Thanks…
Thanks Han for posting the class diaries as you have done so far.. I thought they were really helpful in catching all the nuances and the dynamics of the class.. (from a non native speaker perspective i have generally much less problems reading and writing than listening and talking)
wouldn’t blame you if you are not going to do that anymore, since this space seems to have lost momentum.. but with just four of us class maybe we get the sense that we manage to communicate enough during class time?
anyway, i enjoyed last class, we might well have played some of the best improvisations so far during that time
thanks for the links, the Braxton material especially, is quite precious and interesting.. found a recent interview to Frith done at Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in Belfast (found that on the side links to Franziska Schroeder’s youtube video) and it’s quite interesting, at some stage he talks about the differences between playing in duo, trio, quartet and so on.. the quartet for is pretty unpredictable according to him.. my thoughs are we definitely need more practice together, in and out of class..
the saturday morning improv was quite interesting, the setting seemed a bit strange, we surely got the shock factor in right, as in i felt we got pretty much all the attention that was available in the room (sadly i had noticed earlier how ‘unconventional’ ways of live performance –i.e. laptop music– don’t seem to get the same respect and attention that someone playing a more traditional instrument usually does)
not sure about my playing in that particular improvisation, for most of the time i felt like i was simply executing some of the techniques i use on the cuatro, without much creative input, or risk.. the public performance aspect somehow took away from the purer aspect of playing.. still, i managed one of that short leaps, when rubbing one of the knitting needles under the strings accidentally hit the frets and resulted in that washboard sound that i’d be familiar with in a 1920s Hawaiian guitar context, but that it hadn’t occurred to me during these improvisations yet…
(and that’s another thing that Frith was talking about in that interview, part 3 or 4 i think.. how we develop our techniques, how we choose to use them when we play…. he also talked about the big difference between hearing the recording of an improvisation or performance and the experience of playing or participating to the same performance)
