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Oregon Stick Seminar 2003A Living Room Event, held on May 24, 2003
Tom Griesgraber (www.thossounds.com) arrived
in Portland to open the latest tour with the California Guitar Trio
(www.cgtrio.com) on Thursday evening. Despite
some technical challenges associated with the first night of a tour and
equipment that was acting up, the show at Lola's Room in the Crystal Ballroom
was great. The Portland crowd loved Tom's tasteful, creative and very
musical, use of looping and synth sounds that formed a background for the
bass and melodies.
Around 10am, an hour before the seminar began, I received a call from Rick in Portland asking if there was any room left at the event. The cool part was that Rick was not a Stick player. He had seen Tom perform on Thursday evening. Afterwards, he surfed to the Stick Enterprises website and was pleasantly surprised to find that Tom was the featured player on the home page. Reviewing Tom's tour schedule, he noticed the announcement of our local Oregon event that very weekend. Rick called me on the morning of the seminar to see if it was full. He was prepared to attend just to sit in and gain some first hand knowledge. But one of the Stickists had brought an extra instrument so Rick was able to fully participate with the rest of us. Soon he was playing along with everyone, even though he had never held a Stick before. Our seminar provided an excellent opportunity for Rick to discover the feeling and potential of the Chapman Stick. Prior to the event, everyone submitted topics that they would like to have covered during the seminar. For this seminar, the attendees were interested in developing greater ability on the bass side. Tom began by reviewing chord patterns with emphasis on the various 7th chords. He then reviewed "upper structure triads", where you play the root in the bass and a triad on the melody side built from the 3rd note of the chord. Most of the rest of the day was spent on bass lines and associated interlocking melodies. We provide lunch around 1:00 pm. Naturally, the Seattle folks fired up on delicious and very strong coffee. It gave everyone a chance to hang out, get to know each other, and try each other's instruments. Since we didn't have to leave the property for lunch, we were easily able to get our heads back into the seminar after the break. Tom led the group in learning a complex bass line by practicing isolating segments of the bass line and then assembling them together. He also illustrated the value of using a metronome at very slow speed to build up timing accuracy, and refining fingering technique. He helped us appreciate the how tapping each note very slightly after, before, or exactly on the metronome beat affects the feeling of the music. This exercise also helps counteract a natural tendency to speed up during a piece. It was especially interesting to see how tapping very slightly after the click creates an inviting, laid back feeling to the music. Of course, what Stick seminar would be complete without the group photo and the gear discussions? Around 5pm the seminar ended, with everyone's questions having been addressed. A few attendees were able to stay on after the event. We drove in to the nearby town of McMinnville where we continued to get to know each other and enjoyed some live jazz in the being performed in the dining room. Looks like we have the beginning of a tradition of annual living room events!
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