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.

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.

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.

first impressions

Small group (quartet), a significant change to the 9+ class sizes of the past. Four is the magic number in these context (maybe we’ll discuss this in future classes), but for now, all I can say is… we have a band (2 treble instruments, bass and drums). How weird is that?

identity politics

All male class (all white, but, hey, this is Cork). Why is that? What happened to all the female students this year?

background and prior experience

No one in the group comes from a complete no-prior-experience-of-improvisation background. Does this mean the group has a head start, or that we come with baggage we need shed? How much are our habits (and as improvisers and performers we all have tricks we rely upon from time to time) going to be benefits or liabilities in the coming weeks?

introductions and contract

Everyone got to introduce themselves and state what they expect from the course. Whole bunch of issues came up which we’ll be returning to in the coming weeks:

• interaction: stimulus and response, choices, etc.
• freedom
• restrictions and limits
• boundaries (and responsibilities?)
• (personal) expression

Paul brings up the concept of process (his word) and interaction (mine). We’re starting in a good place here.

Owen is looking for freedom—freedom away from stylistic (idiomatic?) limits, and freedom in terms of ‘expression’. How’s that for a list of interesting and problematic terms? Plenty to go on….

first improvisation

First impressions: very polite.

Found the interventions of Kevin dramatic, and as was Owen’s absence. (Learned that Andrea’s listening is based on an almost LCR or surround sound system.)

The group is good at gauging duration (a request for five minute came in just under), so we probably won’t have to spend too many classes dealing with that issue. (We will likely need to deal with the issue of how to start and how to end of course….)

discussion

This, for me, is when the group starts to shine. Andrea brings up ‘choices’, Kevin wonders about the initial impulse that cascades through the group. We’re not quite in a position to articulate a lot of these ideas in a pragmatic fashion yet, but we’re entering interesting areas.

final improvisations

Notice that Andrea and Paul are very much into their instruments, while Kevin and Owen (especially Owen) are very much looking around at the group (visually driven?). So I requested that Kevin and Owen don’t look at the group, and Andrea and Paul to look up from their instruments.

Now that was interesting wasn’t it? what’s the mechanism here? what happene?

Unfortunately ran out of time. (Maybe return to this later…)

other business

Blog / class diary. Class volunteered to be frank about criticisms, etc. (I’m personally a little nervous about this: people often say they want the ugly truth until they get it.) Propose that we start by being civil on the blog, and then see what happens.

Oh, and the blog will be public. (Nothing like living dangerously.) I will, however, refrain from posting certain information up here: actual assessment (grades), attendance records, etc.

for next week

Question: Why improvisation? Of all the myriad of was to construct / perform / do music, why improvise?

How do we proceed?

• Plan A: we do a Karate Kid, paint some fences. I lay out a bunch of exercises…
• Plan B: freeform. Much more exciting, but much riskier. Class generates direction (I only mark the exit points).

Primary thing to note is that the student/instructor relationship (and responsibilities) will be different depending on the model we choose.

Had some discussion on this, and we’ll vote on this next Wednesday.