Listening

What was interesting was that when we tried to ignore each other, I felt a lot more confident in my own playing. Listening intently requires a lot of attention, so when I eschewed listening as much as I could (not that this isn’t an effort in itself) I was able to focus on my own instrument a lot more then would otherwise be possible.

During the summer I performed (in a sextet) a piece, which called for improvisation on short musical motifs within a large-scale form. Basically, there were four things that I had to keep my attention on; the score (I generally memorise these, but on this occasion I didn’t have the time), the other musicians, the conductor (I hadn’t worked with one of these before) and my playing. What I found was that my attention was being stretched thin and the quality of my playing really suffered because of this.

Maybe I should consider (Ms Oliveros would not be too pleased with this) listening less? Part of me really believes in that “men can’t multitask” shtick. Maybe something I could try with group improvisation is alternately listening and not listening. I have a tendency towards pausing a lot; maybe these should be used to take in as much of the sonic environment as possible. Just a thought.

Relationship

The main thing on my mind here is this idea of “contribution”. What does contribution mean in this context? An improvisation might be exciting, might be beautiful, might be any number of things, but if you don’t subscribe to the idea that there are right and wrong things to do here then what exactly are you “contributing”?

I’m not sure what I think about the musical right/wrong dichotomy in this (or any other) case at the moment, but shrugging it off what can we say drives our contribution?

The desire to help out?

I am pretty confused with this one.

You’re either with us or you’re not

Have to say I’m really intrigued by this idea of being musically “not together” (apart?) even though I’m not fully sure what it entails exactly.

In first year Performance Studies, Paul O Donnell played a recording of a gig where he was actively “against” the band leader. He did everything he could to upset and disrupt what the leader had established. The musical outcome (most of the class thought) was more interesting than what it would have been if Paul played along with the leader.

Of course, there is (I think) a big difference between being “not with” someone musically, and “against” someone musically. Maybe the first improvisation of Wednesday’s class was an example of an attempt towards being apart, being “not with each other”.

How can the music go somewhere unless someone pushes it?

I’m inclined to say it doesn’t go, but I guess that depends on your definition of “push”; do you mean nudge or force?

Let’s imagine (this will require a leap) that I open with some serious speed-metal shredding. Is this a push in the direction of some kind of free-metal extravaganza? Or, is this just a statement of material that is open to interpretation and subject to change? Are these two discrete and separate, or do they blur and become indistinct at some point?

If I tried to drown out anyone that wasn’t following the free-metal theme then that would be a pretty serious push, but that’s all I can think of that I would call a “pretty serious push”.

If you don’t push it where you think it should go, who does?

Must admit I’m pretty stumped on this count.

All I can really put forward is that it comes from the group’s consensus, but that makes it sound like it’s all been worked out from the beginning. Maybe a better way to put it would be that the music is the group coming to a consensus, but then that suggests that we’re coming to some kind of musical agreement.

This is a lot of food for thought.