A cold February Sunday.

During the Monthly Open Circle on Saturday, Curt gave us the smallest taste of the double reversed circulation. In this exercise, we each had two notes; one in the major scale (mine was the 3rd note), the other in the minor scale (here mine was the 8th.) The ascending scale traveled in one direction and the descending scale circled around in the opposite direction.

Last night I carefully worked out my notes in the Bach Circulation score Curt passed out to the 12 of us who agreed to work on this project. (In a circle of twelve guitarists, I will be playing every 3rd note (over 2 bars of 6 beats each) of the right hand of this piano score and every 10th note of the left hand. To someone listening from the center of this circle, the melody line will pass around counterclock-wise and the bass line will travel around clockwise.) This morning, on waking, I saw the score in my mind's eye and remembered the work in the circle yesterday and realized I’d annotated the score incorrectly; I’d marked all my notes from the melody line and forgotten to take my 10th notes from the bass clef. Email conferring with the musical director reveal that I also misunderstood my notes in a handful of bars where I thought I played a rest, and instead I’m playing part of a trill. So now I’m in possession of a properly annotated score – now I simply need to learn to play my notes. A bit of a challenge because in practicing, the other eleven guitarists will not be with me so I must learn to place my notes only in time, and without the context of the rest of the piece.

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My friend Max sent me a link to this remarkably moving video for Obama. (I recognize almost no one in this video, being so out of the pop culture loop.)