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