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Bob Culbertson (instructor) Steve Osburn (organizer) Glenn Poorman (organizer) Rich Brandt Steve Cambell Dennis Keller Wes Teregan Dave Tipton Aaron Wolf |
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The weekend started Friday night at the Union Street Saloon in downtown
Detroit. Rasa and I got there at about 7:00PM to find Steve Osburn, Wes
Teregan, and Bob Culbertson just arriving. Bob was traveling with his
girlfriend Susan (originally from Detroit). Her sister Christine was also
with them and had a viola in tow. We got right into the room where we
would be performing and began setting up. We did some quick sound checking
and then broke for a while to grab dinner out in the dining room. After
that, we finished our sound check and, shortly after, it was showtime. The
turnout wasn't nearly what I had hoped for but there were a fair amount of
people in the room so we started at about 10:20PM. I opened up with about
a 30 minute set. The set felt good although I was just debuting my new sound
setup and my ears were treated to some surprises here and there in the form
of some tinny auto-filter settings and some wicked feedback. After I
finished, Steve Osburn played. I had never seen Steve play as a solo before
and I really liked what he did. He had Wes playing Zendrum along with him and
delivered a rock solid set. From there, Bob played. I hadn't seen Bob play
since I was at NAMM in January of 2000 and had almost forgotten what a
monster player he is. He did a ripping set mixing up classical, celtic, and
jammin blues. He did a rendition of "Little Wing" that brought the place down
and then called Wes up with his Zendrum to do a version of "Birdland". At
one point, Bob announced that we all knew who the next tune would be dedicated
to and performed a beautiful and stirring rendition of "Amazing Grace"
following that up with an announcement that his CD and gig proceeds, for now,
are all going to disaster relief. Toward the end of the night, the jams got
started. Bob and Steve did a couple of Steve's tunes together and then Bob
played a couple of jams with Christine on viola. Christine proved to be an
excellent viola player and the combination of viola and Stick was really
nice. In spite of a low turnout, we all had a blast on Friday. My only
complaint from the night was the loud talkers in room which has happened
there on numerous occasions. Luckily, they quieted down later in the set.
On Saturday morning, the seminar began in earnest. Being a smaller group
than we originally had planned, we decided to move the seminar over to
Steve's house. So we all made a coffee run and then setup at Steve's where
we would spend the next two days. We started the day out working as a single
group. Bob started with some rudimentary work on the tapping action and
getting a good solid sustained tone. From there, we worked on some chord
positions/inversions and also worked on getting familiar with the notes in
the bass. After that we split up. Rich, Steve Cambell, Dennis, and Dave setup
upstairs while Wes, Steve Osburn, Aaron and myself remained in the basement.
Bob split his time providing material to work on for each of the two groups
and then leaving them to work while moving to the other group. Our group
continued to work on chord inversions as well as chord stacking which
basically meant combining simple triads of different scale notes to build
more complex chords. We also worked on using the knowledge of chord inversion
and stacking to spruce up our soloing and make it more interesting. Sometime
around 2:00PM, we broke for lunch and went down to the Chinese place by Oz's.
As always, we were moving much slower after the meal but we did make it back
to Steve's where we continued on. With the groups still split up, we did some
work on Emmett's motor bass technique until finally wrapping it up at about
6:00PM.
From there, we packed up what we needed and set out for the Alexander Music
Building on EMU's campus for the Saturday night performance. We grabbed some
take-out on the way and arrived at the recital hall at about 7:30PM. We met
up with Nelson Amos who was the the faculty sponsor of the event and started
setting up gear. At about 8:40PM, the show started. Wes performed two tunes
accompanied by Fusionaut's Zendrummer Ken Kazora and played a solid set. Wes
was followed by Steve Osburn who played three tunes calling Kan Kazora back
up to accompany him on the last of the three. From there, I went up and ran
two looping pieces. After I finished, Bob took over and, again, played a
ripping set. As 10:00PM approached, we did a couple of jams before calling it
a night. First, we did a blues jam with Bob, Aaron, and myself on Stick along
with both Wes and Ken on Zendrum. For the last tune, Bob and I did a
rendition of one of my own tunes along with Wes on Zendrum. After that, we
called it a night.
On Sunday, we all met up a Steve's at 10:00AM for our last day. As a group,
we refreshed on some things from the day before and then split up again.
During the morning, our group worked on various techniques we could use to
add some fullness to the right hand. We also worked a bit on combining
melodies with the chord arpeggios we'd worked on the day before and we worked
on two handed bass and two handed melody playing. At about 2:00PM, we broke
for lunch and, upon returning, Bob spent the rest of the afternoon providing
some one on one time with each of us. Right at 6:00PM, we officially wrapped
it up. We spent a bit of time packing up, taking photos, and saying goodbyes.
Then ... everybody hit the road.