On Improvisation Work

On Improvisation Work

There are some serious exercises that have been posted within the theater areas about this ... the main issue with musicians, is that they are too tied to their circles of nothing, and have not been taught anything from their early days, regarding "expression" ... all the teaching was about MECHANICS and not about anything else ... consequently you get folks that are afraid to get out of the mold they are in ...

One of the toughest examples of all can be found in Robert Wyatt's book (Different Every Time) ... where even its title is immediately something that most musicians are afraid of and they would not even consider playing with Robert because of it ... and the example is a massive treat ... and something that folks in the sister board will not discuss or give any ideas about it ... but it is very clear what is going on here! It is about Syd Barrett, when Robert and many others were recording something or other and one guitar player was having problems with it ... and finally asked Robert ... what key is he in? And Robert's reply is the thing that most musicians dread the most and will run home quickly! "He don't know no chords. He just plays!" ... and now, we should/could sit here for a long time and try to figure out how Syd played. Likely by the sound, and he knew where to place his fingers to get this sound of that sound, and of course, while goofing around doing this, it is really easy to come up with an "Interstellar Overdrive" or "Astronomy Domine" ... nowadays this is easy as there is sheet music for it, but back then? And he had the perception of a child ... overgrown child ... that loved stories ... so many of his material is a "story" ... but we only think of it as "songs" ... and there is a difference, as far as I can tell.

Some folks in music have interesting thoughts about how this happens ... Rachel says "muscle memory". Hiromi says it was colors her teacher taught her how to use them. Daevid used to say it didn't matter and the inner feelings will show up for glissando or anything else. Neal Cassidy would likely say ... who cares ... and another story would show up! On an interview on CBS on 12/19/2024 (just heard it yesterday!!!), the three members, Bob, Bill and Micky talked about colors for both Jerry and Phil ... in other words, you have to take a good look at those that improvised the most ... and see if you can point to what he/she did and how they got there ... their ability is a result of that INTERNAL discovery about how they looked at music ... it had nothing to do with what kind of music it was, or how good it sold ... it had to do with making it all live and sound right ... on the stage! Really ... for you and I there is no greater compliment towards "music" at all ...

There is an "acting" exercise that can be used for musicians, but I have never met one, other than Daevid Allen that could go past 5 minutes in it ... and the exercise is meant to be done over several hours ... but the issue here? ALL MUSICIANS WILL BURN THEIR CHOPS WITHIN 15/20 MINUTES AND THEN NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT! Not to mention that some of them think that going around in circles on a chord is improvisation ... and that illusion only helps the person lose even more of their ability to"express themselves" ... and it becomes a practice thing, instead of a learning thing!

Hint ... it's not about the chops and stop thinking so and using them!

[quote] How do you even begin to choose? By placing purposefully chosen limits and guidelines on students, teachers can make the process more approachable and give students the direction they need to start building successful improvised solos.[/quote]

I think this depends on the student and the teacher. In your idea, the point of an "improvisation" is to not have any rules, guidelines, or limits, and you are already setting folks up to get stuck, in my experience. The only way to learn this is to get the "expression" to start and then make it stay alive as long as possible, until you can see some results, that is ... a few bits and pieces that help the student move forward, instead of thinking they are not getting anywhere, which is the case with a lot of musicians, because they tend to start on a chord ... and many are not even capable of simply following a sound out ... in a non-logical way ... in other words, in a way that is about how you feel and see, and not about the music mechanicks ... this is about learning to go and do above and beyond the touches of the music as spelled out in a staff, or score.

[quote]
Improvise on scale modes
Limit note choices
Provide short, rhythmic themes
[/quote]

I would suggest changing these and doing something else ... Keith Jarrett's teacher had an interesting one when he was a kid ... took him outside and they are near a small stream ... and she says ... when you can play quietly and carefree like that water, you will be good!

Or one of my favorite example ... write down some 25 touches ... hard, angry, scream, crying ... and don't stop until you have enough to play with!

Now you tell your student that you have ONE NOTE ... and play it in all of those different touches ... and you will find that the player can't do that ... AT ALL.

What this does is bring the student to the SOUND of the note and its expression, the one thing that no one taught them right from the start ... they had their child taken away from them (City of Lost Children!), by forcing them to be more attuned to timing for some mechanicks ... not even listening to each other. Even Robert Fripp says that the quality in KC is about listening to each other and complementing them ... and the music just flows in those moments!

[quote]
One aspect beginning improvisers often struggle with is playing in time. They can get so caught up in note choices that time is simply forgotten about.
[/quote]

Timing is an illusion ... for what we think is "better", and this takes away the ability to find some new moments in time, that express things differently ... I suppose for a band/song that is a hit, this exercise is mute ... but for learning purposes, that is another story altogether!

In an improvisation, the one thing yo have to let go off first and foremost is TIMING, of any kind, as it is the one thing that ties folks down the most ... you want to teach them some freedom and the first thing you do is tie them up in knots?

Define improvisation ... first ... and this is important, so you can better define a starting point, and I kind of like to say ... it really doesn't matter where you start but immediately getting onto the mechanics that tie you down is not something I would do.

[quote]
The bottom line is that by providing some easy to follow limits and guidelines, teachers can make the early stages of improvising less intimidating, more approachable, and more successful for their students.
[/quote]

It is not likely an improvisation works properly if all one can do is keep time (for example) and have limits or guidelines, and this is where drum solos really hit the trash quickly ... the one thing these guys can do is do "time" but when it comes to touches? All of is is mathematical and mechanical and has very little originality and touch. The same exercise with the various emotions also work for a drummer, however, if the guy can only count by hitting the snare drum, then the exercise is OVER ... stop it right away ... I would start by taking the snare out , and force the drummer to do "time", on his 7 toms and 4 cymbals, for example ... and guess what ... they can't do it, because their metronome is that snare drum ... the metronome needs to be their heart and feel, not something that he/she can hit!

The best drummers, can go in and out of time, and they know the secret is tied to their touches in between, and I suppose one has to suggest they have to "fit" the music ... but that might be an illusion as well, since it could very easily bring up a brand new something else ... but the rest of the band is not there ... boom ... exercise is over!

Show some of these folks, some things done "without time" more or less. Kate Bush's one album (Snow) has a lot of songs that simply flow ... and they are not about tempo or anything else ... they are about the flow of her voice and expression ... and one drummer, makes it work ... how? Not using what we call "timing" and instead just complimenting her voice and expression ...

One film ... The Tightrope ... is a film about one of Peter Brook's exercises, and it is something that you might want to study some as it also has music, as one player is in the background adding to it all the time ... and it is a good example of how you can take an exercise and extend it, and have different folks try it ... and listen to how the actors feel about it ... this is an area that musicians often fail tremendously ... they can't feel, or do not have time to feel, because they are so tied to the beat, and the mechanics of a song ... you can kinda see this in RETURN TO FOREVER live, and how they make room for each other to fly out, and it never gets in the way of the specific piece of music .. it just continues, even though in this case you can tell that Ponty only does his classical bit and it ends after so many bars ... in my book not a very good improvisationalist, although obviously a very good classical musician.

One last touch ... Peter Michael Hamel's book has one funny thing in it, that we don't like to talk about it ... because we "don't know" ... and worse ... we don't want to know! There is an old man in the mountain that fashioned one string between 2 sticks and he plays it and is excited .. and says " I got it" ... " I got it" ... and a couple of folks watching ... ask ... "Got what?"

Now you know the secret of an improvisation ... you either live in it, or you die not knowing a thing about it. It's a sad truth about a detail that broke apart acting in the 1950's in both England (West End), America (Acting Studio) and France (National Theater) ... and their actors breaking the mold of acting from an idea that was all mental and had little to do in helping more modern theater that was freer of conventions than previously ... experimentation can only go so far as we allow it to be explored, and that is the point of an improvisation ... for the English it was "the word" at that time, and you can always go back to Lawrence Olivier ... for America, it was "emotion" and the day that Marlon Brando woke up theaters in America with one scream ... "STELLLLLAAAA" ... still reverberates some American Theater major schools. And the French were really big, and still are, on the careful quality of their expression, and the poetry and words in the plays were about making sure that the words were important, but the work had to have some serious value, a standard that helped the break into modern theater with its free forms and improvisation ... Godot is sill a great improvisation, and you can change half the script if you are tuned in ... or kill the play if you are not!

[quote]
On Jamie Muir
[/quote]

Jamie Muir ... who played with King Crimson for a bit, and one of his bits in the Toob, is fantastic ... and a lesson that you can't teach ... you have to feel it and have a touch for adventure that goes far and beyond ... what we know as "music", which, in terms of an improvisation, we have to drop and forget!

Muir has stated: "I think group improvised music is one of the great forms of 20th Century music because it's so radical. It should be listened to live and not in an acute intellectual way. A lot of other music is quite absurdly intellectual."[2] Regarding his approach to percussion, he said: "I much prefer junk shops to antique shops. There's nothing to find in an antique shop – it's all been found already; whereas in a junk shop it's only been collected. But a rubbish dump – a rubbish dump has been neither found nor collected – in fact it's been completed rejected – the future if only you can see it." He recommended that "instead of transmuting rubbish into music with a heavily predetermined qualitative bias ... leave behind the biases and structures of selectivity (which is an enormous task), the 'found' attitudes you inherit, and approach the rubbish with a total respect for its nature as rubbish – the undiscovered/unidentified/unclaimed – transmuting that nature into the performing dimension. The way to discover the undiscovered in performing terms is to immediately reject all situations as you identify them (the cloud of unknowing) – which is to give music a future."

This, in part, is something that was illustrated in the albums by German band FAUST, in their early albums ... even though at times it felt like the sounds were merely synthesized, and as I like to say a lot of it was about turning the knobs in the studio or synthesizer and learning from it.

It was also, and could be said, a serious part of the early "krautrock" movement, however, it was not exactly only done by a few musicians ... this was something that was very alive in theater and film, already, though it was difficult to classify at first as it did not fit anything ... but soon enough it had a life of its own, as Edgar Froese stated in one of the Krock specials. No past, No future and what you got left? YOU!

And that's where the improvisation starts! And has to end, instead of it being something that is akin to a musical something or other. Some will disagree that without the ideals and concepts of music, it isn't music, but the 20th century put a dent in that thought ... and very quickly!