As discussed today, we need to decide what we’re doing this term. The current option is ‘Plan A’—to (re)introduce or (re)inject (partly) idiomatic, (recognizably) stylistic, or (consciously) traditional elements (back) into the improvisations.

Some options, listed roughly in order of time needed (i.e. high to low), you may want to consider are:

1. game pieces
2. collective score/part-making
3. conduction and cueing

I look forward to hearing your decision next week.

I’m a little snowed under with another project and will unfortunately have to bow out of doing a full-scale teaching diary for the time being (you are, of course, welcome to write about the class in any form you want). I will leave you with a few links though.

• If you haven’t already, as discussed in today’s class and pointed to in my last post, have a listen to the two magicians.
• More on Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway and Evan Parker.
• The musician who said improvisation was about finding an ending was Charles Hayward.
• The duet that Kevin mentioned by Marian Murray and myself was from the May 2008 Stet Lab (you’ll find this under the title ‘don’t eat the red acid!’).

Finally, if you’re looking for further listening material, I highly recommend destination OUT which posts rare and/or obscure recordings of improvised music(s). (They have, among other things, recently completed a Braxton blogathon.) Subscribe to their feed, download their mp3s, listen, study and learn… and have fun.

We tackled two major elements during this class:

1. getting to get the class to crit
2. how to end and improvised performance

The Big Crit

the good

Play: there’s a several minute stretch of discussion by Andrea, Owen and Paul after the first improvisation. I don’t need to add anything to this; we’re talking about our work.

But…

the bad

Play: are we happy with that? (Our contract made during our first class was to be frank and critical of our work.)

Andrea says we have room for improvement. Owen asks how we might improve. Andrea suggests through more playing and discussion. …But our discussions pretty much exclusively fixated on our successes, and we’re afraid to discuss, in specifics, our less desirable traits—our flaws, our failures, our near and not-so-near misses. How are we going to achieve ‘high-quality’ performances if we don’t apply the same criteria that we bring to bear on the work of our elders and models?

We also tend to propose ‘solutions’ without fully specifying the problem, without asking what is wrong with what we are doing? what dissatisfies us about our current state / performance?

(This will potentially, and eventually, relate to examining criteria.)

the ugly

Kevin: we could be more pig headed.

Owen: did not like my playing. (Excellent! a proper crit!) “The jazz parts put me off.” But if you didn’t like my playing, what could you do to stop me? (An unasked question: what could you have done to redirect, redefine or subvert my playing?)

My crit: I don’t trust the group (but this is actually my problem, not the group’s fault). What sucked? I agree with Kevin, we performed like sheep. Paul could be more assertive, less polite; Kevin could demonstrate more nerve; Andrea could make strong statements by dropping out. We rarely do endings that go bang…

the art (craft? science? magic?) of ending

ending a

Andrea sees a convergence of agency [sorry, my paraphrase] between performers signaling an ending. But is that what’s really happening if, as we’ve discussed before, this kind of interaction, as observed from a third party, is extremely unreliable sign to navigate by.

Owen desires a more abrupt ending… What do you need to do to get that ending?

ending b

Owen feels a need for signals.

We’ve done a lot of ending in the last few weeks, so we are capable of doing endings. What is the mechanism?

Kevin rephrases this question: how do you signify an ending? (This is an interesting, and telling, way to think about the problem… wonder where this leads to.)

Andrea: stop playing, and wait for the others to stop. Certainly works (this is a pretty good answer).

Kevin talks about leaving your options open for coming back in if the others do not take the exit. However, if I guessed what Kevin was doing, and I sabotaged it, what’s happens then?

Andrea brings up the audience as creator of meaning and possibly somehow the arbitrator of the ending. (But how?)

(The answer to our question is between Kevin and Andrea’s statements.)

If two performers desire different kinds of endings, what happens? What can you do in that situation?

ending c

This one, for me, sounded cool. None of us got quite what we wanted, but the results were interesting. (Something to return to.)

How was that? did it suck? was it better? We’re good at describing what happened, but not so willing to make ‘quality’ assessments.

Andrea talks about an ending being a consensus or compromise. Andrea is on to something here: the last improvisation, for him, felt like “we’re have an ending; oh no, we don’t; oh yes, we have… everyone did their own ending… it was cool in a sense, but it was also… forced. Or not an ending as such. [emphasis mine]” Some of this was desirable (“it was cool in a sense”), but held back by some other notion of an ending (“not an ending as such”). Where does this other notion of an ending come from (this ‘real’ / ‘true’ / ‘authentic’ ending)? And if we don’t push this somewhere (“forced”), if we don’t make it happen, then how does the music happen? (Andrea thinks the music can happen without the group making it happen.)

Me: “You’ve actually articulated the idea [of how endings work]… but we’re stuck on this one word [actually two] which is ‘false ending’… There is no double bar line… but we can end, which I agree is magical, but like magicians… the person doing it knows full well that there’s a sleight of hand.” Are we unwilling to open the hood and examine the engine? Improvisation can appear magical (is magical), but are we afraid to loose this sense of magic by examining the sleight of hand?

other notes

Are we imagining a preordained ending? (If we are, is this a useful concept?)

An unanswered question: Kevin, last week, expressed a possible improvisative tactic as “continue as you mean to go on”. Why? Why would you continue as you mean to go on?

Owen suggests prepared elements several times during this class. I’m resisting this: prepared means (scores, compositions, etc) are useful things to bring to improvised music, but, as stated in the first class, we are not going to be dealing with them (at least during this first term). I want to see what is possible within an open improvisative context before resorting to other means.

Andrea, like last week, brings up the word ‘control’. Do we not have significant amounts of control (25% share/stake in a quartet, 20% in a quintet)? Is there a question of responsibility for our performance? it seems to me that we cannot hold anyone else to account for the music…

homework

Listening to some endings:

Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker, ‘ParkBrax 5’ (from Duo (London) 1993).
Derek Bailey, George Lewis and John Zorn, ‘On Golden Pond’ and ‘The Warning’ (from Yankees).
Marilyn Crispell and Gerry Hemingway, ‘Billy Duck’ and ‘Jump’ (from Duo).

Moment-by-moment commentary of a group (in this case duo) improvisation as promised. BTW, yours do not have to be as wordy as this one, and you are very welcome to take a short snippet of your performances (30 seconds, 5 seconds, whatever) if you are short on time…

0:06 start

Here’s pretty much the kind of opening I did at the last class. I know Murray’s not quite ready yet (nor, I’m gambling, is the audience), and I jump in, make a bold statement, hoping to shape the rest of the performance in those stark tones

The sweeping, fluttering gesture’s fairly comfortable to play (a choice partly dictated by the fact that we’re performing cold without a warmup), and I also know there’s a few other places I can go with this—I’m familiar with the technique. I’m hedging my bets with the harmonics at the 11 second mark, saying that I may go there, or set up an alternation. I abandon this for the moment, save it maybe for later, because the ultimate tactic I decide to pursue does require the harmonics…

0:06–0:35 initial tactic

After the initial few cycles, the tactic comes to me (almost like a collapsing of likely possibilities)…

The tactic deployed at this point, for me, is to play in any available gap left by Murray (and, I think, he was pretty much doing the same at his end).

Interesting thing about doing three consecutive gigs across three consecutive evenings is that the speeds of interaction get quicker. This opening ‘section’ took both of us by surprise. There’s no warm-up, and we’re at the densest point (in terms of information and gestures) of the whole evening; if nothing, things relax a bit after this.

Another thing is that Murray and I have been performing together, on and off, for about ten years at this point, and I trust him to make good choices, and, on a selfish note, I trust him to make me sound good. In the past, my strategy used to be to throw him any kind of random garbage, and watch him transform that initial impulse into beautifully crafted porcelain… but I’m not doing that here: I’m pushing for a little more parity and obliqueness of logic.

0:35–0:50 overlap

This tactic was, at least for me and at these speeds, an ‘imperfect’ algorithm. This imperfection of my judgement leads, for example, to the performance sounding like Murray’s doing an ‘answer’ to my ‘calls’. That latter point is really ’cause my reflexes are a little slower than Murray’s, and so while he jumps in straight after me, my reaction has a greater latency. (So the temporal grouping goes: Murray… Han, Murray… Han, Murray… Han, Murray… an illusory grouping.)

Another thing it leads to is (accidental) overlaps of our gestures. There’s an interesting sound we stumbled upon here that, to me, should sound like a foreground-background setup, but it’s difficult to decide who’s foreground and who’s background.

0:50–0:53 breakout

Two gigs ago, we did entered an analogous serendipitous zone (in that case, if was a hocket, a cheap trick that, from an inexperienced audience point of view, sounds amazing, but really easy to do) and, discussing it afterwards, we both thought we stayed there a little too long. So I figure it’s best to exit this foreground-background setup sooner rather than later. My exit gesture is (apparently) picked up my Murray, which gives me slingshot out of there.

0:53–1:14 solo

The slingshot didn’t land me anywhere other than an empty space, and I’m lazy, I can give Murray a solo and be entertained, reserve my energies for later after he’s taken us somewhere else.

1:14–1:38 back to duo

I wanted to push it back into the dense zone, and if there’s a missed opportunity in this performance, for me, it happens here. Murray’s taken this to the sparsest place, and rather than letting him go further out there, I jump in.

Now I’m pushing it back to the 0:06–0:35 initial sound, but Murray’s staying pretty much in his sparse place. I can’t exercise that initial tactic of course, so I’m, in a sense, doing a duet with a phantom Murray.

1:38–3:07 overlap redux

I briefly return to the higher register flutterings I did during the 0:35–0:50 overlap to indicate that I haven’t thrown that out yet. Like the 0:11 harmonics, I’m hedging my bets and keeping options open.

But, I think, Murray takes this as an opportunity to overlap… and I just play all the time, see what Murray makes of it. I figure he can handle making this sound musical (and I won’t worry about that at all). I alternately try and stay out of, and jump into, Murray’s (pitch, gestural and timbral) space: I want to make his life difficult.

3:07–3:49 separate ways

At some point, I think I feel I pushed Murray way to the stratospheric register… so I head bass-wards. We’ve been occupying overlapping registers for most of this, I think it would sound cool if we headed to extremes. I still set up the mid-register flutters to plug the gaps, to set it up as an almost accompaniment to the other voices, and to indicate to Murray that I’ve got that register covered, you can stay up there.

3:49–4:28 transition

Not sure why I played an almost normal chord here, but Murray takes that as a signal to change, and I take his change as my own cue to change. Having set up the harmonic at the 11 second mark, that’s an obvious place for me to go. I’m making this a gentle transition from the flutter to the harmonics (touching on the bass portamenti on the way). I’m trying to indicate two things to the audience: that I haven’t forgotten any of these elements—I’m still a juggler—and (vanity point here) that I have the chops to make this transition. I’m also keeping options open in case Murray throws a curve ball.

4:28–5:55 pseudo-balkan fiddle music

I wanted to get a pulse going. I would have preferred if Murray ignored the pulse, but he doesn’t.

Instead, possibly triggered by the (part-accidentally) melodious harmonics, he enters pseudo-balkan fiddle territory. I’m a total sucker for this, and get a real kick every time Murray goes there. If I’m the accompanist in this situation, that’s fine by me…

5:48–5:55 transition

Murray’s pushing away from this semi-idiomatic moment from about the 5:48, but I want to stay here. He builds on small staccato gestures, until I’m pretty much persuaded to leave this space.

I begin to think, at the back of my head, that I should be looking for endings.

5:55–6:30 the New Music violinist

Murray goes to the New Music violin cliché zone. Not sure how I should respond here… He catches my off guard, and I fumble at this point and do a few scrapes and scratches. Pretty pointless guitar playing I think. But, when Murray transitions to pizzicato, my gestures are retroactively justified: see? we’re swapping places. (Still later this becomes, for example, rough vs. smooth sounds.) As I said, beautifully crafted porcelain.

6:30–7:28 final tactic

When you’re being thrown a bunch of stuff, this is where the Oxley-Taylor tactic becomes useful. All I do is match my transitions/jumps to Murray’s, and offer a bunch of transitions myself.

Still looking for the exit, even if I am pretty happy where I am.

(Incidentally, if you’re looking for the ‘leap’ in a technical, guitaristic sense, this starts at 7:03 and again at 7:38… it’s that voice-like sound from the guitar; I’ve never done that before.)

7:28–8:30 looking for an exit

The overlap here, where we serendipitously land on parallel docks, was something that I though might also indicate to Murray that an exit was near… I’m slowing things down (not in terms of sound, but the number of elements being juggled), like shifting gears before the breaks goes down.

There’s a brief hocketting moment at 8:14, but, remembering our discussions about what happened two night ago, I push to break apart this simple, cheap thrill quickly by throwing a couple of uneven gestures.

Not exactly the ending I hoped for (I wanted something a little more decisive), and we’ve done much better at other times, but I can live with it.

as a contrast (?) to Oxley-Taylor

…we do very self-aware improvisations. (…or is it really as big a contrast as I make it sound?)

play

Fine as far as it went, but I miss some of the density and complexity of last week.

discussion

Any comments? criticisms? (A question that I did not ask in class: if we’re afraid, or unwilling, to say we’re dissatisfied with an improvisation, how do we move on from here?)

Andrea feels being “relaxed” has helped un-stuck the group. Kevin would like to be more alert.

my crit

The good: interesting challenges and choices because of the stark volume discrepancies.

The bad: the start, for my tastes, was a little too timid for me.

how do you start an improvisation?

Play and talk through the process. In the discussion, try and articulate what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it both in terms of effect desired (where we’re pushing it), and how we’re affected (how are choices are shaped by others’ actions).

You want it to go somewhere, but of course it does not… and that’s okay.

A step-by-step articulation of choices, consequences of actions, etc.

some observations

Kevin: two ways of opening: something known, or free of premeditation. Kevin is thinking in terms of individual state. (…but how does this map on to a group?)

Andrea: two ways: slow, gentle; fast, dense. Thinking, broadly, in terms of aggregate group behavior. (…but how is this useful if a group is composed of, say, competing agencies?)

how do you start an improvisation? redux

Play and discuss. Okay, for me, this improvisation rocked—interesting contrasts, moments of density, sparseness, etc.

expectations

If you’re surprised by the result, you must have expected something. What are our (imperfectly) predicted consequences of our actions?

sports commentary

Play, while trying to do a DVD commentary. I admit this is hard (talk and play), but Andrea gets this pretty much straight away.

BTW, great little ending to this…

other notes

Paul realizes that it’s okay to ‘play notes’—we don’t have to do ‘extended techniques’.

homework

Write up a moment-by-moment sports commentary to one of our past performances (either in class or with another group, but ideally with a recording that’s available online…). I’ll also do one, and post it up here…

potential questions to tackle

1. how do you end an improvisation?
2. what might ‘control’ mean in this practice? (Andrea was hovering ’round this word.)

other business

performance-practical

Everyone present is good for anytime during the practical week (8–12 December) as long as it avoids the jazz/pop practicals (checked with Paul O’Donnell subsequently, and the jazz/pop practicals will be on Wednesday).

Kevin will do the program notes; Andrea, the poster.

Need to think about how to bill ourselves, performance format, and, eventually, examination criteria.

open day performance

Everyone present is up for doing a performance at the open day on Saturday, 8th November.

general comments

I did a little too much of a lecture in class (I suspect the desire to play more and talk less is a response to this).

I also somewhat jumped the gun, indicating the exit out of our current dilemma. I wonder if this will turn out to be a mistake: the last thing I want is for the class to regress into a model in which the teacher generates direction. I hope everyone holds on to their responsibilities (and I don’t exercise too much executive control).

Playing wise, for me, this is the class when we hit it, and it really starts to cooking. (I have no real explanation for this, but I’m also interested that no previous Safety First course has hit such a high mark so soon into the course.) It remains to be seen whether we can keep this up, or if the spark, fired by the various revelations (and reevaluations) of this week’s class basically die down. Either way, the next few weeks shall be interesting.

towards a improvisative tactic

Quick summary of the dilemma: avoid both the autocratic command-and-follow model and the Cagian denial of agency. …and can we (and should we) bring our egos, histories, prejudices, etc to the negotiating table?

What do you want to do? Kevin say talk about Taylor and Oxley.

reverse engineering Stylobate 1

Kevin: Oxley just keeps on following Taylor.

Kevin talk us through what Oxley is doing. Here, Oxley picks out this from Taylor; here he picks something else out.

Question: but what about the other moments when Oxley’s playing doesn’t correspond to Taylors?

Andrea says his initial impression was also that Oxley was following Taylor, but then began to hear the reverse as well.

The rhythm sometimes ‘locks-in’, other times it does not.

How is Oxley following Taylor.

Kevin hears a myriad of ways in which Oxley follows Taylor (imitation, accentuation, etc).

Owen hears Taylor as the dominant voice—the leader.

Question: that’s what it sounds like, but is that how it’s constructed. What’s the underlying mechanism? (Note to myself: we should try and separate audience POV and the reverse engineering of performances.)

Kevin: Perhaps Oxley is accompanying Taylor.

Question: What do you mean by accompaniment? (I didn’t ask this in class, but the question, in a sense, is what does it mean to accompany, when idiom, and style (the usual reference points for this kind of break down of roles) is up in the air?)

Kevin: following… trying to compliment.

demonstration of accompanying

Duo: Kevin as Oxley, Owen as Taylor.

Sounded good. Very interesting playing.

Andrea and I had a hard time deciphering who was accompanying who.

what’s the Oxley algorithm?

What generates that complexity [of response]?

Kevin suggests that Oxley takes his cues from Taylor selectively.

Question: Under what conditions does he take his cues?

my take on what’s happening

Taylor is jump-cutting between several contrasting, distinctive ideas/gestures. Oxley also jumps between contrasting ideas/gestures, locking his changes with (what he perceives to be) Taylor’s changes.

They are, in a sense, missing out the aesthetic or idiomatic ‘judgment call’ (“he’s done that, ergo, I’m going this”).

Thus, sometimes the music ‘locks’ and other times he doesn’t.

Talk very briefly about how the performer’s negotiations are partial (e.g. Oxley’s take on when Taylor makes a jump is subjective). May need to return to this idea…

the audience and ‘active listening’

We return to the idea that the audience’s interpretation of the onstage relationships is subjective. Thus, as performers, all we need to do is generate a certain degree of complexity, and the audience hears the rest. In reference to Andrea’s notion of ‘active listening’, I add that audiences are active because they actively create meaning. Performers delegate responsibility to the audience, the audience (partially) creates the relationships onstage.

play: try out the algorithm

Trio: Andrea, Kevin and Owen.

Playing wise, for me, this was a high point of the course thus far. High-energy, interesting and complex; as audience, the relationships and negotiations were just that little bit out of grasp (that’s a good thing).

Andrea liked having a tactic: not worry too much about shaping the music. I say that the shape should sort itself out if you do your part. (There’s my tired soccer game metaphor…)

what does Taylor do?

Given Oxley’s tactic, talk briefly about what Taylor’s responses might be. Kevin: prolog a ‘section’ if he likes what Oxley’s doing, etc. We really need to return to some of these ideas because they are at the core of real-time tactics and musical negotiations.

egos, histories, etc.

Following on from last week’s discussions, briefly cover the idea that selflessness is often synonymous with musicianship, and how this may be a problematic idea in group improvisation.

Andrea: Oxley is slightly less egotistical.

Yes, but Oxley is keeping his own identity: he is not subsumed into Taylor’s gestures in a straightforward way. Oxley’s moves are his own, and Taylor’s has to deal with the resultant—Taylor’s life is not made easier by Oxley’s choices.

Andrea: in this music, the self is more necessary than in others. You need to bring yourself (material, background, ego) to the group.

(A peripheral issue that I didn’t say: I think Andrea’s right, but with one modifier: in other musical practices, the self is just as important, but we like to pretend it isn’t. In other words, we often value music, and musicality, that is unmarked.)

You can, and I think it would be good to, bring other traditions and idioms to the performance. You can play the Delta blues, but you cannot expect others to necessarily join in.

play

Quartet: Andrea, Han, Kevin and Owen.

We have a cooky, dramatic little ending: ppp flutters from Owen, just when it threatens to die down, I interject, others join in, etc.

what are we doing next week?

Now what? Owen: less talk, more play. Han: play until we come across a problem.

Andrea invents a class dinner as a metaphor as a way to theorize group improvisative performance. I responded that

Your metaphor of group performance as a group meal is an excellent one… but I’m going to suggest one significant difference: in group performance, the ‘meal’ can be altered in real-time depending on the resources available (or the ingredients brought by the group).

Thus, although it makes sense to say that

each of us will bring things that he feels will be enjoyed by everyone else, according to his own experience and taste

Because group performance is dynamic, we’re not stuck with Owen’s starter or Kevin’s main course.

Now, it strikes me that Andrea’s semi-planned (people are given responsibilities, but have leeway within those) potluck is only one available way to organize a group dinner. Another would be a meticulously pre-planned meal (taken, say, from the pages of a book), where all parties were given specific duties that would culminate in that planned extravaganza; yet another would be a blind potluck where everyone brings whatever is at hand. Even in this crude metaphorical sketch, we might find echos of the autocratic, authorial composerly model in the former, and the Cagian denial of agency in the latter.

But if, as Andrea and Kevin have said, we’re trying to find a balance—something in between those would be best—I’m going to posit that we’re aiming for a different kind of organizing principle.

three hungry chefs in a less-than-satisfactory kitchen

Marilyn loves Chicago cuisine (its versions of Italian, Chinese, etc.). On the other hand, Evan is a chocoholic. John likes everything.

They’re all hungry.

They search the kitchen, find utensils, appliances, ingredients.

Evan needs his fix and is relieved to find a small lump of chocolate, and almost empty jar of Nutella. His heart skips a beat, and begins work.

Marilyn rolls a pizza base. She’s not thinking too much about her next move, or what Evan (never mind John) is up to, but is meticulous—whatever it is that will result, this will be a fine, Chicago-style pizza base. She preheats the oven.

Evan puts together a dark(ish) chocolate sauce. He doesn’t know how sweet or savory it is ’cause he is too hungry to check; he is only guided by his nose. He looks over at Marilyn and feels a momentary sense of dread: should I aim for savory?

John, becoming dissatisfied with the kitchen and the course(s) of action by his comrades, decides a little spice will cure any monstrosity that might result. Just make it hot, he thinks. He grabs half the spice rack, runs between his comrades and throws a pinch of this and that into their concoctions: he pops paprika into Marilyn pizza base, and dumps whole peppercorns into Evan sauce.

Before Marilyn has time to respond, Evan (with only a vague notion of what he is doing) has poured the sauce over the pizza base.

Marilyn, by habit, more than anything, sprinkles oregano onto it. She ceremoniously slides the pizza into the oven.

Oh well, looks like we’re having spicy chocolate pizza (with oregano). It is neither Chicago cuisine, nor is it the confectionery that Evan is more used to. John is slightly horrified (but fascinated).

The meal and its making are, however,

1. novel
2. a result of accepting available resources (including people)
3. a result of competing and cooperative gestures (a negotiation in real-time)
4. neither authorial, nor the denial of agency
5. neither pre-planned, nor the result of pure chance
6. a result of individual desires…
7. …yet of accepting what it can be

Now substitute environment, context and instrumentation for the kitchen with its appliances and ingredients, and substitute improvising musicians for hungry amateur chefs.

play

Felt the group played well. Nothing specific to add other than we’re quicker off the mark than week zero.

This is actually the first time I play in the 2008–2009 Safety First class. Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a little stuck in this post-Campbell pseudo-bluegrass mode. (Doesn’t help that my right arm ain’t quite there yet.)

discussion

(Note for future: we need to move away from talking generals, and get down to specifics in our discussions. Hopefully, examining Taylor and Oxley’s performance will help that.)

Andrea asks “were we listening?”

where are we

How does the class feel about where we are? Kevin says we are making progress.

Where are we headed? Andrea: “definitely a different place from where we started.”

Where are we?

consensus

Kevin brought up the notion of consensus (as the process that drives, or goal of, improvisation). Our online discussion continued along the following line

Kevin: …It comes from the group’s consensus…. Maybe a better way to put it would be that the music is the group coming to a consensus….

Han: If it’s a matter of consensus, the question in a sense becomes, who (helps to) makes the consensus if not you?

Kevin: The other performers and the audience?

Han: But if the other performers are, say, all waiting for the others to make the consensus, are you not stuck in a loop? Can a consensus be reached if everyone is just waiting for it to happen?

How do you find consensus if we’re all waiting for the other person? If we’re all reactive how are we going to go anywhere?

“shedding habits”

Paul had said in the second class, in response to the question, that he desires to shed habits. If the goal is to shed habits, why not do whatever you want to do (or do anything (at all))?

play: do whatever you want to do

discussion

Good? Bad?

How did that improvisation compare with the very first improvisation of the class? (Play recording of the first improvisation.) Were the performers listening intently in that first improvisation? and if so, was that advantageous in comparison to everyone doing their own thing?

Kevin thinks yes, but qualifies that something in between those would be best.

Where is that?

leaders and followers?

Orthodox (West European) musical ensemble pedagogy’s model is of leader (conductor, composer, etc) and followers (good musicianship is following). Does the world break down into leaders and followers? Can we be something else other than the leader or the pack?

Andrea says yes, it’s about “finding a balance”.

Paul says he finds it very difficult to “shake-off the past”. But how can you get consensus if you don’t bring yourself (including your past) to the table? We each want something, and what we want is part of our trainings, our histories, our traditions.

(Kevin brings up a double call-and-response scheme. This has the idea of contrasts and juxtapositions hidden there, I ignore this (sorry, Kevin), but we’ll probably return to this.)

audience and perception

Andrea says that notions, such as consensus, are subjective. (He brings up the point of audience and reception. I promise we will return to these ideas of subjective and partial in reading and reception.)

play: duo plus the guy doing his own shtick

Andrea and Kevin do a duo, ignore me, I do my own thing.

discussion

Paul didn’t like it. I was overpowering the group (sorry, my bad). He brings up the word ‘unified’ (as a desirable trait), but adds

Paul: I wanted to hear different things.

What do we mean by reacting? In ‘normal’ music, the bass player, say, is in the bass register, the piccolos are stratospheric; the performers are (apparently) not together. If they were in the same space, the music would collapse. Is that what we mean by reacting (to occupy the same space)? Is ‘being together’ or call-and-response all we have; the only possibilities?

Andrea found it hard to discern if he was reacting to me or not (i.e. interaction is subjective). In which case, does it really matter if I respond (if we’re going to hear a ‘response’ regardless of intention)?

Kevin: No.

Han: Then what do you have left?

Kevin: What you’re doing and what the other guy is doing.

play: duo (two soloists)

Paul and I play, trying our best to ignore each other.

discussion

Andrea thought (imagined?) he could hear interaction. Goes on to say that, when he plays with Kevin, he sometimes occupies the same space, other times, creates contrast. Return to that question: does that mean we can do anything we want?

ego

What do you bring to the negotiating table? Personal/collective histories? Prejudices? Egos? (Paul is suspicious of egos?)

other business

Andrea asks about the topology of the group/class (clockwise, Andrea, Owen (me in this case), Kevin and Paul). I reply that we’re trying to keep things simple for the moment. We may have to return to this issue at a later date depending on how much progress we’ve made on other issues.

homework

Consider Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley’s ‘Stylobate 1′ (from Leaf Palm Hand) and see if we can talk about it in terms of ‘diplomacy’ and in terms of ‘ego’, or tradition, or (personal/collective) histories. Also see if we can reverse engineer what they are doing, and how they are doing what they are doing.

Some really interesting articles from Andrea and Owen. Good writing people; here’s my response:

Andrea states he does not see

…‘Listening’ as a passive thing”.

I think many of us are attracted to some notion of active listening, and I agree that listening does not necessarily have to be a passive behavior or a subservient position, but how do we talk about this other kind of listening? The notion that listening is passive, or at best only reactive, is a strong part of orthodox musical pedagogy; we’ve all been trained into this:

• follow the tempo
• lock-in with the group
• be influenced…
• respond…

The pressure on us is to find an alternative vocabulary to talk about listening, theorize it, and explore the practical dimensions of this alternative form of listening.

Andrea also goes on to say

…The response can simply mean ‘i’m here’, ‘i’m with you guys’.

My question is, do we have to say ‘I’m with you guys’? Even when trying not to listen to each other, you were listening to each other. In other words, you’re always already performing ‘I’m with you guys’ even when you’re not explicitly stating it (in sound, in gestures, in music). (And how exactly does that work?)

…And would it be a tragedy (in musical terms) if I said ‘I am not with you’?

In somewhat of a contrast to Andrea, Owen questions the very idea of listening

Is it a good thing to always listen? (because i think it was exciting when we tried to not listen today)

I responded to this by saying that

Well, I did think it sounded good. But you were still listening (you did jump right back in when Kevin started back up). If you were still listening (in some sense), what was it that made that improvisation more successful?

I think you’re right to ask if there are different ways to listen. The question then becomes how were you listening (and interacting) in that performance as opposed to the others

For me, the way out of our current funk is hidden somewhere in Owen’s remark:

I don’t want to manipulate where a piece of music goes, and push it somewhere were I think i should go.

I won’t say whether I agree or disagree with this assertion, but the key to many issues (listening, interacting, how to get to the edge, how to leap into the unknown) is just under the surface of this statement. Let me break that down:

1. How can the music go somewhere unless someone pushes it? And…
2. If you don’t push it where you think it should go, who does?

how to proceed

The course will run on a ‘freeform’ basis. Voted three-to-one.

notes

Paul’s vote is partly dependent on his belief (hope?) that the ‘freeform’ approach will move him out from his habits. I note that Kevin voted for the other approach.

why improvise?

We tackle the question.

Possibility of the novel and the new.

Does improvisation offer a unique relationship between audience and performer? Paul is interested in sound (itself?). Owen, on the other hand, finds a unique relationship, and links this to the idea of surprise (the novel and new).

Kevin further locates this in the idea of ‘expectations’: improvisation “invites the possibility that something wonderful can happen.”

Han: [Expectations] from whose point of view?

Kevin: From everyone’s point of view; the audience’s point of view and the performers’ point of view.

I ask why I don’t get this sense of surprise from a composed piece, even when I’ve never heard it before. Is it just my own prejudice?

Kevin: Maybe it’s because you know the performers aren’t being surprised.

Andrea talks about adaptability [my word]; the ability music to move with context (acoustics, environment, audience, etc.); to go places. Playfulness, ‘innocence’—”be surprised, be amazed.”

Han: Do you get a sense of right and wrong in improvisation?

Owen doesn’t think so. Andrea values listening in improvisation.

Andrea: There can be right things to do, wrong things to do, but I don’t get… mistakes. … For example, if one doesn’t listen to what’s happening, that’s wrong. That could be wrong.

Andrea clarifies this as “lack of awareness”, and brings up the volume (drowning out others) issue. (We’ll probably return to this a future class.)

listening

Can you tell when someone is listening? What does it mean to listen?

demonstration: improvisation without listening

Set the task of playing without listening.

Is not listening possible, never mind desirable?

Han: What does it mean to listen?

Paul: That you may be influence by what goes on….

Han: But can you not be?

Is listening as a criteria for judging whether an improvisation is successful a problematic idea? Does listening, as a concept, give us a way forward?

listening as a relationship?

My take: when we say ‘listening’ this is a short hand for a kind of relationship. In the case of ‘listening’ we tend to think stimulus and response, or influence. Ultimately we see the person doing the ‘listening’ as passive.

enter Steve, Anthony and Ralph

I offer a couple of quotes. Lacy seems to lean towards the notion of the novel and unknown (but does he?), while Frost and Yarrow articulate… what?

Owen reads “avoid the reflex of trying to make it into something you think it ought to be, rather than letting it become what it can be”, and states that this is what we’re trying to do. “To add to what is happening rather that subtract from it.” What does it mean to add? Andrea substitutes the word “contribute”: “passing the ball” and “giving some kind of sense of direction”.

demonstration: passing the ball

Andrea and Paul demonstrate this idea.

Get a crit from Kevin and Owen. Kevin brings up the term “call and response”. Owen thinks the “concept” of interaction is faulty; it prevents the performance from going where it can go, rather than where you think it ought to go.

Paul enjoyed the performance, but is not always aware of what is happening in the heat of the moment. According to Andrea, the duet format allows the greater possibility of dialogue. Is, however, dialogue a good thing, or as Owen suggests, a liability?

call and response

Call and response: a contribution? adding to? a relationship?

Owen suggest that the exact nature of the response is arbitrary. Does a call require a certain class of response? What does it mean to do call and response?

demonstration: random call, random response

Kevin and Owen perform arbitrary call and responses. (Okay, I enjoyed this a lot, and not just for the theatrics.)

Quesion: do we need to worry about whether the response logically follows from the call? Isn’t the only important thing that the call follow the response, thus making itself the response? [Didn't say this in class, but doesn't the response just need to perform being the response?] Andrea takes the discussion to gospel….

Han: They [gospel performers] can respond however they want to. The important thing is that they responded, and, thus, the response is an appropriate response.

a little exercise in juxtaposition

We’ll probably talk about this again, so I shall leave it here for the moment….

Do we need explicit signs and gestures to say we are listening? Kevin does not think so.

question for next time

What does it mean to say ‘call and response’?

What does ‘contributing’, ‘adding to’ or ‘relationship’ mean in practical terms?