Gafoo’s Blog

I am so excited about this show. We are going to start marching and playing next week
and hopefully we will get some gym time soon. We chunked through the music up to the quiet
section of Roulette Dares today. Good stuff. Since Nacho was gone I had the mallets
today. They are really good players. It’s just going to be a matter of refining their
dynamics and fixing minor rhythmic things here and there. I can’t wait for the new
mallets to come in so I can here the xylophone with a bit more harshness. It needs a
little more wood sound in some spots. Hearing the low end of the big marimba and the
old marimba is cool as hell! The 2 sounds they produce together is nothing short of
beautiful. When we get into the gym I am going to try like hell not to lose that. We’ll
after working through some spots with the mallets for a while, I slide on over to the
battery rehearsal where Eddie and Jared are more than ably handling things. It is really
great to have the extra guys on the battery staff this year and it is really starting to
show in the progress of the line. We playing together, though things are still fuzzy.
I think it’s just going to be a matter of spending a little bit longer playing slower.
We were pushing the tempo on them today. We were playing at about 150 bpm which is still
20bpm slower than we need to go but at this point, playing at the tempo and still staying
together is a really great acomplishment. We are just going to kill this show come March.
Well, next time I will definitely record our rehearsal and post it up on the web for all
to enjoy. The Music Of The Mars Volta was a little scary choice in the begginning but it
is really turning out to be a fantastic music choice and these kids and ripping it up.
Keep up the good work everyone!