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. 

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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.”

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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