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.

TO BE CONTINUED