From: ujwb@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer)
Subject: Re: Theory and improvisation (was RE: perfumed ambience)
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 14:57:57 GMT

In article <ALLMUSIC%92100910312405@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET> writes:
>On Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:37:50 EST Ilia said:
>>that gives a person an ability to improvise? Maybe, jazz training?
>
>In my neck of the woods we have (ta-daaa!) the Berklee School of Music, which
>attracts a number of students whose dream is to become the Next Al DiMeola or
>something. It is my considered opinion that the students learn some new skills--
>they can read and write charts better, their phrasing is smoother, etc.-- but
>essentially they emerge with roughly the same musical raw material they had
>when they showed up; they don't learn "jazz" if they hadn't had the feel for it
>already. At the risk of sounding like Lenny Ray, I think there's an attitude to
>jazz improvisation that you absorb subliminally, by constant playing, and maybe
>to some extent by "living the life." There may even be a biochemical component--
>I've always observed that real jazz musicians hold their liquor way better than
>I do :-)

That's the thing is about Berklee, they are always panned for being uncreative.
Still, the nice thing about it, there are a lot of musicians around, and
a musician who has something to say ought to be able to find other
musicians who have something to say.

A lot of musicians who are creative actually went to Berklee.  But I
don't think it is the stuff they did in classes.  Maybe some of the
classes helped develop their ear.  But more important, they had the
opportunity to work on their stuff in an intense way.

>>composition. They have a vast library of small musical extracts in
>>their heads, and more or less randomly they retrieve those when
>>necessary. It's like in a Glass Bead Game, when you don't create new
>>ideas, but study the old ones, and then play by putting them together.
>
>Sometimes they make this explicit. One of the things that's cool about the Jazz
>Passengers (the extremely talented but heavily ironic Knitting Factory sextet)
>is the number of quotes and allusions they cram into some of their solos. Tiny
>bits of Mingus, Monk, Ellington, and probably hordes of earlier people that I
>don't have the experience to recognize cascade through their work. This is in
>some sense a purely intellectual exercise-- "Look what I know!" But in another
>way it's a tribute, like saying "Not only were these the people I've learned
>from, but I hope some of what I've learned from them is what it means to play
>this lick in this way under these circumstances." Sonia's notion of getting

That also is the post-modern technique of pastiche and historical citation.
Schnittke is doing the same the classical music domain.

>>Now, the question is if there is any other kind of improvisation at all.
>>Isn't every improvisation based on musician's previous experience?

It is and it isn't.  An improviser has to be ready to deal with events
that are not planned.  ( In addition, see the Brackets reference below)

>Well, I know there are improvisers who claim they enter a kind of trance state
>whereby they become a vehicle and "the spirits" play through them. I don't buy
>it myself, but if true, it would certainly be possible to do something unique
>in such a state, something not found in your previous playing experience-- and
>that might be well worth waiting for. (Or it might not-- it's equally possible
>that "the spirits" like Mantovani :-)

But I think this always meant that the music was so strong that it gave
the experience of taking over one's ego.  They are just using a
religious terminology to describe it.  I think there might be some
genres which are more conducive to this, and ironically, these might be
more based on some previous experience than the one of trying to play
something new.  For one thing, in a trance, you are trying to sustain a
feeling so it is automatic.  If you are sustaining something, that means
it already exits.

>>    I don't mean that those ways of improvising are bad. Often they
>>actually sound very cool, and there is no way to tell by listening which
>>technique one uses (at least for dilettantes like myself). So, this is
>>more of a theoretical discussion. The main criteria of whether
>>improvisation is good or not, just like with any other kind of music,
>>should be the enjoyment of the listener.

I will stick with Carla Bley's assertion that "Music is always good if
it is real".  Of course that doesn't mean you will always like it.

>Well, I do feel like you should take the opportunity to improvise off line,
>allow yourself sessions where nobody outside the group is listening, to try
>out new techniques and see what you can and can't get away with! The way Urban
>Ambience comes up with new material is usually that we get together and freak
>out into a tape recorder, then we play the tape back and say, "This here is a
>good bit, what did we do here?" and develop that effect into a tune. A lot of
>tape gets wasted, but tape is cheap. (We do also draw dots on paper sometimes,
>but then we lose the social and collaborative aspects of the band. I could do
>a lot more "composing," but that would mean a certain amount of imposing my
>will on the band, and I think what's good about it is how strongly we disagree
>on certain points and how we resolve that disagreement in performance.)

I always think that is a good thing to do.  Alan Silva did that when I
was in his Celestial Communication Orchestra.  Then the next rehearsal,
he would come in and tell you if you weren't playing the part right.  He
could develop things from what he heard on the tape too.  Of course,
once you did it one way, he wanted to keep changing it.
So you are in effect rehearsing the stuff so you don't do it that way on
the gig.

In Brackets, where we do a lot of Ornette Coleman tunes, the heads can
be played in a variety of settings.  When we get to the end of the performance,
we usually have a more unique (and strong) situation for the head.  We always 
end up saying, "man, why couldn't we have played the head at the top this way".
Sometimes, we say, "why don't we fix it here, do it this way all the time".  
Sometimes we do, other times we forget all about what we did, other times we
only do it partially that way, or maybe we only remember once.  Probably one 
reason why we don't make things fixed, because no one is that organized, and 
it would be good to make composition out of the improvisations on the tape.  
Still, at each of our gigs, we go to a lot of areas we haven't played
before.

Jeff