Safety First

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).

the opening piece of The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of Kevin and myself at october 2008 Stet Lab in O’ Riada Hall

commentary of the first minute and a half..

the track link is this:

know these guys?

i decide to open using the teaspoon.. it’s one of my favorite tools, much lighter than a steel tone bar enables me to do fast slides across the strings or across the length of the string/s..its great for mallet-ke bouncing ((might use it to try to get that deep low resonant sound i found last week while playing with Kevin– possibly the lowest frequencies i can get with this guitar and they were hiding right where i usually find the highest ones: above the bridge pickup)) and of course like scratching the side of the spoon across the strings, this another thing that can be done extremely fast.. at the first hit (0.00) it sounds like the wah is halfway down, better push it all the way because i want all the highest waileyslidey sounds to be available.. don’t really worry too much about where Kevin’s at, think i want to use the very high frequencies.. i tap the strings quite fast (0.08) and move into sliding mode just after that and alternate between flat slides and side scratches.. K seems to be on a similar territory of fast swooshes so i think this will work.. might be a mixture of the politeness of the situation/context and the stormy rain around us that s me into upping the acidic content of the atmosphere.. need some distortion (0.33) .. will it work? let’s see.. scratching fast on the first few seconds gives certainly a loudness boost, some kind of break from the previous mood, at first it doesn’t seem to generate a reaction in K, but here he is.. getting louder and slightly more percussive (0.43).. i continue on the fast scratching and percussive mode for a while, then decide for a more sustained sound (0.52) to leave some space to K and focus a bit more on what he is doing.. after 5 seconds feel i can’t sustain that any longer and move into a percussive space (0.57) then need to dull the sound with the wah (1.01) and then start the bouncy percussive thing close to the bridge (1.03), alternated with more fast slides (1.09) seems like i tried the low frequency trick but not sure the pick up setting is the right one, then scratching hell ( 1.11-1.16) and things seem to get a little out of control, and that’s not a bad thing because normally it’s when i lose control than the interesting things start to happen..drop the spoon and pick up the wooden mallet with the felt tip.. a little hardcore break for a few seconds and then rotate the mallet and let it bounce on the strings.. distortion is on, the tone gets a little more dramatic…

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.