Review by: Marc Pelath
Location: Casa Margarita, Chicago, IL, the home of Marc and Diana Pelath
Attendees: Markus Reuter, Marc Pelath, Jacob Leibeck, Lloyd Dyson, Colin Jenkinson, Thom Catts, Aralee Dorough, Lucius Gregory Meredith (remote)
Much is lost in the fog of history following the pandemic. The TGC Chicago 2022 course ran five days, from August 15-19. Sessions generally ran from 9-12 and 2-5, followed by an evening session from 8-9. The content of the course was largely a review, elaboration, and exploration of the chromatic bracket approach that Markus had started disseminating earlier that year in the 2022 TGC AAD course.
We met in my relatively-spacious basement, plugged into a mixer, and played through two PAs. Exercises covered but were not limited to: “do re mi” patterns, rock and rolls, the chromatic bracket in two and three “handfuls”, diatonic patterns within the chromatic bracket, and of course countless (well, countable, but not counted) variations of all exercises. Evenings were dedicated to jams with parts improvised by Markus, as is the way of our tribe. Jacob led us through exercises occasionally, Greg did his best to participate remotely, we all admired (or tried) each others’ guitars, and we emerged from the week with fresh resolve—Thom seemed to be the most electrified, as it was his first experience learning from Markus. Personally, we discovered (and found the solution for) the main problem with my technique right at the end of the week, which would have by itself justified the whole week.
Jacob’s partner Frankie Wolf joined us one evening as an audient, and William Mazzarella joined us on guitar for the Thursday evening jam.
