Safety First

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.

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?

Hello all, heres my 2nd Journal entry after our 2nd class.

Today was a mind boggling class of improv. Our focus of interest were such topics as listening, contribution, relationship, and this main concept of call and response. (oh god)

I haven’t found any answers, only more questions….

We began the class by discussing the question of Why Improvisation?

Did we answer that? To be free, and to be creative and to find new and unexpected musical situations? We improvise because we like it. We like to express ourselves. We want to push boundaries, our like to think that we are trying to push boundaries. Boundaries in the sense that (we are use to this, and we don’t we are going, lets just let it go there) I say we in the sense of I (my own opinion)

To be honest i am more confused now about what we are to do, which is a good thing…I think..:)

Why? These topics of discussion today.

Listening 

• is it a good thing to always listen? (because i think it was exciting when we tried to not listen today) I know we could’t help it but it was better than the usual call and response theme. 
• If we do focus on listening, is my contribution going to depend on what i hear? 
• and what the hell is listening? lol what am i suppose to gather from listening?
• Is hearing the same as listening?