NEGC Meeting Minutes April 24th, 2005

Attendees: Performers : Victor, Dev, David, Meli, Martin, Mary Beth & Glenn

We began the meeting without Dev working on a specific cirulation pattern: a "normal" once-around, then the person began, now passes a note to each person in turn, with them passing a note back. When the final person has passed their note back, the person to the right of the one who began, begins the next cycle (with a "once around", then ping-pong). Dev arrived and we did it again with him.

Then the rest of the meeting focused on repertoire for the upcoming gig at MIT Earthday on April 28th. We will not play Flying Home due to Terry not being available.

We plugged into our battery-powered amps and worked on:

• Third Relation
• Growing Circle - to achieve a better balance while Terry is gone, David is to learn the lead and Martin (or was it MB?) is to learn the bass, but not for the Earthday gig
• Eye of the Needle - agreement to play the outro using all downstrokes, but being aware of the "feel" and not overplaying
• Calliope
  
• The Moving Force
  
• Bicycling to Afghanistan
• Hommage
• Invention #10 - after splitting up into two groups to do some review work
• Larks Thrak
• Israel
• Hope - spending extra time working on the "fast circulation" section
  
• Asturias - running through a few times trying to get the feel right for when the final twinkly should come in, with various pieces of advice offered

We will also likely play Aspiration at the gig, and possibly embroidery.

A full 3 hours of solid work.


DBK

NEGC Minutes

Attendees: Victor, Dev, David, Meli, Glenn, MB

Victor began meeting by asking for a minutes volunteer. This led to some minutes discussion. MB volunteered to do minutes.

Circulation in C major. We eventually completed three octaves ascending and descending. Then we worked on circulating the C major pentatonic scale, three octaves ascending and descending, and skipping the start person each time around. This was frustrating work...lots of wrong notes and confusion about the skipping. But, we did it. When we did it...it was a cliff hanger...but, we all seemed to be in each other's head conjuring the next note to make it work.

Third Relation times two.
EofN. MB burbling alone. Work on "D" section and marching. Seemed to get a groove here but Meli and Glenn identified a place to work.
Bicycling to Afganistan ...some change up of parts. Glenn will do a different part for next few weeks of performance.
Growing Circle refresher.

Practice with the right hand-left hand jive thing. 12 beats in this. We all got the pattern, only some of us can count the measures and do it at the same time.
The pattern: both, R, L, R, R, L, R, both, R, both repeat starting with R, L, R, R, L, R, both, R both.

Discussion about energies:
Automatic energy: chatter, body systems, metabolism
Sensitive energy: "prana" and "chi"
Conscious energy: "all energies" ..."unitive??"
Creative energy: this "happens" to people, but you have to be in perhaps the sensitive or conscious state to catch what is happening.

Each energy can be further described by its associative center: the centers are the physical, intellectual, and emotional. For example, there is a emotion sensitive energy.

Glenn asked questions about all this. Everyone should feel free to add to this part of these minutes. I'm sure there were many insights and this discussion seems very important.

After centers/energies talk, we chatted about what we need to work on and upcoming performances.

To work on:
Mostly, we need to spend the next three weeks focusing on the repertoire.
Regarding practice: Before beginning, think about which energy state you are in.
The Invention subgroups should each try to meet outside of the Sunday meeting.
Victor is teaching Dev Moving Force.
Meeting of Dev, Victor, Glenn, David at his (David's) house at 7:30 AM on Tuesday, April 19th.

Upcoming performances:
Earth Day, 10 AM, Thursday, April 28th (MB will confirm)
Bridge's school, 9 AM (arrive 8:20 AM), Friday, May 6th
OCBC, 10:30 AM (arrive @ 9:30 AM), Sunday, May 15th

Minutes respectfully submitted by MBAH

NEGC Meeting Minutes April 11th, 2005

Attendees: David, Dev, Glenn, Martin, Victor

We arrived and began by tuning. Guitar were then remove and we worked with the rhythm introduced last week. We began with the basic pattern in the hands then went on to marching (8th notes) and accenting the count (16th notes). Victor showed us a 6th note pattern as well but this proved more difficult. We sat and went back to the original pattern and added variations such as counting 4, keeping the left hand going and varying the beats accented by the right hand etc.(If anyone cares to add more detail to this feel free, I was having enough trouble with the basic pattern!)

We move on and split up to learn the first bars of IBE. Glenn, Martin and Victor on lead and Dev and David on base. We merged back together and Dev and Victor played the lead and bass parts together. Glenn will provide tab/chart.

Victor spoke of the importance of the pattern to learning IBE and hearing the
16th note grid “musically”.Circulation work:-Cmaj scale, three octaves, asc and dec. We did this once then failed to repeat it a second time. Victor the added skipping a person after every fifth note (there were 5 of us). We failed and tried varations, just counting, saying the note names, counting and playing. We almost made it with some sketchy notes, but not with confidence. Discussion of the division of attention when skipping ensued.

-circulating the C Maj pentatonic scale. We did this asc and desc, then with a star patterns and it’s reverse and finally the reverse of the asc, desc initial sequence.
We spoke of Askesis and Victor told us some history of its origins at Claymont. Comments about 4ths and 5ths led to Victor showing us an alternate Calliope.

Minutes submitted by MGB

NEGC Meeting Minutes

April 3rd, 2005

Attendees: Victor, MB, Glenn, Martin, Dev

After the rhythm work, we discussed minutes and the importance of writing them. It was decided to keep the minutes to basic notes about the work we need to do. We also accepted a plan for who does the minutes each week. Each week’s minutes scribe is responsible for finding the scribe for the following week (even if they will not be attending that meeting). Glenn is retiring from the honorable but thankless (until now) position of being the sole person who acts on finding a minutes writer each week. Thanks Glenn!

Rhythm:
-Beat clapping on the 1, 2, 3, and the “ands” of 3, 4, 5, 6
-Right hand, left hand work pattern: both, R, L, R, R, L, R, both, R, both
-to loop the right hand-left hand pattern, the last “both” of the pattern because the “1” for repeating the pattern: both, R, L, R, R, L, R, both, R, both, R, L, R, R, L, R, both, R, etc
-Also, work on counting this pattern in 4/4

Circulation work:
-Cmaj scale, three octaves, asc and dec. We did this twice in not too long a time
-circulating the pentatonic scale (each person with one note in the scale); we did this with skipping/star patterns, as a sequential circulation, and as a sequential circulation where the start of the sequence shifted by one person after each complete sequence

Individual work:
Dev and G doing circle of 5ths scales…3rds, 4ths, triads, 5ths to octaves
Martin and MB are still working on the C major scale 3rds, 4ths, triads, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, and octaves.

Note from last week:
We should probably be playing two hours a day to make progress. Something to strive for.

Minutes respectfully submitted by MBAH