People have asked how we decide on what music to do and what we are going to do with it.
Well we had always thought that the trick with musicpeg would be to keep the committee small and invest the absolute minimum time in admin. In this way we can listen to what the members, and prospective members, have to say about where they are at, and what they want; yes personally, of course, but also considering what the dynamic of a particular group up has thrown up as needs and strengths. Musicpeg can proudly say we have never forced any issues and despite its existence for years and years it has not become an institution with admin at its heart fighting to preserve a fixed identity based on established paperwork or methods and procedures.
Musicpeg responds to its community.
So the effect has been that we have had workshops that have explored, jazz standards, and blues, reggae and West-Indian music, we have focused on harmony theory here and on rhythm there (we did a salsa workshop and Indian rhythms were built into another). South African 'township'? done that. The nuts and bolts of music have been explored in a fun way such that some have taken the idea further and taken formal exams (Open University as well as music performance grades). Yet others have passed over the words and just focused on the sounds of the moment; we recall a workshop looking at free-jazz led by one of Europe's leading exponents. Mike Westbrook brought an arrangement along and we rehearsed it; Greg Abate brought himself and his saxophone over from the U.S.A. and we did a theatre gig with him as guest soloist. We have performed at fetes where musicpeg has taken the lead regarding structure; other times the members have organised and run their own jam sessions and formed their own small groups from within the ranks. A couple of workshops ago we got managed to co-opt Adam to show us how to sample and process sounds; again this only happened because the members showed an interest. For the last workshop we used more pop and funk and rock material after guys made clear what they wanted at a meeting.
Spring Term
These sessions were led (almost) alternately by Gary Bayley and Billy Bottle.
Bill used his extensive performance experience as well as his formal training to guide us through some of his own tunes as well as Average White Band's funk classic Pick Up The Pieces. As ever the emphasis was as much on exploration as rehearsal. A relatively new departure for us is how to integrate vocalists and instrumentalists and this avenue began this term with the addition of Martine Waltier on vocals.
Maj Ladom - read it backwards and you might get a sense of what this is about. The first subject is really about listening and balance where the players pass a phrase around from one player to the next - this really tightened up our hearing! The Harmonic support is from the mixolydian scale but there is a catch - the series has no third. (I use the word series as scale often seems to connote a start and an end in the mind of the player). The illusion of a third is created however as the series moves up periodically in minor thirds. The second subject can be best described as a lydian So What (Miles Davis) which left lots of room for soloing on this most evocative mode.
The Great They - this espionage-inspired shuffle was a useful note-reading exercise but there was also a harmonic dimension looking at upper triads (particularly using the melodic minor). We investigated how we can make the mental leap with our ears when an unexpected bass tone subverts the simple major triad. In its coda, memories were called upon to quote the Perry Mason theme (which had to be shoehorned in from 12/8 to 4/4)!
Gary took a more short term approach using selected music to practice generic musical skills. On the agenda was pentatonic scales and polytonality. The important ii V chord sequence was introduced. Polyrhythms and 'head arrangements' were practiced as well as the traditionally undervalued use of texture and sonic density. As per the previous workshop some points were illustrated by taking the familiar and deconstructing it, finding out how it ticks and then creating a version that has the members' identities running through it.
Torbay School Music Festival @ Riviera Centre, Torquay
In April we were asked back for a one-off collaborative performance with pupils from Cuthbert Mayne. The result was an airing of Gary's own 'mash-up' of Coltrane's Impressions with Bjork's Human Behaviour: a real blend of ages in both personnel and material.
Flashpoint: Reload
Bill also works with Robert Owen Communities' Creative arm at the Palace Theatre in Paignton working with the samba band and running his own 'Sound Alchemy' course. As a day service for people with learning disabilities it seemed a nice continuation of our community work to invite Music Peg to collaborate in some way. ROC Creative's show, Flashpoint: Reload was an ideal opportunity as its finale was to be a samba-infused rendition of the song Let The Sunshine In from Hair. Gary was first enlisted to take part in workshops with tenor in hand, which allowed the samba band to become familiar with playing alongside tuned instruments. Eventually more horns were added in the form of Peg attendees, the result being a New Orleans-style
conclusion (complete with suits and loud shirts!) to an already awe-inspiring show. It was performed on three nights in May/June including Exeter's Barnfield Theatre.
Autumn Term
It was decided to give Bill a full term to run a course which left him free to extend upon a few avenues already covered in the spring but to try a few others too.
The ten-week session was geared towards an end recording rather than a live performance. In the workshop, as ever, technical fixations were cast to the wind, and instead we concentrated as a group on feeling, imagination and our own identity as a group.
On the journey we played a broad range of styles (from Steely Dan to Stravinsky) and there were many opportunities to explore rhythmically. With Peg (Steely Dan) and Cherchez La Femme (Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band), we looked at clave rhythms - not just playing but feeling them.
In improvisation, we took a note-limiting approach to improvisation using call and response, negotiated shifting structures and dared ourselves to play really 'out' on Keith Jarrett's Is It Really The Same? We also looked at the 'Cesh' (Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony) as a shape for improvisation in Magma's Klaus Kohmbalad and Stravinsky's beautiful Lullaby from The Firebird.
Learning by ear is often under-represented in jazz education with a preponderance on theory and mathematics. Using a tune everyone knows is a good starting point, hence Amazing Grace. The arrangement we tried was Dave Jones' more chromatic harmonisation - a good launchpad for new hearing challenges. We also used a 'cutup' approach to harmony, conducting our own trial and error responses to different chord voicings.
Our final recordings can be heard here.