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
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.
TO BE CONTINUED - ONWARD TO WEEK 2
No comments:
Post a Comment