Another first day of classes?

Oh! I'm getting behind- I still haven't told you what we did the rest of the week at Aldeburgh, nor have I done any of the profiles (though those of you who've ventured over to flickr will notice that I did do little one line profiles of everyone. Those of you stuck in blogger land with just have to wait a little longer.) And I'm not going to do it now because today was our first day of classes, again. Well, the first day of these classes and we met two new tutors and I'm exhausted and haven't been home yet so this will be quick (yeah right.)

We started the day with Nathan who is a jazz bassist and our improvisation tutor. His bass is an older flat back and reminded me of bassey-bye so now I miss her. But whatever- it was awesome. We started with free improvisation which sounded like an orchestra tuning and was ridiculous. We tried again with the instructions to "listen" and "play less." Unsurprisingly that helped.

The next thing we did was set up a groove by having everyone play any note they wanted on two separate beats of an 8 beat cycle. (So: count to 8. I played an F on every 4 and an A on every 5) Then we put in off beats (I was classical here, I just added a G on the + of 4) (Is anyone following this other than Andy?)

Once that was solid and grooving along we soloed over the top of it. But when it *really* got cool is when Nathan got out a Norwegian Folk tune (Gula Gula) and we soloed over the chord progresions from that because then it sounded like real music and it was so great because as long as you stayed in B aeolian mode (let it be, I know this makes no sense) it sounded good.

When it was my turn my mind just emptied and I fiddled around and was having the time of my life and even though I had four choruses to play over it went by super quickly and I was suprised when it was over. About half of us had that experience with soloing and the other half was like "argh! it was never ending!" For me it means that I now understand really self indulgent, terribly boring jazz solos that go on for 20 minutes longer than the 30 seconds they should have lasted. It's super super fun! Well, for the player. Not so much for the audience neccessarily.

Right, so then I took over the walking bass line for the second time around the circle. The bass line was written out and Nathan had been playing it before, but I wanted to see what would happen if I really got the chord structure in my ears. The problem was that the song is half in 5/8 time and half in 3/4 time and no one was being very consistent in how they were counting it or accenting it so it was difficult to keep in time. So the second soloing experience was much different for me. I still wasn't conciously thinking about what the chords were but I was much more cautious because I had that structure in my ear and I was having trouble having my fingers match what I was hearing.

So that was the first three hours of the day, then we had an hour lunch where I made spaghetti and washed dishes and then ran back to Guildhall for "Percussion Skills" Which was an entirely different beast.

Nigel is an amazingly talented drummer, but maybe not the clearest teacher. This class was also three hours long and I think it will end up being one of those things where you pick up as much as you can and just don't expect to actually understand everything until much much later when it suddenly makes sense in light of everything else you've learned. Sort of like reading Derrida: don't try actually deciphering each sentenc- get to the end of the paragraph/page/chapter/treatise and then figure out what it was that just washed over you.

Anyhow- by the end of percussion skillz my hands were itchy they way they get when it has been very cold and they're starting to warm up again. I think I may have been thwacking things too hard.

So now I'm going to go eat dinner, because it has been a long day.