From: MHB@MITVMA.BITNET (Michael H. Bloom)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Subject: Re: Theory and improvisation (was RE: perfumed ambience)
Date: 9 Oct 92 13:40:55 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

I never did set down my thoughts last time the improv thread came around,
and I'm not sure I can do any better now, but:

On Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:37:50 EST Ilia said:
>    Following Mike-Marco's discussion of classical training vs
>    improvisational music:
>
>    OK, classical training restricts musician's creativity (or at least
>makes one more critical about his own stuff). But is there any training
>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 :-)

>    I was around some jazz schools back in Russia (Jazz in Russia? What
>the hell is that?!). I've seen many excellent (in technical sense)
>musicians, who studied jazz for years. It seems, however, that what they
>are taught as 'improvisation' is actually the ability to combine
>previousely learned pieces fitting them into the main theme of the
>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
into the head of the improviser is relevant here; that's something I like to
do myself in appreciating difficult music, to try to internalize what it would
feel like to play what I hear them play.

I don't feel like it's inherently wrong to play based on previous experience.
I once read of a theory of music criticism called "the expectation-realization
model," which I found quite inspirational. In brief, it works like this: when
you start to play, listeners are going to try to fit your statement into some
context they're already familiar with, just because that's what listeners do.
Then you have the option of continuing to play in that context, realizing their
expectation, or doing something different to somehow thwart that expectation.
And the "something different" can be anything from a sudden shift into a Eugene
Chadbourne rake solo to some subtle ironic raised eyebrow applied to the music;
for example Carla Bley's minor key version of the "Star Spangled Banner" makes
you think about the tune in a different light. Since I'm addicted to quotes and
allusions in my improvising, I find this idea extremely useful.

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

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 :-)

>Another kind of playing that I witnessed was what I would call 'finger
>playing'. People who practice a lot have certain patterns 'engraved' in
>their hands, and they insert them in the improvisation automatically
>without thinking (or feeling. Well, it's almost the same in music).

That happens a lot. There are certain licks I can play where I always groan
afterward and say "Jeez, that sounded like Jerry Garcia"-- not that they're
explicitly his licks, but that they resemble his way of getting around a
musical problem and repositioning his hand on the fingerboard.

>    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.

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.)