Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "Hot Lettuce with Sweet Mayonnaise"!

Set 1 50 megs 

Set 2 30 megs

Timelapse Quicktime of The Whole Evening 18 megs

click here for a larger view of the panorama

Here are both sets of June's breakthrough 'Woodland Acoustic Orchestra' performance! Expecting at least a couple of the musicians to arrive slightly after 8pm, I had prepared another short acoustic set to use the gap to test some arrangements. But by 8pm, the core group for the evening -- TQ Berg (Steel-String), Woody Frank (Steel-String), Dennis Jolin (Ukelele, Table, and Bike Wheel), Ian McKagen (Steel String), and Me Woods (Bass-Box and Percussion) -- were completely set up and ready to roll! (At this point, we didn't realize that the Chai House clock was over 20 minutes behind due to a failing battery, but it sure *felt* like we were off to an early start.)

And a strong start it was! With a solid critical mass of 5 players right from the top, we were finally able to explore the new signaling approach that I'd been planning to try as soon as we had enough musicians to pull it off.  This new "breakthrough" system is actually pretty simple: A white-board is set up in front of the band -- facing the stage. Once a groove is established the first player works their way out of the jam and writes a signal (chord-change, time-change, stylistic/structural concept, etc...) on the board. While the composer-of-the-moment is getting their instrument back on and re-entering the groove, everyone is quickly reading and integrating the signal...preparing a musical response to it. After the signaler has insinuated their way back into the groove, they signal the transition. Everyone changes what they are playing in accordance with the signal.  

Any time after this point, the next person in the circle puts down their instrument and writes a new signal on the board -- during which time, the rest of the group can ignore them and just concentrate on developing whatever movement has come from the previous signal. And this group of players definitely rocked it! ...deftly manipulating the abstract system to maximum effect, while keeping enough moment-to-moment focus for expressive instrumental interpretation and some interesting vocal-additions.

I really love the effect of rotating through the line-up with each player contributing creative open-ended compositional direction and the group spontaneously responding! And the written format naturally breaks up the mix (as each player in turn has to temporarily stop to write) and allows the band to communicate without "tipping their hand" to the crowd. 

The audience, not knowing exactly what the syntax of the signal was, picks up only on whatever semantic value it added to the collective groove, unburdened of their own interpretations of how the group "should have interpreted it", yet simultaneously just a wee bit curious as to what words might've provoked the latest large-scale shift in the sound. From informal polling of family there that night, it seems to produce a pleasing mystery.

For the second set, frequent drop-in collaborator William Precht was available to jump on the piano and so we all tuned down the 3/8 of a step to match the average of the Chai House piano's scatter-plot tuning scheme. 

It was a welcome addition, providing a new dimension of rich sustained warmth for the remainder of the evening. At about 10:12, after a third extension of "Super Barista" (still failing to get a reaction out of Erin and Rita :), I glanced up at the clock and was surprised to see that we had already gone so far over time! This, of course, was before Erin told me that the clock's battery had needed changing, and I suddenly realized that our seemingly magic ability to start on time -- and then play such an amazing second set that it appeared to catapult us through some sort of experiential worm-hole -- was actually just the result of the two of them deciding that they should probably wind it ahead to "Ballard Standard Mean" time, in case we looked up for reference.

Anyway, that's just about it for this one from me. Special thanks to Tina for the photos! And as always, I encourage you to add your own show-notes here in the comments.

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 18)"!

Set 1 50 megs

Set 2 37 megs

"Wednesday, June 10th, 2009. This is Juggler's Challenge." This week's typically raucous interactive-music extravaganza featured veteran jugglers TQ Berg (Electric Guitar and Vocals), Dennis Jolin (Electric 6-String), Michael Perry (Da Kit), Donovan Raymond (Bassss), Me Woods (Hybrid Guitar and Shouting) and -- for the second set -- Woody Frank (Acoustic Steel-String). Continuing to build upon the recent Juggler's Challenge Revival momentum, episode 18 featured plenty of inspired Challenger (audience) input and the various sounds that this input provoked from the band.

Set 1 started off with the usual warmup jamming and show-introduction, followed by a less-usual kick-off sheet from within the band (thanks TQ!) to get us going. The "song" that resulted was one of my favorites of the night. IMO, this is another fine example of the increased synergy within the group resulting from retaining most of the same Jugglers from show to show. And this particular idea seems like something we should keep doing (helps tie that first 20-minute free-jam while waiting for Challenger input into the rest of the show)!

As the Challenger input started coming in, the music built on plenty of continuity, creative counterpoint, and ready energy. Several of the pieces spontaneously developed distinct repeated movements (verses and choruses?...sortof). A rich sonic palette combined with some new and effective leadership on the part of the other Jugglers really made this a breakthrough JCR show in my mind. Michael brought out a sheet as a screen for the overhead projector, and TQ even launched a whole movement on lead-vocals, which makes me think I should really set up some extra mics and try to lure the rest of the band to step up to the mic from time to time. Thanks to the band for continuing to jump right into the mess each month!

Speaking of energy, somewhere in the second set, I began to realize that my ears and the small vocal PA couldn't quite keep up with the swelling sonic mass. At the time I couldn't clearly determine or articulate the problem (you'll hear me repeatedly calling for general volume reduction towards the end of set 2), but in retrospect it's clear that the two electric guitars, while perfectly balanced with each other, ended up well above the remaining instruments and were most likely the searing stereophonic source of my ringing ears. (Given the often laser-like throw of a 12-inch guitar cabinet -- stealthily spitting fire well beneath the altitude of the average player's ears whilst flash-cooking the corneas of the guy who's only 7 feet further from the amp -- I suspect neither of them had any idea at the time.) Even still, with a bit more shouting than is maybe ideal, I think most of the concepts came across at some level and a good time was had by all!

That's it for me for this one for now, but as always, please jump in with your own observations, favorite morsels, costume-suggestions, etc... here in the comments section.

The Woodland Acoustic Orchestra Presents: "Unilateral Carp Tarp"!

Set 1 37 megs

Intermission (Bonus) 3 megs

Set 2 (Truncated) 23 megs

This entry's recordings are from May 27th's superb WAO show! (The Woodland Acoustic Orchestra presents: "Unilateral Carp Tarp") Like many of the acoustic shows, for the first half of the week, it looked like we might have a fairly huge orchestra. But like many of the acoustic shows -- even after I had eaten my entire plate of food for the first time ever and played a short 4-song solo set to stretch things out a bit -- we ended up starting the first set with a scant trio of musicians. ...thankfully, in this case, the very capable Dennis Jolin (Ukelele and Percussion) and Aaron Stepp (Fretless Bass) joined me (Six-String, Percussion, and Voice).

I had planned for a more formal signal-driven evening (using two white boards facing the band as a way for the musicians to log simple concepts where everyone could see them before signaling the change). But with a trio's ability to turn-on-a-dime, coupled with the expected drop-back to 2/3rds power every time somebody would have to stop playing to write something on the board...well, we didn't end up using the boards.

Nevertheless, I thought this first set was pretty fantastic! Dennis' sweet mid-rangey riffs looped perfectly across my warm/sparkly acoustic-jazz and Aaron's brilliantly syncopated bubbling bass-pointalism. Momentum was unbroken as the soundscape morphed from one relaxed contrapuntal mood to the next.

For the second set, we were joined by William Precht on percussion and electric kalimba. We also had a guy named Jo(h?)n playing some extra percussion from the couch. He must've been operating under the "first, do no harm" principle, because his additions were so sparse and/or tasteful that I didn't even notice him on my first pass through the recording. (I'll have to listen more carefully and see if I can pick him out next time.) William is always a super strong contributor and this set immediately opened up into a much broader space with -- for me -- cosmic overtones. Much like the first set, each movement segued beautifully to the next. Everyone really seemed to be having a good time. Sadly, though I had thoughtfully prepared the recorder for battery-only operation following the demise of my power-adapter, I had neglected to delete the tracks from the previous show and so we ran out of memory about 10 or 15 minutes before the end of the set. Stupid, stupid show-host/documentarian! Bummer to lose any of such a great set, but I guess at least the recorder -- unlike previous recorders I've worked with -- didn't trash the whole file when it ran out of room. :) And the remaining 20 minutes are well worth checking out!

I'm also including some of the setup for Set 2 here as a bonus intermission track. I liked the way the various noodly instrumental textures collage against the last of the Chai House break-music.

Well, that's it for this one for now. As always, I look forward to reading your thoughts about the show here in the comments.

Neon Brown Presents: "Juggler's Challenge Revival (Episode 17)"!

the show 102 megs

Here's a top notch Juggler's Challenge Revival show by a group that is mostly a duplicate of April's 5-piece band, but with two extra musicians. So, all told, that's Noah Adler (Mandolin), TQ Berg (Destroyer), Brett ??? (Big Sax), Dennis Jolin (Electro-Uke), Michael Perry (Drums), Donovan Raymond (Bass) and Me Woods (Hybrid Guitar and Vocals).

For those of you who are interested in numbers but not good at counting, that's 7(!) people at a fully-improvised event where (1) interpreting audience-input in a relatively focused and accessible way and (2) keeping the instrument volumes in balance with the vocals are both of fairly-high importance. And really, on both of those counts this was possibly the best group yet! Apparently, if the players are actively listening (something I know I can count on from all of these guys), 7 people is actually a great number of people for something like this -- allowing each person to play more sparsely and have plenty of leftover attention to explore and amplify whatever conceptual challenges the audience has thrown our way.

Throughout the evening, grooves, melodies, and counter-melodies morphed and intertwined seamlessly with nary a hint of devolving into an escalating-volume war. In fact, now that I think about it, we actually had 8(!!) for a while when William Precht briefly plugged in a thumb-piano for perhaps our most nuanced, uplifting, and rhythmically-interesting piece of the evening.

We started a bit late due to a combo of transportation malfunctions and generally poor time-management on my part. Except for Dennis, who was still completing his marathon journey to the Chai House, we were all finally ready to go at around 8:30, when I got a funny feeling about the recording device and decided to check the adapter.

Sure enough, the AC-power adapter was shorting and the screen was already flashing the 'low-battery' message. Sensing that it was likely to be an extra good one, I booked over to the drug store on foot while everybody else started warming up with some instrumental grooves. The recording here starts when I got back about 10 minutes later and stuffed the new batteries in. Since, we had less than 90 minutes from our start-time to Chai-O'Clock, the show became a single unbroken marathon set!

With only a little hounding of the audience on my part, the transparencies began showing up on the overhead-projector early in the evening and became ever-more-inspired, all the way up to the closing verbal input of the night from Erin, "Snails Exploring an Abandoned Salt-Mine".

Here's a rough outline of what went down: 0:00:Warmup-Jams/JC-Introduction/Dennis Arrives/More Jams, 20:30: 'A Musical Experience in 10 Words or Less with Some Cheating', 27:30: 'The "Musical" Love Song', 39:30: 'Todd's Abstract Graphical Swirl-Score', 44:00: Thumb-Piano Jam --> 52:45: "The Key", 59:30: Challenger-Penned Lyrics ("Leanne Rhymes With Busta"), 1:09:00: Sadbot's Grand Cycle, 1:15:30: Snails Visiting A Salt Mine, 1:24:00: Introductions/Sweet Home Mr. Spot's.

So that's it for this one! It feels like this format is really starting to come together. I'm looking forward to coming up with some new challenge-templates over the next month. I'm also looking forward to seeing where this goes if we can keep at least 75% of the band from show to show and can make the whole concept as accessible for the Challengers as it seemed to be on this particular Wednesday. As always, feel free to add your own notes in the comments here!

Neon Brown Presents: "Woodland Acoustic Orchestra" (April '09)!

Set 1 58 megs

Set 2 25 megs

Here's another full evening with the ever-mutating Woodland Acoustic Orchestra. This month's lineup consisted of Noah Adler (Mandolin), Dennis Jolin (Percussion), Aaron Stepp (6-string Bass), and Me Woods (Acoustic Guitar and Voice).  After the minor sound-reinforcement debacle of two weeks previous, I brought my own mini-PA to this show, which allowed us to easily plop the speakers down in some much-more-ideal locations. I suspect the sound from most random places in the audience is usually pretty decent even with the built-in PA, but having greater mixing freedom certainly made it much easier for us to hear each other clearly and -- coupled with some much-more-thoughtful mic-positioning -- definitely yielded a better balance on the recording.

Even still, things took a while to get rolling. Something about the way we started seemed to push us into a corner from which it took a while to figure out how to step away. I'm guessing the general vibe for most of us was something like "man, I feel like I'm already playing too many notes to easily move this somewhere else, but it still feels like we could use some more momentum". To be fair to all of us, the Acoustic Orchestra is a slightly unconventional and ever-shape-shifting beast, and it can often take a while to figure out how to work with (or maybe relax-into) the balance of sonic textures on any given night. Also, we were still a little bit under critical mass for ideal "Acoustic Orchestra" action. Generally it seems that a minimum of 5 players makes it easier for each player to find a nice sparse approach that allows plenty of room for listening, more-effortless mutation, and greater overall momentum...which means signaled-changes can have huge impact without bringing things to a halt.

Nonetheless, for whatever reason (in spite of my many theories, it really *is* a stubbornly mysterious process) things seemed to magically gel about half-way through the first set and -- for me at least -- floated on various incarnations of this inspiration for the remainder of the night. (And really, even the first half of the first set has plenty of interesting ideas.  Just consider jumping ahead a bit if you if you're not enjoying the beginning...it really *does* get quite good!) As with many of the best Acoustic Orchestra shows, multiple simultaneous interlocking melodies form a rich grooving tapestry full of new sparkling details on each listen.

Lyrics, as usual, were mostly lifted and twisted from the Ballard News Tribune, although the end of the first set features what I thought was a rather entertaining extended piece of blather.  This bit was inspired by the very cool surrealist art that had been hanging at the Chai House since at least the previous Juggler's Challenge show (thanks to Dennis for the photos here!  

...if this art is still there next time, I'll try to remember to write down the artist's name and post any relevant links here).

Okay, that's it for me on this one. As always, if you were there or have been sampling the recordings, feel free to add your own comments/context here in the comments section!

Neon Brown Presents: "JCR(16)"!

Set 1 46 megs

Set 2 36 megs

Here are two fine sets of Juggler's Challenge music featuring a fantastic quintet of TQ Berg (Destroyer), Dave Foley (Drums and Vocals), Dennis Jolin (Guitar), Donovan Raymond (Bass and Vocals), and Me Woods (Direct Guitar and Vocals). All of these guys are versatile improvisers and great listeners -- and therefore extremely well suited to the audience-interactive format.

This was to be the first Juggler's Challenge Revival episode with the new overhead-projector, and so I expected a bit of extra complexity during the pre-show setup. What I didn't expect was the Chai House's already-hobbled PA 'jumping the shark' sometime over the previous 2 weeks. It's hard to even recreate in my mind the bizarre configuration in which the remaining barely-functional speaker-cords had been hooked up to the power-amp, but the net result was about 40 minutes of fussing with it only to achieve a mono signal with the highs and the lows located in completely different parts of the room. I'll test it again over the next few shows to see if it improves, but from here on out, I'll also be lugging along my own PA, just in case.It took a while to get the Challengers going with the new transparency-based input (I'm suspecting that my attempts to cajole them into action were being translated into a muddy jumble by the remaining PA components.), but we did actually get our first transparency up and projected before the end of the first set (the "innuendo-fueled-buttrock-anthem"). And, thanks to some spacious and synergetic free-grooving by the band, the half-hour wait was quite enjoyable (for me anyway :)!

Interactivity really picked up for the second set, with a second mad-lib song (the "fuzzy" love song), a great 'musical-experience-in-10-words-or-less', and a sweet tune based on a set of lyrics written entirely by the Challengers. We even got our first ever abstract-graphical score designed in the way that I had imagined they would be! Kudos to David Kimber for drawing something that was actually abstract and which could reasonably be interpreted from left-to-right. I sorta botched the directing of it (once we had set our 1-minute time-limit, it would've been better for everyone to just glance at the timer to help them determine where they were in the score rather than wait for me to advance the marker, which of course I wasn't doing because I was playing :), but I'm going to post a photo here, in case it inspires any future score-artists to build on this very elegant concept. Note that the staff-line here isn't literal (with only 4 lines)...only suggestive. Rockin' good!

Well, that's about it for this one from me. But again, if you were there or are listening to the recordings, feel free to add any entertaining details that I might've forgotten here in the comments section.

(Oh, another quick note: Near the beginning of the show, I announce "Weds, April 8th, 2008. But that was just the flavored syrup talking...this show was in fact recorded this past week, which is well into 2009.)

Neon Brown Presents: "Woodland Acoustic Duo/Trio/Quartet"!

Prologue 12 megs
Set 1 43 megs
Set 2 30 megs

Here is a prologue and two sets by a small-ish Acoustic Orchestra of Dennis Jolin (joining me in the prologue and throughout the evening on various percussion, melodica, and even banjo for a brief second), Aaron Stepp (laying down the magical idiosyncratic grooves on Fretless Electric Bass), Donovan Raymond (Piano at the end of each set) and Me Woods (mostly Guitar and Voice, with brief stints at dumbek, wood-blocks and manual-tube-driven-voice-leslie).


I had thought this might be one of our larger Orchestras, but -- true to form -- I sent out a very late reminder to the musicians (well really I just forwarded the show-listing with their names in it) and by 8pm it appeared that it might just be Dennis and me...which it actually *was* for the 10 minute prologue...but Aaron showed up with his bass towards the end of that, and we even added Donovan Raymond on the Chai House Piano for about 10-20 minutes at the end of each set.

This was a weird one for me. There was a huge appreciative audience the whole evening, with lots of friends in attendance, and I knew we had a great group of musicians, but with the PA speakers' super-wide spacing (about 12 feet off of the edge of each side of the stage) I was having a hard time hearing things in balance and so was struggling to find harmonic/rhythmic coherence and a place to settle in the mix. My playing in particular felt like it was lurching along and tripping up the beat fairly regularly. Even the vocal additions (from the Ballard News Tribune and the want ads from the back of the Seattle Weekly and the Stranger) seemed precariously perched atop the crumbling grooves. (And the 'Super-Barista' in the second set is a nearly incomprehensible hideous sprawling beast that only a fan of the most disorganized overlapping melody and lyrical wandering could love!) But then, near the end of both sets as Donovan would join in on the Piano, we'd all work through a challenging 5 minutes or so of trying to figure out how to play in the new landscape before being suddenly and mysteriously overtaken by a wave arising from nowhere and carrying us to the climax of each set on a smoothly building drone of ecstasy. (Start at 27:00 in set 1 and 17:20 in set 2 to jump right to these portions.) Listening back now, I'm actually enjoying most of the night here, and I'm particularly blown away by how many different sounds are coming out of Dennis' area of the mix...some truly diverse and well-seasoned hand-percussion!

The recording here suffers from some of the same problems as my ears did at the time: My cavalier attempt to not over-think the positioning of the mics has positioned them too far from the PA speakers and too close to the percussion and especially my dry leg shakers. If you start playing each set at a volume that sounds appropriate for the wash of cracked nuts that comes first, you'll end up feeling like you're listening to a guy shaking a rattle in time to a band that's playing in the other room. If, on the other hand, you imagine that you've walked into a jam-party late enough that the only available seat was right next to the guitarist's brashly-rattling leg, perhaps it's possible to tolerate a volume where you'll be able to absorb some of what the other musicians were up to. I've also done my best to apply some selective EQ and compression, slightly improving the balance.

My left leg was sporting a new set of bells that -- as my partner Tina will readily attest -- I spent several evenings tying onto various unsatisfactory leg-attachment devices before settling on an "elegant" system that knots them into a single length of panty-hose. It took at least 3 minutes or so before individual bells began tumbling loose onto the stage (...but there's a simple fix for that which I won't go into now :).

This night was *also* the first Chai House visit of my 9-week old daughter Lucy (pictured here with our friend Melvin) who, to my slight surprise and great delight, seemed to really enjoy herself -- apparently staring intently at the musicians and wriggling aggressively throughout the first set.