Steve Ball

The Airport Exercise: Learning Edition

There seems to be some interest in the Crafty community brewing again about the Airport Exercise. I’ve had a few inquiries in the past few weeks about where a score exists. A few years ago I scratched out a fast and poorly executed version and posted it somewhere in the haystack of this diary.

Then one morning, I saw an efficient path: hire an expert.  And create a ‘show me how’ video. 

 

The Airport Exercise is part III of the Tower Trilogy that includes The Tetrachords and Descendent: three pieces for large guitar ensemble designed to stretch the fingers of the players and the attention of listeners.

This version of the piece is designed to give interested guitarists a glimpse of what is going on with the form and fingering.

The piece was designed to be played in airports. I don't mean playing a recording, I mean to use the time that might otherwise be wasted waiting by pulling out your instrument and playing this quietly and gently at the gate, perhaps even transforming the idea of a delayed flight into an opportunity to go deeper.

The score for this piece, transcribed by Gabriel Riccio, is available here for a small (optional) donation here.

The backing tracks were recorded and released as part of the version of this piece that appears on Steve Ball Sketch Box: CD1, Guitar Sketches featuring: 

Robert Fripp, soundscapes
Tony Levin, bowed bass
Pat Mastelotto, zing
JG Bennett, voice 
Steve Ball, guitar

In addition to completing the Electric Gauchos Box Set, this year, I’m already looking ahead to capturing a number of the group exercises and improvisation forms I’ve been using in guitar ensembles over the past decade or so. 

My current working list includes:

1. Nine Lives
2. Group Loop
3. Pulse Division
4. Follow The Leader
5. Nine from Nowhere
6. Chord Circulation
7. Descendent
8. The Tetrachords
9. The Airport Exercise

More on this project as it continues to unfold.

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The Tetrachords

Yesterday, at the ongoing Saturday Morning Seattle Guitar Circle meeting at Seattle Creative Arts Center, we stumbled onto a quick glimpse of a subset of the possible patterns that four fingers can make on one string.

Sometimes, these four note patterns are called tetrachords: 

tetrachord  / ˈtɛtrəˌkɔːd /  noun

1. In musical theory, especially of classical Greece, any of several groups of four notes in descending order, in which the first and last notes form a perfect fourth.

In 2004, a piece of structured improvisation repertoire appeared at my fingers that included a means of exploring four note patterns on one string – not technically pinned to the perfect fourth, but designed to stretch four fingers across ascending and descending tetrachord patterns with a ‘rest note’ (open string) between each fretted note.   

The Seattle Guitar Circle performed The Tetrachords live only once at the Sakya Monastery in 2004:

Saturday August 21st 7:30-9:30pm
Seattle Guitar Circle
performing improvised music for meditation
@Sakya Monastery
108 NW 83rd Street
Seattle, WA 98117

Eleven years later, The Tetrachords is now part II of emerging guitar exercises disguised as music. Three of these pieces are part of the Tower Trilogy that includes The Airport Exercise and Descendent. These are three of nine pieces for large guitar ensemble designed to stretch the fingers of the players and the attention of listeners.

Last night, after reflecting on the patterns that led to the original (partially improvised) piece in 2004, I made a quick video to accompany a remix of my recorded version of The Tetrachords that appears on Guitar Sketches.  The image is a picture I took in 2000 during a BTV-era visit to NYC. I stayed in the hotel at the WTC and got up early to take some pics including the source image used in this video.

Historical note, here is a quick picture of the program from the show:

This was the last official Seattle Guitar Circle show before Tuning the Air was born.

At the time, I was interested group practice, writing, recording and performance centered around structured large group improvisation. My goal was to enable and mount performances that felt and sounded ‘composed’ but that were actually unfolding in the moment based upon a new shared ‘repertoire’ of improvisation practices designed to keep the players listening in the moment, and each performance unique.

More like a conversation between intelligent, articulate musicians than a rote, recited play. 

In 2004, after 18 years of playing intricately composed interlocking guitar music, I was ready to move into a new form and new format that was not seeking to endlessly relive, repeat or replay past patterns. 

Ironically, in 2014, the center of gravity has finally caught up with this idea as the newly reformed team in Seattle is now not only comfortable with listening, then playing – it’s generally become part of what we do.

Next step: how to help it come alive in a sustainable way?

One answer: awaken the guitarist inside.

Another: gently revisit the primaries of articulation that include

1. rhythm (pulse, drone, syncopation)
2. polyrhythm (pulse division, complementary rhythm) 
3. vamping (two, three, four, five, six, seven note looping patterns)
4. melody (what do you have to say?)
5. harmony (what do you say to that?)
6. leading (take us somewhere)
7. following (do what I just did)
8. circulation (too many variations to list here)
9. group loops (too many variations to list here)

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Electric Gauchos: Maturin

'Maturin' is a fourth preview video from the upcoming Electric Gauchos Box Set: 81 tracks on 9 CDs, all improvised by Electric Gauchos during a three day session in late May 2014.

Maturin features: Brock Avery (drums, percussion), Fernando Kabusacki (guitars), Fernando Samalea (drums, percussion, vibes), Horacio Pozzo (guitars, keyboards), Igor Abuladze (bass), Steve Ball (guitars, keyboards, and vocals).

Maturin also features Douglas Erickson on acoustic guitar, Stephen Thompson on flute, Rob Taylor-Manning and Jane Siberry on spoken word.

At the beginning of this all improvised piece, I asked Doug to play "Pop Song Number Two" and three seconds later he began playing the acoustic arpeggio that is the basis of this song.  None of us had any idea what what ‘Pop Song Number Two’ is (including Doug) but what poured out was one of the highlights of this insane project.

I later added words and melodies and turned the improvised backing track into this song.

CD 5 also features the instrumental version this track called "Maturin."

* * *

tired tiny god
holding earth in its place
burning out of her shell
from her deep winter spell
only to rain down thunder and shock
stronger than stick or sword stuck in some rock
not like the end we read in the book

two tiny threads
keeping us in our place
we'll break out of our shell
from our deep winter spell
so let’s slide off her back
and let's chug her bitter pill
head and hooves, tail of calf
can you hear mother's laugh?

* * *

Words by Steve Ball
Copyright 2015
Blue Orb Music Publishing
Ballistic Music

 

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For true fans, here is the all instrumental version to contrast to the vocal version:

NOTE: I made these videos as part of my ongoing quest to discover tools to build generative video. Anyone who sees these and finds resonance with this mission, please contact me (or leave comments here about the tools you use for live or rendered video tools to accompany vast-catalogs of music.

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