more difficult. Okay, a lot more difficult. While it is a “simpler” part, it requires a different kind of precision. I’ve been playing it for so long that counting is not technically necessary. The rhythm is in the lead part, and completely audible, so it is only a matter of playing along with that. And since I can also play the lead parts my body is quite comfortable with the rhythm.
But 1) this is a project about taking a fresh look at the piece, and 2) I need to present the part on Saturday, and being on my toes is a high priority.
Before I had to stop to change gears and prepare for my 9am student, I did see something remarkable that I will need to explore and verify. But it comes down to the fact that each bar naturally falls into 2 distinct sections, the first 8 beats and the second 5. A little Golden Ratio moment.
Didn’t have time to explore this in depth, or to determine if this is actually useful in any practical way. But I’ll come back to it for sure.
Heard back from one of my students. I was most concerned about her, as she is already immunocompromised. So now one hole has opened up in my afternoon, giving me the opportunity to come back to all of this.

2:31pm
Heard from all of my students. I now have the rest of the day off. I don’t blame them. If a student had shown up to their lesson sniffling and hacking as much as I am, without giving me advance warning, I’d be a little irritated. Went out. Picked up some chicken soup to go, because you know… Now I’m a counting-in-13-maniac. The plan, considering all the different ways people learn, is to present as many strategies for getting to the core of this part as I am able. Currently taking a break from a very tactile approach that uses the “body beat” step pattern to keep time while clapping the rhythm and counting out loud. 13/8 is solid. 13/4 is there, but a whole lot more cerebral and a whole lot less musical. Now back to it.

Friday January 31 2025

9:15am

Again slept through the night. Very happy about that. Realized that one side-effect of the problem I’ve been having with waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back to sleep is that when it happens I really don’t dream. Somehow that strikes me as unhealthy. So for the past two nights, in addition to getting the sleep my body needs, my mind has been allowed to go on adventures and have a little vacation.

As I’m still fighting this head cold, I did not set an alarm for the extra-early hour. I very definitely miss practicing in the pre-dawn stillness, but I also need to let my body recover. Much better today (so far) than yesterday.

I don’t teach on Fridays, but it is not a day off. It’s the day I set aside to take care of the little details it takes to keep a small business running – scheduling, paying bills, balancing accounts, and such nonsense. Also dealing with any personal matters that require more time than the spaces between my appointments allow.

So practice was strictly limited to 1 hour. Again, metronome work. After 2 weeks of this my beginning point is considerably faster, but still within the Eye of the Needle performance range. I’m occasionally tempted to push it up, and if calisthenics and chop building was the aim I certainly would. But as long as the aim is re-experiencing Eye of the Needle from the inside, out, we will stick to the 68-72bpm range.

All about rhythm and counting today. The bass part of this piece has unique challenges in that respect. It is the only part that has rests in it. It’s the only part that has note values of anything other than a sixteenth. So the fact that it “sounds like the easy part” is pure illusion, and the lines played during the 13/4 Intro and Midtro are a minefield of opportunities to lose the magic. My work yesterday and today has primarily been in identifying the various strategies that I use for playing this part with integrity.

But now back to the mundane.

4:00pm
Yikes. When your Friday office day coincides with both Month-End Closing for the business, and the deadline for closing your 2024 personal and business Federal Tax reporting, say “hello” to a deep 7-hour rabbit hole.

6:00pm

Note to self: Trying to get in some quality practice at the end of a day that was dominated by number crunching and otherwise "adulting" is a wasted effort.

Saturday February 1 2025

12:15pm
Eye of the Needle Bass Workshop went well, I think. After all these years of giving presentations like you’d think by now I’d be better at gauging how much information and experience can be packed into 60 minutes, but that level of wisdom still eludes me. I always want so much more. I also hate hearing the sound of myself yammer on, but with a screen full of muted guitarists, it is tough to keep it from turning into a 1-hour monolog. I miss feedback.
During the parts where I was playing the “lead” line over and over so that they could have the opportunity to practice timing the part, I kind of had to avert my eyes. The Zoom lag is tough to ignore and it’s very distracting to see a couple dozen right hands moving a half-beat or more late. And impossible to tell who was getting it right and who was in need of a little more guidance. I miss musical interaction.
That said, while the approach I’ve been taking in my efforts these last 3 weeks to return to the beginning with each of the parts of this piece, all of which I have played and performed at one time or another, may be an example of “assuming the virtue” or perhaps just wishful thinking, many little things have come to light. Like the counting exercise I presented today, they are not necessarily new insights by any definition, but you might say that I have over the years chosen to ignore them. Or something like that.
We’ll see. This cold I have been fighting seems to be well on its way out, and has left me physically exhausted. A day off is essential. Monday I begin unpacking Guitar 2.

Sunday February 2 2025

IAAD – day off
SGC – Curt takes cold recovery day off
NFL – off (well, “Probowl Games”, but that’s not football)

TO BE CONTINUED - ONWARD TO WEEK 4

2025-01-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 2

Monday January 20 2025

11:45am

I was awakened by my alarm at 6:30am, which took me by surprise because it meant I had actually slept uninterrupted through the night for the first time in several weeks. I found this oddly disorienting, and it took me some time to shake the unfounded feeling that I had overslept and was somehow beginning my day already running late.
Morning routine as usual, except that I elected to do my Eye of the Needle practice for the day before having breakfast.
I began by putting on headphones and listening to the recording of the piece from the 2005 Tuning the Air Jupiter Studio Sessions, which was posted on the website this morning. Listened 3 times. The aim was to listen “as if for the first time”. I failed spectacularly. Moved to the desk and picked up my guitar, tuned it, and articulated for myself what I would address today.
Began with 15 minutes of right hand warmup with the metronome at 60, which is at the low end of EotN tempo.
I am not setting a schedule by the calendar for this work over the next eleven weeks, but I remind myself that I will need to be mindful of everything I want to accomplish in this time, and to pace myself. At the bare minimum, my aim is to revisit all 4 parts and take a serious look at what each requires in terms of mechanics, music, and the guitarist inside. I had already decided that I was going to begin with Guitar 1, which we tend to refer to as the “basic lead” part.
Today I looked at the Intro; the A to C to A to F# sequence in 13. Played through it several times just listening to myself and making some mental notes about what needs attention. Then I took each section systematically apart and made some decisions about what I want to establish as reliable and consistent in the fingering for the left hand, and the accented picking in the right hand. Jotted some notes down on the “Practice Notes” document (link here) so that I can come back and review them later. Then focused on some of the details, particularly the transitions between each section, the place where an open string is incorporated, the transition from A to F# where the last note of A and first note of F# are both the same A but fretted with a different finger, and generally being as clear and intentional as am able throughout.
Played through the entire 4 bars a number of times, ultimately bringing the metronome up to 68, which is a pretty typical performance tempo. One detail that came to me a bit out of left field was the observation that when I practice Guitar 1 I always either play through the first bar rather than jump in at the middle where that part typically makes its entrance, or jump right in on those 2 repetitions of the pattern and then forge ahead. Today I adopted the practice of “playing” those tacit 6½ beats, hearing the high lead in my head, and entering where the part is supposed to enter. I find this very difficult.
During the final half dozen times through the section I added the limb rotation – or rather I paid attention to the limb rotation – at this point it is almost impossible for me to play the piece without some reference to this practice. But inviting it in with clear intention has an entirely different quality. How to practice the other aspects of the Guitarist Inside still eludes me.
After an hour I had to wrap up, so that I could eat some breakfast before my first student arrived. I found this irritating. I did, however, observe that when I sat down at 10am in my Teacher Role, something was different. I was different. More present, is my best clumsy attempt to describe it.

Tuesday January 21 2025

8:15am
The clock was set for 6am, but I awoke at 5:30 and didn’t fight it. I was very happy with yesterday’s after-sitting-before-breakfast work on Eye of the Needle, so decided I’m going to continue that whenever my schedule allows. Tomorrow I’m hosting the Central European Time Zone-appropriate Tea Time, which means I’ll be socializing on Zoom at 7am, so this time won’t always be available. But when I can I will.
Focus for today was preliminary work on the main body of the piece… the A-D-A’-F#-F# sequence.
First, 15 minutes of right hand warmup beginning generically and gradually moving to the string crossing patterns that this part of the piece requires, at 64bpm. The older I get the longer it takes me to get that hand going, and the lower my top end becomes. That’s just a fact.
Once warmed up, I played through the sequence several times without a metronome, just making mental notes about where decisions needed to be made and general observations about weak areas or areas of hazard. From there, to each section in turn, with the metronome still at 64. Most of the decisions about the use of the pivot were redundant, as I already did that yesterday with the intro, but I dutifully made the notations the Notes document to formalize each. Likewise with the particulars of the accented picking, which is one of my tasks for the course. So the A, A’, and F# sections were quickly dispatched.
About the D section, however. Even when I had younger and more supple hands, the fingering adopted to eliminate the 4th finger pivot between G and D that involves stretching the 3rd finger out to play the G, has been clunky. No matter how in-shape my hands are, and how well warmed up I am, there is a subtle interruption of the flow, tone, and timber, of that sequence. My answer to that problem, which I adopted a couple of years ago, may well be the most heretical practice in my approach this piece in a series of practices I am working with that go against the established canon. That is, I play the open G string on every repetition, not just the final transition. This is what I came into the course with, and what was and is my intention to formalize. The primary challenge with this approach is in the right hand, as the tone of the open string will make that note pop out if it isn’t handled with care. But I’ve been working with it for some time, and if any of my bandmates have ever noticed that I’m doing it, they have remained silent on the subject. And my bandmates are not noted for their inclination to remain silent when something needs to be said. But I’ll come back to this.
Moving on, having gone through each part and articulated each of the decisions, jotting them down in the Notes document, I moved on to looking at the challenges of the transitions. As there are open string transition notes, and I’ve been employing these since the beginning, accuracy of the notes is not terribly challenging for me. The primary challenge is making clean, clear, and graceful position shifts. Shifting clumsily tends to make the first note of any section pop out, and it is (sometimes painfully) audible. The primary culprit of course is the shift from A to D, and there is no better way to kill the piece that for someone to miss that transition by a half step.

One nice thing that is possible with the 4/4 section is that if practicing the transitions is the aim, it can be facilitated by just playing one bar of each section and just cycling through them over and over. So after looking at each transition individually to identify the challenge for each, that is what I did. I noticed that when practicing I rarely look at my hands, even for the leap to D. I don’t think this is always true when performing or rehearsing (note to self to look into this), but when practicing it seems to be my way. The no-look leap to D is definitely hit or miss.
As yesterday, I wrapped up the hour playing through the entire 20 bars many times, keeping in mind the decisions I had made and an ear out for where further attention is required to ensure the quality of musicality I am aspiring to.
For the final few runs through I moved the metronome up to 68. Not a technically challenging leap, but even those 4 beats per minute bring with them a qualitative difference in the Music of the music. And I have long understood that as the tempo increases, I have less available headroom to micromanage my technique. I need to be confident that the choices I have made about the piece have sufficiently been built into the way I play it that I can rely on muscle memory to carry out my intentions. When adding the Guitarist Inside to the mix, this is even more necessary.
As I was running the section at the higher speed, the 4th finger of my left hand occasionally did something interesting. A nearly 40-year-old muscle memory perhaps. I played the G-to-D combination with a pivot. This surprised me because reinstating the 4th finger pivot in that section was never even on my radar. So I took a few extra minutes to explore this. Found that right now it is definitely not reliable. But I also saw that when done well, it works. No sign of unwieldy hand contortions. Both notes clear and well-articulated. Not ready re-adopt the practice. But I believe I’m going to make a a little side project out of it just to see if it leads anywhere.
Now into my day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I actually had to consult the score to verify that open E was the transition from F# back into the Midtro. I hadn’t been practicing that way. Didn’t think it would be necessary since they’re both in the same position. But after I sped the tempo up a little I caught myself occasionally playing it. More muscle memory asserting itself. Even then I didn’t really believe it. But it persisted. I chuckled – hotshot Eye of the Needle guy can’t remember how the part goes – and pulled out the score.

Wednesday January 22 2025

7:35am
Again awoke before my alarm. As a trend I am finding this a bit irritating. But it did mean that I had the time for my morning routine AND my Eye of the Needle hour before hosting the Tea Time for Europe Zoom call. And as my day begins to get a little complicated in a few hours, this was ultimately a good thing.
Day Three with Guitar 1. This was a kind of wrap up day for the first level of work with this part, covering the middle A in 13 out to the end. No technical notes, because the basic material here is all repeated from earlier in the piece and the decisions I made in the previous two days all carry over. Most of my work was with the unique transition challenges this section poses.
Right hand warmup for 15 minutes. My playing is clumsy. Persevere.
Since this was all about transitions, the first part of the work was simply looking at each transition individually and being explicit about what has to happen in each. I’ve been playing guitar for a very long time and I’m pretty good at blowing through transitions like this without breaking much of a sweat, but actually breaking them down in this was is always enlightening. Sometimes I begin with just the final note of one part and the first note of the next in order to actually see what my hand needs to do. If there is a leap (A to D), how far is it, really. Then maybe the last 4 notes of the first and the first 4 notes of the next. And from there just continue to extend each out from the transition point until I’m playing both sections in their entirety.
So: F# into A(13) remembering to use that open E string. A(13) into D; both a leap and a transition from 13 into 4/4. D into A’ just like in the first half, so kind of a freebee. And A into the coda. Except for A into D, nothing here that takes a great deal of time. Just clarity.
The challenges of the coda are little different, if only because the transitions happen very quickly, so I spent a little time looking at those challenges.
All in all, about 30 minutes to cover everything. Took a few runs through today’s material, from the last 4 bars of F# on out to the end. Then moved to playing the entire composition from beginning to end at 68, remembering to include at least the limb rotation, and observing how reliably I can remember all of the little decisions I’ve made the past three days. Not bad. Most of what I heard that was unsatisfactory was mechanical, not lapses in attention.
Interestingly, at what is sort of the middle part of performance tempo, on the D section the 4th finger pivot spontaneously won. It wasn’t even close. So I believe that I’m going to formalize that… right up until such time as I decide to change it.
What today’s work made very clear for me is that for the rest of the week my practice will be calisthenic, using sections of the piece as material, and more generic exercises that support these skills. Next week I’m moving on to Guitar 3, most of which is identical to Guitar 1, so the primary focus will be the transitions in and out of the “burbles”. Any chops work I do now on this part will benefit that one. And while Guitar 2 has some particularly unique challenges, it is still based on this part, so all prep work will support it.
In one of those “where did that come from?” moments, somewhere in the middle of all this the thought came to me that I need to put a marathon “Eye of the Needle Bass Part” workshop on the calendar. Thinking Saturday after next (Feb 1).

Now, out of my cave and into the world for a few hours.

Thursday January 23 2025

8:00am

Awoke early, but for once not earlier than planned. This needs to be a day of conservation of energy. First student on Zoom in an hour. Last student will leave at 7pm. And I have a gig at 10pm, so I’ll be getting home around 2am. No room for nonsense.

Changed things up a little. Had breakfast before sitting down to practice. Then a solid hour of practice. The first half was largely right hand work, using cross picking in string patterns that are used in Eye of the Needle, but not parts of the piece per se. Began at 60bpm, but moved it up incrementally until I got to 70. Then 15 minutes of work on the various arpeggios used in the piece, but not in context. Mostly focused on RH/LH coordination and maintaining consistency in volume, timbre, attack, volume, and duration. Flow, in short.

For the final 15 minutes I played through the piece beginning to end, with the Guitarist Inside, each time a little faster, watching for the various places my execution begins to falter occur. At the end I was at 74bpm, which frankly sounds too fast to me regardless of how well it’s played. But working with the 5% rule, which states that I need to be able to play any piece well at a tempo at least 5% faster than it should be played, so that when I’m actually performing it I have the sensation of relaxing back into the tempo rather than straining forward toward it. It’s a dopey little trick but it has served me well.

So by the end of the hour, 68bpm was pretty comfortable. 70 okay. At 72 I’m sounding noticeably shaky. At 74, lucky to get through it.

I do have to observe that at anything above 64bpm I’m really not fond of the way I sound on the coda using downstrokes. There is an unpleasant choppy aggressiveness that is utterly contrary to the Music.

Ah well. Moving on.

Friday January 24 2025

3:00am
My big takeaway from a year of monthly gigs with Black Dogs: “Chicks dig harmonica players.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10:30am
Definitely no problems sleeping through the night, that’s for sure. The problem with sleeping in is that I begin the day feeling like I’m already late for everything. It’s a psychology thing. No matter.
Awake at 8:45. Morning routine. Head for the guitar.
Solid hour of very good work. For the first 45 minutes, purely calisthenics aimed at getting myself up to the tempo the piece requires. Lots of EotN-adjacent arpeggios and right hand cross picking patterns, but not the piece itself. Began at 60. Ended reasonably comfortable at 74. If I keep this up there might be hope. And we’re only two weeks into the project, so reason for optimism.
Ran the piece a couple of times at a couple of different tempos. Over 70bpm is still basically a hack-job. It occurred to me to play along with the recording we posted at the beginning of the week. Metronomes are irreplaceable tools, but they aren’t musicians, after all. Lo and behold, 67bpm. Very doable.
Played along several times. Made some mental notes about places I’m not consistent in executing my choices. Today, for some reason, it was mostly clamming open string transition notes. That’s a new one.
I was actually having a lot of fun and could have gone on longer, but Zoom waits for no man.

Saturday January 25 2025

8:00am

Awake normally early, rather than painfully early. This allowed me to get my EotN hour in before heading up the hill to Seattle Circle’s monthly Open Circle.

Today had a transitional quality. Bringing the week of Guitar 1 focus to a completion, which in turn points to the path forward. In the past couple of days it has become clear that what is primarily keeping my technical execution of this part from being up to the quality I aspire to is not a matter of knowing how the piece goes or remembering what finger goes where, when, or what direction my pick should be traveling at any given moment. It’s just chops. Very simple. And with 9 weeks still ahead I can very clearly see how a tangible improvement can be made over the balance of this project.

So, I practiced with that in mind. 45 minutes of focused calisthenics with the challenge level turned up a bit, and then played though the piece a number of times for the final 15 minutes. The Guitarist Inside continues to be the biggest mystery.

Monday, moving on to Guitar 3. As this is mostly the same part, with the added challenge of popping in and out of the 5-note running “burble” figure, I see this taking a day or two. Then on to Guitar 2 which is more of a technical challenge, but still calls on the same essential skills and applies the same musical forms I’ve been working with the past two weeks.

1:00pm

Home from the Open Circle, which I conducted because Brad is down with a very bad cold. By the end of the day, in honor of the IAAD's work for today, I had a number of guitarists in OST "burbling".

Sunday January 26 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

NFL – afternoon on

TO BE CONTINUED - ONWARD TO WEEK 3

2025-01-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE DIARY

Week 1

Monday January 13 2025

Began the day as usual, and with a short sitting specifically to acknowledge the beginning of the course. Breakfast and coffee. Check the updates on the website. Minor rearrangement of my workspace to facilitate 90 days of work on Eye of the Needle.

Tuned with a tuning fork (a rare occurrence these days, but something I am re-adopting for this course).

Took inventory by playing through each of the parts once: 1) basic lead, 2) basic lead with “burbles”, 3) high octave and harmony lead, 4) bass. No metronome. A few interruptions. Simply taking stock of where I am today, at the beginning of the project. Also making mental notes about technical weaknesses that could use some work, consistency of fingering and right hand. This takes about 20 minutes.

Put the guitar on its stand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Put the “Eye of the Needle Evolution” playlist on as I prepared for my workday. Noticed something for the first time; on the December 1986 WMMR recording someone is playing the high octave on the middle A Minor. Robert, I expect. It's still in 4/4 - that change doesn't appear in my recordings for more than a year. There's always something new to hear. Live and learn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesson with a student working on EotN. Hear myself giving very down to earth practical advice on how to approach taking a piece you “already know” up to the next qualitative level. It occurs to me that I should listen to myself on this subject.

Tuesday January 14 2025

Taking my own advice from yesterday, and acknowledging that EotN won’t be formally introduced to the project until next week, began my day with 30 minutes of generic calisthenics specifically chosen to hone the right and left hand challenges that the composition brings. Could have easily gone on longer, but a guy has to earn a living.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After hosting the IAAD “Tea Time” I spent a few minutes enumerating how I will go about addressing Eye of the Needle afresh. Aims, under the headings “Technical/Mechanical”, “Musical”, and “The Guitarist Inside”. At the top of the page I typed:

Work daily
Remain open to the appearance of refinements and adjustments to the specifics, including abandoning some of them, as the process unfolds

Wednesday January 15 2025

Ah, Day 3. Predictably the drudgery kicks in.

For one thing I mysteriously didn’t sleep much last night. No idea why. Before first light, I just gave in and got up. Took care of my morning routine, and then sat down to practice. Sticking with refraining from practicing the piece itself, for now, in favor of calisthenics designed to support the piece. Will keep this up until next Monday. But unlike yesterday, there was really no joy in it. Good solid and useful work, and after 45 minutes my hands had certainly come to life. Now day has begun out there. Traffic sounds louder than usual, which suggests that it is overcast. A typical Seattle winter morning, and I am moving out into a rather busy day.

Thursday January 16 2025

Over the Day 3 hump. It didn’t hurt that I got some sleep last night. Right hand work, with metronome, on open strings this morning. Focused on one particular skill that the slightly heretical approach I’m taking with EotN on this project requires. I knew I had my mojo back when, after 30 minutes, I had to stop because a student was arriving, and I kind of resented it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I always do for these courses, I formally added The Exercise Of Contact At A Distance to my morning sitting as of Monday. We are, after all, taking part in a project together, at a distance. But this morning it occurred to me that the exercise may be one good avenue for the inquiry I identified at the beginning, asking what it means “to hold good will in my breast and send good wishes to the other players and audience.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a little “free” time I had after lunch, before I needed to swing back into Teacher Mode, I did a deep dive into harmonic analysis on EotN. Nothing I didn’t already know, but down to a new degree of specificity. Quite interesting. Over-analyzing the piece can be really distracting, doesn’t actually add much, and tends to suck us into a whole lot of geeky blah-blah-blah discussions. So I generally don’t emphasize the harmonic movement much, beyond its practical usefulness in mapping out and visualizing the form, when I’m presenting the piece. But one of our suggestions on this course is going to be to begin by listening to the piece, “as if for the first time”. I’ve been listening to this piece fairly regularly since December 1989, so that is going to be a tall order. So for myself, I’m hoping that taking a little time today to actually look at the scales implied by each section is one way I can hear from a slightly different perspective.
But is really is a rabbit hole I need to be careful not to step too deeply into. It drains my energy

Friday January 17 2025

Up before first light. Morning routine. Breakfast. Checked in on the IAAD website for anything new. Then to the guitar.

45 minutes of arpeggio work. Not EotN – I’m still holding off on that until the group work on the piece formally begins on Monday – but definitely EotN-adjacent. After about 15 minutes of warming up, began to explore some right hand options. For the rest of the practice I worked with accented picking, endeavoring to keep the attack on notes as consistent and neutral as possible, as well as keeping my attention on maintaining time reliably; being careful about the time hiccup that the double downstroke can create. Also looked at where my strengths and weaknesses lie on the finger pivot. No surprise. First and second fingers, very reliable. Third finger, good in the right situation. Pinky, forget it. Ended with five or ten minutes of the long top-fret-to-the-bottom-fret run from the end of the C Phrygian section of Bicycling, on endless repeat, using accented picking rather than alternate. Very interesting. I believe I’ll be coming back to that one.

Fridays are the “office day” at Golden Music Enterprises – Do the books, pay the bills, take care of correspondence, set up and confirm my teaching schedule for next week, run errands, and all of that kind of stuff. So unlikely to have an opportunity to get back to the guitar before late afternoon.

The workstation until April

Saturday January 18 2025

Up very early again. This trend wasn’t part of the plan, but that seems to be how it’s unfolding. Morning stuff and then an hour on the guitar. Worked on the PRS unplugged, because it’s before dawn on Saturday morning and I actually like my neighbors.
Mostly generic calisthenic work this morning, but all with an eye on accented picking, as well as a bit of finger pivot work. Began with the first primary, but played in triplets with the picking accented in 3’s. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it comes pretty easily for me. More difficult is when I put it back in duple time but maintain the accents in 3’s. I lose track very easily and find that the only way I can hang with it for any extended period is to over-emphasize the accents. This is precisely the habit I’m hoping to breed out of my hands by the end of this project. But for the short term I’m afraid I’m going to have to live with it.
Pivot work was the most EotN-like material of the morning. Subbing the seventh for the root of triads with the root at the top, ala the first 6 notes of EotN, was the basic material. But taking it up the neck or across the fretboard in diatonic C Major triads. Somewhere in there is an exercise that might be useful, but for today it was mostly just a lot of exploration. One thing that playing the electric guitar did point up for me is how much sloppy pivoting affects intonation. Since the strings are so much lighter it is much more obvious. But if it happens here it is certainly happening on the acoustic. Note to self to pay attention next time I pick up the Ovation.

I have to say I’m having fun reacquainting myself with bits and pieces of Afghanistan. It’s been dormant for me for a long time, but recently it has been brought up by a number of students. Doubt I’ll ever again have the chops to play it like I did when I was in my late 30’s, but it really is kind of a catchy little number.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IAAD has the day off tomorrow, but I don’t. Moving on to guitar practice for the band I actually play with every week. I have new material to memorize. Monday, then.

Sunday January 19 2025

IAAD – day off

SGC – morning on

NFL – ‘til the cows come home

TO BE CONTINUED - ONWARD TO WEEK 2

2025-01-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE NOTES

Work daily

Remain open to the appearance of refinements and adjustments to the specifics,
including abandoning some of them, as the process unfolds

TO DO:

Set up and keep up Eye of the Needle IAAD-specific diary.
1/14: Done. Click here to link

AIMS:

Technical/Mechanical

Reestablish accented picking
o Ensure timing is consistent and reliable
o Minimize overemphasis
Identify and formalize pivot choices
Work available tempo up to 72-74bpm reliably

Musical

Restore competence and ease with all parts
o Articulate musical intentions for each part

Bass: projection and singing quality, without overplaying

Leads: flow and continuity, attention to position shifts

Okay, for the high lead simply achieving minimal competence in the upper octave Intro/Midtro sections will be a satisfying and major accomplishment

Guitarist Inside

Not exactly sure how to go about this. Some ideas…

Strengthen the connection between the form and the limb circulation
Gain some understanding of what it is to hold good will in my breast and send good wishes to the other players and audience

1/16. Pay attention to the EoCaaD in the morning sitting
1/20. Practice it, no matter how inept you are

What is contained in Lord Have Mercy? And how is an old reprobate supposed to understand it, let alone put it into practice in a meaningful way?

_________________________________________________________________________________

PRACTICE NOTES

1/20 – focus on intro

Accented picking: ~~3-3-3-2-2~~  (see 1/27)
Pivots:                2nd inversion 2nd finger between strings 2&3
                               Root position first finger between strings 1&2
Attention to transition notes, especially doubled A between A and F#
Remember to practice the first 6½ tacit beats

1/21 – focus on G1 main body – A-D-A’-F#-F#

Accented picking: 3-3-3-3-4
Pivots:                A: 2nd finger on G&C on strings 2&3
                                D: same for C&F
                              A’: 1st finger between A&C on 1&2
                              F#: same
Attention to attack on open string transition notes: match timbre and volume to the rest of the melody
Final G of D pattern: abandoned the 3rd finger stretch because I simply can’t play it musically. Two alternatives: 1) open G string, 2) 4th finger pivot. TBD. 1/22: the 4th finger pivot wins.

1/27 – focus on Guitar 3

Play more on fingertips to avoid accidental muting of transition notes
Care for transition notes – blend attack, timber, duration – flow
Accented picking adjustment: when playing main figures in 4/4, back to alternate picking on final 7 notes of each phrase. Basically, the second “3” will be the only place the picking is reversed. 3-3-3-7

2/3 – focus on Guitar 2

Accented picking: Same as Guitar 1

Pivots: Same as Guitar 1 when unison/unison octave

Alternate A of Intro (bar 3): no 4th finger pivot between strings 1-2; use fingers 4-3

Harmony A and F#: 2nd finger between strings 2-3, 4th finger between strings 1-2

2/4 update: taking out all pivots above 12th fret except the 1st finger pivot on F#

Open string transitions: Review and formalize, incorporate into practice. If playing the high octave in the Coda, ignore the open G transition from final D – this l connects more musically/melodically to the first F# of Coda

Find warmup calisthenics to strengthen and smooth out arpeggios above the 12th fret

How the hell do I keep the open D string from sounding when I remove my first finger?

What They're Saying About the Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists Performances in the Midwest

2016-06-20T13:27:00.003-07:00

Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists
2016 Midwest Tour
Minneapolis MN, Madison WI, Chicago IL

Audience Feedback

Re Madison, from a friend

Hello league pals - just a quick note to say, WOW. The concert you put on in Madison completely exceeded my and my local friends’ expectations. The use of the guitars in that room, the exciting improv, the sound of the instruments approaching & leaving the space re-defined for me what a concert experience can be. Playing parts of pieces bunched together then fanning out - incredible. The 30-D soundscape you all created was unique and marvelous, and brought me to tears several times. Thank you so much for that gift - the sounds and sonics you made in that space will remain unforgettable in my music mind. Bravo, and hope the rest of the shows are awesome for you. Safe travels, and thanks again! It was great seeing you all.

Email from Westwood Lutheran Church, Minneapolis

Dev –

Thank you for the kind note. Of all of the ensembles we have hosted recently at Westwood, none has been more thoughtful and considerate of our space than yours. We are grateful! And I am so glad to hear the concert went well. I heard amazing reviews from some of the Westwood folks who were there.

If the recording made last night become public, please do let me know as I would enjoy listening.

All my best,

Email, re Minneapolis

Wow, I really loved the show last night in St. Louis Park, MN! I got to wondering if it was the audience that controlled the lengths of the songs and wondered if we should not clap until the guitarists removed their hands from the necks of their guitars. Very memorable performance!

Email to Curt Golden, re Chicago

hi, Curt - I wanted to send a note of thanks for the performance last night by you and the rest of the Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists (and if you could pass it along - you’re the only one who’s email I have!) It was incredibly powerful and a testament to artistic commitment and excellence,, joy, and a truly generous offering to all of us in the audience. I was pretty much moved to tears during the opener and the sense of amazement didn’t cease the entire time. I know a program like that takes time and effort and I appreciate all that went into it.

I actually took a New Standard Tuning weekend course you taught in 2005 in Atlanta. I loved it and it made me realize the kind of dedication the guitar needs and I’d probably have to give up my other instrument to do it. So, I put more effort into harmonica, my 1st axe (we also exchanged emails a couple of years ago because I’d heard & liked your blues band featuring your harmonica work). I also wanted to mention that I showed up to that course in 2005 very dissonant and ignorant, not just about guitar but other things. I see it now that I’m studying to be a Zen Buddhist teacher. People show up to beginning courses that I assist with sometimes with that same twitchiness. They don’t know better but we’re taught to harmonize with them without judgement and you did the same for me during the course, which I didn’t realize til now but really appreciate.

Overheard at the Merch Table:

“You guys should go to the White House to play.”

Email from First Unitarian Society, Madison

Hi Dev,

I hope you travels are going well. I just wanted to thank you for choosing FUS as your Madison venue. I was really impressed and fascinated by the organization of all your members and your ease of communication. I caught part of the concert – so refreshing, and interesting – a real audio experience.

FUS Facility Coordinator

Email to Curt from a (skype) student (OST) in the Chicago vicinity:

re. Robert Fripp & The Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists - you were right. My mind is blown. Bravo to you and all your cohorts!

One interesting thing - after the multi-lingual introduction/announcement and before the start of the concert the whole room became quite still. I felt like the stillness was an actual physical thing and then two guys sitting behind me started commenting on the silence and somehow broke it. I felt a disappointment at that point.

With respect to the performance:

Pretty amazing. I didn’t expect it to be more than music but it was movement (is that stuff choreographed?) and the space itself. It occurred to me that the only way to experience the performance was to be there, in the middle of it. No recording, even video, could do it justice. Still, I did procure a copy of the DVD on sale at the merch table (but haven’t watched it yet).

Where does that music come from? I mean, I know where Red comes from, but all the other stuff? Is it improvised? I guess the classical piece that you played up in the balcony is written out.

Also, I noticed that you all appear to “pass” a note from one to another with a gesture to the “recipient” but sometimes there was just the gesture and no note - what’s that about?

All in all, a great show from my point of view. I really appreciated the opportunity to be there.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Robert Fripp and the Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, Westwood Lutheran Church. It was a surreal combo of performance art and sonic immersion. The 30 guitarists made sounds similar to piano, harpsichord, whales and bees.

Facebook Comments

“Thank you for blessing us with your music this week! It was wonderful to have some behind the scenes rehearsal performances :)” – Westwood Lutheran Church, Minneapolis
“The performance was so full of joy -- thank you for bringing your wonderful music to Minneapolis!”
“Incredible web of mystery bliss” – Madison
“What an amazing concert this was! I am still thinking about it and can hear the incredible sounds. Thank you for coming to Madison!” – Madison
“My favorite shows are always the ones that might me want to go right out and play music.

Tonight’s show was something else entirely though. Changed the way I see approaching performances, the use of the space and interplay of all the performers was just mind blowing. I think it’s going to take a few days for this one to sink in. Thanks to all the crafty guitarists tonight for a truly incredible show and feeding me a ton of inspiration.” – Chicago
“Thank you for the memorable show! It was amazing!!” – Minneapolis
“Still trying to recover from last night's experience. I experienced synesthesia for the first time and I wasn't even looking for it. Add to that the fact that Robert Fripp played his guitar on my ear. And when I mean on my ear, I mean I could rest my head on the guitar. Jaanus had to pinch me afterwards just to assure me it actually happened.

Music coming from everywhere, communicating from one end of the venue to the other. Players upstairs and downstairs. Conversations in music triggered by non verbal language, plus a couple of classics thrown our way. Painting the room with musical colors.

I can go on, but I think you get the point that I can't really put the experience into words.”
“Midway into the show, seven crafty guitarists appeared in those seven arches and stayed there for a good 10 or 15 minutes in a musical volley with the group across on the other balcony by the organ. The whole evening was visually stunning, but that was the moment I would've most like to document with a quick picture.” – Chicago

Chicago show review from Facebook

Robert Fripp and his Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists were absolutely incredible, one of the most unique and interesting performances I can recall in many years: Twenty nine acoustic guitar players, I believe, including their fearless leader, all dressed in black and completely unplugged (more shiny black Ovation acoustics with a cutaway than I've ever seen in one place, and some very nice Taylor's and otherwise, too), fully mobile, moving in circles through the chapel in groups and subgroups, suddenly appearing in balconies for extended hymnal jaunts, or six inches behind your head with a tiny chromatic lick just for you before moving on down the row. There was literally no barrier between the band and the audience, it was all one space throughout. They traded riffs across the room and ran rhythms and chords around the building in bidirectional circular waves. It sounded at times like a gigantic modular harp which could divide and subdivide itself on a whim. It was the quietest and most observant audience situation you could possibly imagine. King Crimson popped up a couple few times to great effect among extended segments of angelic twinkling, mathical headbanging, and lots of other moving musical motifs and blends for which I have no proper terms. R. Fripp himself was far from the spotlight for most of the night, entering and exiting the group quietly throughout the performance, and slowly taking more direct control as they neared the encore, which he conducted in real time after mostly observing large portions of the set from a close vantage in the shadows. The humor, humanity and openly joyful nature of the production only complemented the stupendously disciplined musicianship and perfectly executed group dynamics on display for the entire 100 or so minutes.

The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 13

2015-08-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday August 23, 2015 – Part II

Seattle, WA

9:48pm – the home office

I had a 10:15am lobby call. Having done most of my packing yesterday and before I went to bed last night, I took it easy in the morning. Breakfast, a long shower, writing, final packing, and checking out of the room. The van, courtesy of Frank Ocean, arrived on time, and we loaded the first LAX-bound wave of OCGers – the Seattle Six, plus Leo, Tom, Marian, Jon, and Jacopo – heading home. For the Seattleites, a couple of hours to kill at the airport, so we piled into a restaurant at the airport to pass the time. Flight on time. I slept most of the way. Everyone home safe and sound.

Mostly packed, and ready to say goodbye to this carpet

Melvin says "welcome home you bastard."

<--- Previous Post

The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 12

2015-08-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Sunday August 23, 2015 – Part I

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

1:54am – my inside office

Home from the gig, and a lovely end of project dinner with the entire team. Packing as much as possible before I fall into bed. Out the door at 10:30am.

It was really a splendid gig. The stuff that that was shaky going in, was shaky in performance, but it was a lot of fun, and the audience was completely with us. The two When Ready, Begin’s were the real deal; played with authentic gusto and good humor. In the second one, out of seemingly nowhere I felt the impulse to get the team into motion, and they went for it. Wonderful. No one was expecting it. We had done nothing with this practice in rehearsals. But it was totally great. I pulled us out into the room for the middle section of Asturias as well.

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 11

2015-08-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Saturday August 22, 2015

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

9:50am – my inside office

We have a long free morning to go with yesterday’s afternoon and evening off, so I stayed in bed a bit before heading down to breakfast. Met with Hernan and Mika at 9am to work through the set list for the show this evening. Our schedule for the day:

1:30 – Lobby Call

2:00 – Uber to Venice

3:00 – Arrive, move in to assess the space, sound check and set-up

6:00 – Quiet time

6:30 – Doors open

7:00 – Showtime

8:30 – Final meeting

9:00 – tbd

____________________________________________________________________________

Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists

August 22, 2015

Full Circle, Venice, CA

Entrance – Procession Chords in Bb Major

Bb Major Cascades

When Ready, Begin

Circulation – A Minor

Eye of the Needle

Lunlunta in C Hexatonic

Razor Whip

Blockhead

When Ready, Begin (with the Orchestra in motion, led by Curt in the moment)

Circulation – Dotted-Fret Magic Chord Notes ending with Quiet Chord

Thrak

Circulation – C Harmonic Minor

Voices of Ancient Children

Bells

Driving Force

Versus

Asturias (Orchestra in motion for middle section, led by Curt in the moment)

Exit – Procession Chords in D Minor

Encore – Free Circulation into Vrooom Coda

Encore – Whizz Until The World Is A Better Place

Second Encore - Calliope

With Erin, greeting the Orchestra as they arrive at Full Circle

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 10

2015-08-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

Friday August 21, 2015

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

5:00pm – my inside office

Scheduled half day.

We began as usual, with breakfast and a 9:45am lobby call to walk down to the dance studio we would be using for today’s rehearsal. The Logistics Team met at breakfast, primarily to look at tomorrow’s gig transportation, but it became instantly clear that there was some kind of mixup in our reservation for the rehearsal space. I excused myself to go work on the repertoire list, confident it would all work out, which evidently it did.

The rehearsal was 10am-2pm. Mostly we ran composed repertoire for final assessment and timing. “When Ready, Please Begin” called from time to time, to keep us on our toes. Discussion kept to a minimum. At the end, a quick meeting to discuss the Gig Day schedule, and then most of us were off for the afternoon and evening. I had a short meeting with Mika, Hernan, and Dev, to talk what would happen after the gig tomorrow night – the final meeting and dinner.

Many headed out to get out of Burbank and explore the more interesting side of LA. I opted for a long nap, supper by myself, a bit of reading in the hotel bar, passing the time with members of the team as they returned from their adventures.

Twinkling In Motion (courtesy of the owner of the dance studio)

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 9

2015-08-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday August 20, 2015

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

8:00pm – my inside office

A day utterly devoid of drama. I barely know what to do with myself.

Like yesterday we Ubered over to the rehearsal space. I opened the rehearsal with a review of the Guitarist Inside collected state exercise, and then ran the team through a 30-minute warm up designed to settle into the hands as well as working with very directed listening within the circle. We spent the rest of the morning reviewing the work we’ve been doing, with an eye to what might be useful for the performance. After the lunch break, I talked a little about what “When Ready, Begin” requires of us, and some strategies:

If you feel you have something to contribute, do so with conviction, without fear, and without asking for permission. Go for it without hesitation.
If you don’t have anything at the moment, trust your neighbors and teammates in the circle – join them in what they are doing, or respond with something that compliments it. Watch for circulations, conducted chords.
If you have nothing to contribute, contribute nothing, but with active and responsive intent.

For this session I asked people to call out any piece of repertoire that they felt might have a place in the performance. We played them with very little comment, simply to hear them, and to get a sense of what stage of performability they were. From time to time throughout this session I would without preamble simply call out, “Orchestra, when ready please begin”, and then we would go for it. Once established I generally cut them off. It was the “begin” part of the challenge that I wanted to address and revisit. I also occasionally checked in to see if my neighbors (a Pozzo to the left and another to the right) were paying attention, and initiated circulations out of the blue.

At this point, it was getting to be a long day. The next session was some much needed AT work with Erin.

For our final hour, we looked at “processing” (as in, engaging in a procession – Crafty-speak), and then talked through the pieces we had played after lunch, offering observations and comments, without delving too deeply into analysis. Hernan and I will sit down and have a look at which pieces we feel are both appropriate for the gig, and ready to be performed.

Practicalities, and then home. Some are going out to be treated to dinner by a local friend. I’m going to stick closer to home.

The Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists - Rehearsal at Center Staging

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 8

2015-08-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday August 19, 2015

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

8:25pm – my inside office

Today and tomorrow we are in the rehearsal studio. This involves a 10am lobby call and an Uber caravan. Not totally dignified, but more or less functional. Dev and I, however Ubered in the opposite direction, heading down to the Shrine Auditorium to settle some final details with Ocean’s tour management team. During the ride, a call with the hotel, as we needed to transition from Ocean’s tab to our own beginning tomorrow. An inexplicably more complicated transaction than one would think. Arrived at Shrine and headed back to the offices. Saw the last of the stage set being loaded into road cases and stacked for an afternoon load out. Our contact, while always professionally cheerful and amiable, looked decidedly bummed and generally bedraggled. The Production Manager was on the phone trying to explain to someone why the gig had been canceled. I sensed this was a conversation he was having often. Concluded our business, although there remain several practical (code: money) matters to be completed before we can say this is all over.

Next on our agenda was another Uber ride, this one down to Venice to meet Erin and visit a potential venue for an Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists gig on Saturday night. The Full Circle. When I saw the name of the venue, I was pretty much sold right there. Met the owner and a number of his people. Totally the right place. Walked through all of the necessary questions.

At about 3:30 we headed north, this time with Erin chauffeuring, to meet with the team at the rehearsal studio, confident that we had found the right place. Arrived at the studio at 4:30. The team was on break. For the next period, Erin took the lead with some AT exercises while Hernan, Steve, Dev, and I, put our heads together on the gig. All agreed, it’s a “go”. Began making confirmation phone calls.

I was feeling a little toasted at this stage, and elected to sit outside the circle for the final rehearsal session from 6pm to a little after 7. The team sounded great, right from the beginning. No shortage of things to attend to, but a group I would love to hear, and even more love to be a part of. Oh yeah, I am. Took advantage of this rare opportunity to get inside the circle for several pieces, and it was wonderful.

Quick meeting to announce the gig as well as a few practicalities, and then back to the hotel. Dinner is desperately needed.

Checking out Full Circle.

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 7

2015-08-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Tuesday August 18, 2015

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

7:25pm – my afternoon/evening office

Basically did not sleep last night.

The roller coaster continues. Morning rehearsals continuing with the Orchestral strategies and also moving on to testing the waters of available repertoire. All with an eye to performing this weekend. The domestic team is in and out of the rehearsal process as we look into work spaces, performance spaces, transportation options, and possible hotel relocation.

As we headed out for a lunch break, Dev appeared. Word from FOM that we are back on for the festival show. A combination of elation, confusion, and general giddiness. The message even included instructions regarding stage attire. The tech folk wanted Dev and one guitarist to come by the rehearsal space to test and check all the wireless rigs. I volunteered to be the guitarist, and we added Dani to the list since he is our sound liaison. Walked back to the hotel. Dev and I went to our rooms to change into more suitable attire, and for me to get my guitar and gear together. I was moving a little slowly, so the following text exchange occurred:

Me: I’ll be down in five minutes.

Dev: It looks like it’s off again. For good.

Me: I’m waiting for the smiley face.

Dev: No smiley.

Down to another group meeting, and back to an afternoon of re-re-tooling the plan.

At one point, the tech guy thought that Dev, Dani, and I, should come down anyway to do the tech work, just in case there was another change in plans, but FOM ultimately nixed that one.

I skipped the first afternoon rehearsal in favor of a shower and nap. It was clear as we approached the final rehearsal of the day that our energy was spent. An evening off is declared. For the domestic team, not so much, at least not right away. Steve booked the rehearsal/recording space 4 miles from here for tomorrow. We needed to figure out how we are going to get to and from.

I won’t hazard a guess what might come down the pike between one moment and the next. Every time my text alert rings, I wince.

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 6

2015-08-17T08:55:00.001-07:00

Monday August 17, 2015 – Part II

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

11:00am – my poolside office

So we’re up to date. Except… not.

Slept in as much as I ever do, which means I was out of bed around 7:30. Took my time. Showered. Wandered downstairs for breakfast. Many of the team in the dining room. Saw Jon sitting alone at a table, and joined him. Grabbed some breakfast and coffee, and chatted.

Just to my right, I sense the appearance of Dev, smiling with his phone in hand. “News?” “Yes, and it’s not good news. Today is cancelled, completely. Ocean is still in London, and won’t arrive until tonight. They are ceasing set construction, because there are elements Ocean needs to approve. They sound very stressed.”

Yeah, I imagine they are. I can’t imagine what this is costing them.

So, what for us. Day off? No, we need to work. A meeting quickly set up for the Management Team. Out on the deck by the pool. Not too shabby. Victor is already out scouting a close-by community center and church as possible rehearsal spaces. The conference room in the hotel is available, for a price, but it kind of sucks size-wise. But we will have a place to work. Dev sends out an email update, that the original plan is scrapped, but we will meet at the time we planned and move to whatever rehearsal space we can arrange on the fly, and take it from there.

If any of these delays were of our making, I’d be a stressed-out mess. But it is not in our control. So, we do what we do. I come out to my morning office space by the pool and type this journal. By this afternoon, everything may have changed again.

4:30pm – my afternoon office (aka, my hotel room)

An afternoon of very useful rehearsal. Three sessions, the first about an hour and the next two more in the 40-minute range. Hernan and Mika presented a number of circulation and improv techniques familiar to the European and South American teams. Nothing completely new to me, although the “razor” was a bit of a new twist I had not heard before. Mostly very fun stuff. One test run through of Thrak as a potential bit of repertoire to pin their ears back in the tech rehearsal (whenever that actually happens). No clue or sense what parts of what we examined, if any, will be of use in our work with Ocean, but in terms of building cohesion within the team… an absolutely irreplaceable investment of time and attention. We rehearsed entirely on our feet. Partly necessitated by the size of the hotel conference room, but also because we reason that we will be performing on our feet.

By the end of the afternoon it had begun to take its toll. So as I type this, Luciano is presenting Tai Chi. We have one more rehearsal session at 6pm, either out in the parking lot or on the terrace. Our opportunity to make a bit of noise, and give Tom M his first experience of The Whizz.

Not sure at this moment what tomorrow’s schedule will involve. Hopefully it will be what we had originally intended for today, but no guarantees.

7:20pm - my afternoon office

Well there you go. The text from Dev at 5:28pm reading “Need to see you ASAP.” Immediately knew this was not going to be good news. Headed up to Hernan’s room, where Dev informed me, Herni, and Mika, that the gig is cancelled. Not us… the gig. The whole gig. Ocean is still in England, he is still not happy with the record, and he is pulling the plug on playing the gig at all.

So, we will be on our way home as soon as flights can be arranged.

What a world. Probably lots to say about what all this means to Ocean financially at the very least. But that for later, if ever.

We talked about how to tell the team. Agreed that we needed to play some music, and so we kept the 6pm call with guitars, meeting in the lobby. We moved out to the parking garage where we had planned to rehearse anyway. I assigned magic chords chromatically from C# at the 1st fret up to D at the 14th fret, and back down again. And then we whizzed until the world is a better place. Afterward, I announced that we would all meet in Hernan’s room without guitars immediately.

Crowded into Herni’s room, where Dev delivered the news.

Having spent most of the past month seriously conflicted about this whole thing, I have to say I am genuinely disappointed.

8:28pm – my afternoon (now evening) office

8pm meeting in the lobby becomes the 8pm meeting in an unoccupied hallway outside of the conference room. The European and South American team, in their meeting, saw that trying to change their return tickets was going to be a nightmare and very likely impossible. Therefore, they will stay in LA and do something. For the North Americans, stay or go is a much easier process. If we go, a ticket will appear. If we stay, nothing changes. So, we are staying. It is not going to be free. There are logistics that need to be dealt with, and Ocean is not covering things like our hotels and our transportation and our meals. One or two will probably need to leave – for reasons of the personal capital they had expended to get here. But the rest are on, and when a voice rises up like that, who can say no?

For the evening meal we headed out to a burger and pasta kind of restaurant, and put together a table of some of the North American team along with Angelinos Erin and Nora (Carl’s sister) to brainstorm all of the possibilities, what we could do, where we could do it, what connections we have in LA and what kinds of favors we could pull in. Lists are made, to-do lists compiled. Not a relaxing evening meal. Went back to the hotel pretty wired and not particularly happy.


The view from my poolside office.

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 5

2015-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Monday August 17, 2015 – Part I

The Hotel, Burbank, CA

Of course, after that August 12 entry, things went into whirlwind mode, and I stopped writing. The last thing I typed had to do with “a different kind of pressure” kicking in. Little did I know.

From Wednesday morning we were indeed “on”. For the folks coming in from Europe and South America there was a lot of pressure and pervasive uncertainty. Necessary visas and last minute airline tickets. I was stressed mostly by proxy. All I needed to do was get on a plane. But it was all sorted out. The international players were all flying a day early in order to arrive in LA on Saturday so that they could have a day to get their feet on the ground. The North Americans all scheduled to arrive Sunday afternoon.

From my perspective, the success of this project revolves around how quickly and completely we can transform this diverse group of players into a single and unified team of players. We all have the grounding in a common practice, but there are differences in approach that need to be reconciled. I’m turning into a bit of a nag on this topic, but that’s me.

Miraculously, everyone arrives without incident. Guitars and luggage intact.

On Sunday afternoon, the 10 North Americans meet at LAX, find the van and driver hired to take us to the hotel in Burbank, and are whisked off to our LA headquarters; a very new, and by the standards of your typical semi-pro touring musician, downright luxurious hotel.

I don’t actually have any time to appreciate those aspects. I have a couple of minutes to drop my gear off and then get down to the lobby to meet the “management team” – Tour Manager Dev, Director Hernan, Music Director Mika, Sound Tech Dani, and Director Horacio, to head into town to have a look at the rehearsal space and meet with some of Ocean’s team. A 30-minute (on a Sunday afternoon) drive through LA to the Shrine Auditorium. An incredibly beautiful theatre. Here they are assembling the stage that will be used for the appearance at the FYF Fest. Lighting, sound, all just as it will be on Saturday at the sports arena.

The moment we walk in, it is clear that this process is a long way from completion. The original plan had been for us to rehearse there Sunday night. Clearly that ain’t going to happen, but we kind of already knew that. Since Dani is going to be our technical liaison, and Dev of course is the man in charge, we let them go talk to the people they need to get to know, and the rest of us stepped back into the shadows to kind of take it in and begin to visualize this show; that and staying the hell out of the way of union stage, tech, and teamsters.

Back to the hotel for 6pm inaugural meeting with the full team. We are in the conference room, which is really a bit small for us, but it is our only option for group work in the hotel. Around the room making brief introductions. A couple of people I don’t know, personally. A few I’m only acquainted with. And a whole lot that I’ve worked with for 10, 20, even 30 years. Very good discussion of what this gig requires of us. The plan is for us to head out for dinner afterward, but Ferni wisely suggests that getting together with guitars if only for 15 or 20 minutes. We take a short break to get our guitars, and meet again in the conference room, standing. Music Director Mika takes us through a couple of circulation strategies that they work with in BGE, involving full chords in whatever key is called. For me, very good to have to think fast like that. And it is really quite lovely. Maybe we can just do that for 25 minutes while Ocean sings over top? That would be something to see. Gets me quickly back in the groove. Steve proposes a couple of improv strategies. We can feel the group coming together very quickly. As we are quiet, and already over the time we set aside for “checking in with guitars”, but something is poking at me, so I initiate a simple circulation. Half a dozen times around the circle, and three chords at the end. What comes to my mind, and the immediately to my lips… “Ah. There we are.”

A walk into Burbank, a Thai restaurant located as a good option. Good food. A beer or two. Simple socializing for the team. Back to the hotel, a nightcap in the bar. While there, Ocean’s team contacts Dev with the schedule for Monday: to the Shrine in the afternoon, a couple hours for us to rehearse on our own, work with tech, dinner, and then a rehearsal with Ocean at 8pm. Wonderful. Up to bed and a good night’s sleep.

Shrine Auditorium - not quite ready for us

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The OCG Meets Frank Ocean, or Not - Part 4a

2015-08-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

Thursday August 13 - Sunday August 16, 2015

I failed to maintain my journal for the next few (totally crazy) days. I fill in the details on Monday August 17. But in the meantime, these:


Melvin registers his objections to my plans

Nevertheless, ready to roll

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