Safety First

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.

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.

what is listening and what is hearing, then…

the main difference i can think of is again a matter of focused attention on a sound when listening, and general presence of a sound within the perceptive field when hearing.. the two things overlap a lot

so during our first improvisation of last class, we were listening to our own playing (or trying to) but only hearing the others without following them.. then when we stopped playing we heard Kevin playing and since that had become the strongest sound in the room we ended up listening to him and reacting..

very interesting, i think we all enjoyed playing ‘carelessly’ for once, not being inhibited by our relationship with the others, just going for it and throwing whatever came to mind on the table.. and this unleashed a good dynamic, who knows this could be a great warm-up exercise for many bands or any group of people doing this type of work (AA again..)

in a studio environment we could have taken the thing further.. imagine we all had headphones and could hear

• only our own playing while improvising together in a circle..

or we could even expand and see what would happen if we could only hear

• someone else’s playing but not ours
• all the others except us
• nothing at all
• some other piece of music

and so on..

it would be interesting to listen to the recordings, looking for relationships in each case

and just as well, we would be in a situation in which we players would be the same as the external listener not playing.. just listening to the music we played without recognizing it

i think we’re getting into this Heisenberg’s principle situation.. we could ask ourselves how much the listener influences the performer

(pretty easy to find examples, everyone has a story of things that ’sounded great’ when i was on my own in the practice room, and look what i mess i just did.. in front of the audience.. the examiners and so on)

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?