Safety First

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.

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…