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:

1. Material specifically written for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
2. Formal compositions written in other contexts, particularly classical works, adapted for groups of guitarists using the Guitar Craft tuning.
3. 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.