ohio meeting in dayton

Post 10 of 90.

We get together at the home of Matt, son of Don, in Dayton. I bring my spare Ovation for Matt to use and we work on "Sun Music" for several hours. It's nice to get some idea of how the piece actually sounds. Don proposes we work on a polyrhythm idea, the usual 1 and 4 in 5 and 1, 4, and 6 in 7, but also an idea in 11 (playing on 1, 4, 6, and 9).

Then a free circulation in C Major, followed by circulating C Major and C Harmonic Minor through one and then two octaves. Don (understandably, I think) hates this particular exercise, but I push for it because it seems very important to building a circulating group, and because it's been one of the very first things Robert puts us through on a course (uh-oh! expectations!). If Matt goes on to attend a course (up to him, naturally) he's bound to run into it, and Don and I would spare him the horror of being "that guy," the guy who doesn't know his C Major and who keeps making the circulation crash and burn, until everybody in the circle finally wants to strangle him. And then as soon as that guy gets it together, next thing you know you are that guy! Not fun.

At one point, we circulate naming the notes as we go, and that seems to help as we take turns being "that guy" in our little trio. Then we drop the note naming and circulate through the scale with a little more ease. I feel renewed enthusiasm to get down to some fretboard familiarity work when I practice in the coming days.

Then we work on "Trapiche" for a bit and exhort Matt to master his alternate picking, especially on the three string variation which causes the picking to turn around.

After practicing, Don and I agree to go to Chicago for the upcoming meeting next Saturday, and that most of our work is going to be geared toward the Chicago repertoire and activities (a while back, we acknowledged that we had more or less been folded into the Chicago group somewhere along the way, and that notions of the "Ohio Guitar Circle" experiment have pretty much been put to rest).