Guitar Circle Journals

Rise at 7.30, the alarm didn´t ring, half an hour late to a day of studying.
Before haveing breakfast with the family, Franz, Sybille and Heike, I work on my Notebook in the kitchen. Afterwards we have a long breakfast togehter, time to talk a little bit as we didn´t have time yesterday.

11.00 Everyone has left, Time for Guitarpractice. It is a sunny day and the light shines through the windows. It is a joy to play.

Poopak is at home as I notice after a while and we have some time to drink tea together.

I read and watch tutorials on mixing and mastering as a preparation for Monday, the final exam of my Sound-course.
A one and a half hour call from Patrick. Old friends talking. We define our relation new and make a step closer to each other. I have a very good feeling afterwards. Things are moveing in us.

Afternoon and evening. Switiching between learning, palying guitar, reading manuals.

19.13 Leaving to a near by “Gasthof” for Dinner with Heike.

21.44 Home again, some more learning ahead….

I forgot to turn on the alarm, but woke up anyway. Hmmpf but good. Strange dream but it felt like a good omen; one part of this dream: an endless stream of white cranes coming from the south, flying overhead.

Drive into Austin for meditation/sitting, hatha yoga, and AT Teacher Training. Yet another good class, though it’s easy to see the others dissipating their energies wastefully. A good reminder for me.

Also, a note from a crafty that I’m not on the AAD list; this gets corrected easily. There is another crafty with my last name, though we’re not directly related, which apparently caused the problem.

Home to change. Then off to campus. Taking care of things there until 18:00. Back home, completing my reading at 21:00. A very good book series, indeed. And, yet, only a story.

More house craft. Some music craft (aspiring to art).

I read an interview, in the Wall Street Journal, with a best-selling author who says that mastery comes after about 10,000 hours. He mentions music composition as one of two specific examples where this seems to be true (is it? the creative impulse can put any instrument to its use).

17.11.2008 Spittal/Drau to Vienna

4.30 Awake, still dreaming some how, a tiny nightmare is still on my mind
4.40 Rise. Shower, getting dressed, short sitting and off to the station. I pass through the floor of granny. She left a message and some money for the train. Generous, loving old woman, I will miss you.
5.46 In the train to Villach
6.20 In the train from Villach to Vienna
6.44-7.30 Guitarpractice. I connect to my friends in the Greenhouse, then I just let the practice emerge, playfull, joyfull. I sense that my hands did not have proper practice for some time, but the feeling in playing the guitar is as if it never left me, there is a relation, a demanding one.

It is becoming a nice sunny day and the light falls golden into the train.
Time for work. I write a short introduction to mikrofones, based on material I already had, for the “Beginning Anthropologists” tonight. Right afterwards there is time to continue to study “internal Mixing / Mastering”. I loose concentration at 10.12 and read some manuals of audioequiptement. Slowly all the numbers on the pages make sense.

10.55 Vienna, Meidling. Changing train to Praterstern. Reading the newspaper. Fear and Panic is the message. Arriving in the Appartement at 11.30. Someone has been working during the weekend. I see a new beautifully orderd and decoration on the outside corridor. Lots of internal considering going on I take a shower and then back to the guitar.
13.20 Poopak calls for Lunch, bussy Richard is there aswell.
Short conversation on recent happenings; the most accessable topic, as it seems is the death of an austrian politician and my shared comments on the effects for the people on the austrian countryside.

More guitar after Lunch. I play over and over again an arpeggio section of Blockhead. The harmonies are so beautyfull and it is just a joy to play.

Continuing with preparations for the evening. I collect some information on Harmonics and prepare some MP3 files to present the difference between them and wave files; what a huge quality difference!

Then, again, back to the guitar.

16.14 Heike, Sybille and Franz arrive. We have coffee together before I leave.

16.55 University Vienna. In search for the promised key to “Seminarraum A” through different offices. First it looks like I have to give the “lecture” on the corridor since there is no key to close the doors afterwards, but then a very “available” Professor tells the Security to take care of the room as we finish, they have “universal keys” for the whole building. So, we got a room to work.

17.20 Writing on the “Technical Reader” for a Recording Project
18.38 Setting up the room for the lecture.
19.04 Kathleen arrives. I answer questions regarding the first lecture, then Kathleen takes over and gives a very personal practical and compact overview on fieldresearch. She works with different settings of the lights in the room, audio material and pictures. The Beginners are really into it.
A difficult “Performance” to follow with theory on “Microphones”; but, I survive.

We have a meeting afterwards to touch base on some CISO topics and agree to produce four Radio-shows for the coming year.

Home again at 23.32; same place, twelve hours later. Its quite, someone is still working…

Best wishes go out to all Guitarcraft AAD Participants, allthough they are unknwon to me, but somehow I sense a connection; maybe thats one of the reasons that I may write an entry again…

17.11.2008

Vienna/Austria

Awake and rise at 06.05. Shower. Iron and prepare.

A positive way to begin the day:

06:40-07:00 Sitting in the Red Room with Heike and Poopak.

07:00-07:25 Guitar Circle in the Red Room with Heike and Poopak. Right hand warm up, then into the Third Relation exercise and finally picking open strings in triplets.

***

Received some emails and a JPG from Horacio, it seems like there is something brewing in Buenos Aires, with the Buenos Aires Guitar Circle.

Buenos Aires...

16.11.2008

Vienna/Austria

Early morning joyful interaction with Philippe. The day unfolds in the GCV home with good energy, cleaning actions underway in various rooms, bread is being baked in the kitchen and an exquisite Persian meal is served for lunch. The Extended Circle is present. Silence hovers. In the meantime, fine tuning the Extended Circle processes, compiling reports, compiling applications, answering emails etc.

The Persian Room is being brought into a state of readiness for the Extended Circle Meeting.

***
18:30-20:30 Extended Circle Meeting / The Persian Room

Persian Room: Heike, Poopak, Richard, Wolfgang
AAD: Barbara, Cristian, Firat, Gabriel, Jacek, Marcelo, Renate, Thomas

18:20 Arriving. Tuning-in. Relaxation rituals. Breathing in and out. Directed attention. Awareness of the space around us, the Circle and the beings in this room. Then we open up the space and one by one invite and welcome the Extended Circle participants into the Circle. This is a ritual, but the EC is already with us. We will pause every 15 minutes.

We begin with a right hand exercise at 75 bpm, playing the strings D, A, E, A. We play the pattern 6x as half-notes, 6x as triplets and 6x as quarter-notes, looping this. There are difficulties with counting the triplets and tapping, so I decide to stick with this exercise, adding various chords from the Arvo Pärt piece Fratres, rearranging it so we are playing it in different harmonizing positions, sometimes with reversed picking patterns.

Before one of the breaks Wolfgang leads a free circulation, any note(s) of one’s choice. A most entertaining circulation emerges, typical GCV, with that slight touch of fun. By the end of the Circulation one of the team is quite clearly energized and drenched in sweat. We laugh, a joyful moment.

A Division of Attention exercise. Both feet tapping simultaneously at 65 bpm, on the beat. As half-notes, tapping a pattern of the hands on the legs: L-R-R-L-R. Then, counting 7 bars of 5. Then, counting 5 bars of 7. We stick to this for a long time, to establish a working basis.

19:30 In between we play The Lord`s Prayer while tuning in to the Extended Circle. Solid and powerful, guitars ringing bright and clear.

20:00 We play Eye Of The Needle, while tuning in to the Extended Circle. And then … we play it once again. A funny final note, brings out more laughter.

Finally, we work on the new grooving bass-line, the first part, establish the groove/feel and basic rhyhthm and patterns. Some of the team are visibly rocking! It is clearly a physical piece.

20:30 Heike leads a C-Harmonic-Circulation with thumbs. A characteristic GCV melody emerges, sometimes beautifully haunting.

We complete, thanking all the Extended Circle friends and the larger Guitar Craft Circle. Then, a nourishing gathering in the GCV kitchen, with sweets, various delicious teas and food for thought. It was a creative and most supportive day, with change in the air. Everyone notices this. Thanking the Extended Circle for so much support.

Leaves in the Red Room

More Leaves...

Leaves...

Time is relentless.

Taking care of things in the morning. And reading a section of the “Sunday Talks” for the ARC. Continued reading of JKR.

ECP connection from 11:30-13:30p.

Then off to AT Training again. Traffic is heavy. What? And I’ve not eaten enough.

I do a lot of work on myself and then others. Noticing very deep doings and, then, not doing those things. I am making very good progress this year; things are really shifting, inside and out.

Grocery shopping on the way home, after getting gas.

A bad accident blocks my usual way home and I have to loop back 3 miles; unusual for this town to have the traffic blocked like that. Signs of growth.

Once home, rabid reading and some more reading-inspired composition.

The power trio plays in the afternoon. The morning is for reading.

After returning from the practice (which was fun and good practice for me), I practice sarangi, guitar (calisthenics only), and keyboard composition. Composing late into the night. Reading and then, inspired by the writing, composing. This feels right to me.

A struggle to get up and down to Villejuif by 9am.

A day of technical presentations which at least inspire me to get some stuff together.

At lunchtime I am rather torn, and this goes on for the rest of the day. Hard to stay awake in the CSS module, which was the wrong one for me anyway.

I subscribe to the twitter network. Notice a crafty is there also.

Escaping into the night, and to Montparnasse for drinks and dinner with Kx, VicePrez… we last saw each other in Rio de Janeiro, and got separated at a busy intersection.

Home, and the end of an era… well, one imagines. I checked out the AAD site today. Lots of things on the way.

A midnight message that seems to wrap up 22 years of something.

Up late at 6:45. The temperature is dropping and I’m sleeping better for it.

AT Training course at 8:30. A very good day: what is needed continues to get clearer. Still plenty, years, of work to do though.

Some shopping in the afternoon. I buy an 88 key midi keyboard, for compositional/recording use.

Worked at home for the afternoon. Absolutely delightful weather: sunny, high in the low 70’s with actual chill at dusk.

I send The Wife a telegram to greet her at her hotel in Marrakech. Then an evening of composing with the keyboard (the ideas flow for hours). And more reading late into the night.

Guitar and sarangi also. Plus, the head bone’s connected to the neck bone; the neck bone’s connected to the collarbone; the collarbone’s connected to the shoulder bone … on down to the fingers. A collaboration and web of unnecessary tension begin to release (can’t hold on forever!?).

Remembering… the beginning of the day and the end of the day both involved bumping into someone by surprise. The morning’s meeting was much more well managed than the evening’s. The contributing factors are obvious. And the material differences in the opportunities rather too clear to be of comfort.

Day in the conference again.

Evenin, out to the party of the conference. A good scene, and one that could be very important professionally speaking.

Too many days without guitar.