Day two of alternating daily schedule… I should be focused on Rip Tide and drumset, with a bit of memory work on Surface Drift (no music!).
Rip Tide
Using Samuels vibe mallets today… too soft, but with the Balter blues I need to wear ear plugs to practice!
Technique – unison RH/LH 8th notes at 1/4 note = 150bpm (improvising patterns within the range of the piece, sometimes one hand static while other moves, sometimes both hands moving); Major scales (one-handed) playing 8th notes at 1/4 note = 150bpm.
Layout 1-5 – read through RH/LH separate all at 1/4 note = 142bpm (hands felt good and relaxed for most of this, but there are definitely sections that I am less familiar with… circled these in music, particularly on pages 6 and 8 for both RH and LH alone).
Soooo….. working on pages 6 and 8 today (most of Layout 3-4)!!! 1. Layout 3, I began by incrementally speeding up RH and LH alone from 1/4 note = 120bpm up to 145bpm, and was able to read easily and maintain relaxed arms up to this tempo. 2. Layout 3 hands together at 1/4 note = 80bpm…no faster than the last time I played, and any push forward results in tension or inaccuracies. After almost two-hours on this, my brain is fried and I can’t even fathom doing this with page 8… so, I am leaving it for now and leaving it for later (or more likely, tomorrow).
Here is Rip Tide page 6. Remember, this needs to be at 1/4 note = 200bpm.
Surface Drift
Brief warmup – yesterday’s practice left the skin on my R middle finger a bit tender; spent about 30 minutes doing memory recall on pages 1-2, then tried repping it a few times at 1/4 note = 50bpm. Was generally fine, though with metronome I tended to stop to remember fragments, without it I probably just slowed down. Need to do more of this.
Improvisation
I had a great 2+ hour session with Art Falbush (trumpet player and improvisor extraordinaire) this afternoon… we talked about free improvisation and tonal improvisation, and how to marry the two. We played a little, and listened a bit (to Thelonius Monk and Cecil Taylor), but mostly we talked. I am excited to get into this and see how it can influence my improvisations in realms I already live.
