Chaotic Improv

[lostinidlewonder]

I was a little hesitant to post this because I really feel uncomfortable revisiting the past I like to move on and look forward, but sometimes looking back can make you think.

I opened one of my old hard drives and saw this sole improv on there. It must have been recorded pre 2000. This is just a bizzare improv I don't know what I was thinking, I don't think I was lol, it sounds void of any thinking I like that in some way...

The roaring jumble of sound parts is typical of a young mans anger lol. I feel the improv is so tense sounding, unlike what I do nowadays, I find I tend towards serenity more than chaos at present, but this improv seems to exist in the chaos part predominantly which is how my improv journey started, it was a major stress relief for a lot of teenage worries and struggles.

To me this is almost like a call/response type improv, the tense parts are like the inner emotional  stress and the lighter more melodic parts I guess are the meditated free thought answer and solution.


It is short so you don't have to suffer too long lol.

Run time: 3:30mins

[pianowolfi]

This doesn't make me suffer, I listen with great interest!

It's like, when I listen to things like this, I just listen, being open

Isn't the chaos (and perhaps chaos theory would confirm this, I don't know so much about it) one of the main sources for creativity? 

[lostinidlewonder]

 

Isn't the chaos (and perhaps chaos theory would confirm this, I don't know so much about it) one of the main sources for creativity?  

I think any strong emotional force can act as a driving force for creativity. I find there is a certain amount of increased physical and mental relief when improvising to remove tension and stress compared from drawing inspiration from other emotions. When I started improvisation I only ever did them when I was stressed out or something that could not be expressed in words happened in my life or someone else, the improv was like a pressure release valve for inside my head.

Thanks for listening

[ted]

There is something very appealing and fundamental in music about the juxtaposition of two contrasting ideas. It seems to lie near the core of so much form, in both Western and Eastern music. It can occur at the microscopic level of the balanced motifs, phrase and answer, subject and countersubject, the expanding sets of bars in powers of two, chorus and verse, loosely called binary form. But it can also occur, as here, in the wider form of an unfolding alternation of mood.

I cannot help thinking of Ives with the hymn singing versus the thunderclaps in Hawthorne, the philosophical contrasts in the Celestial Railroad, the materialism against spirituality of his fourth symphony. I am confident this analogy is not misplaced. I thought I would not like this improvisation but I do, and I have listened to it a number of times so far.

The ordinary English meaning of chaos, in the sense of total disorder, is of course not at all what the mathematical study is about. That was a very unfortunate name to have given the science but it can hardly be retracted now. Yes Wolfi, I have a pet theory about mathematical chaos and improvisation which I might have discussed ages ago somewhere on the forum. I wasn't aware that somebody else had written about it.

[lostinidlewonder]

There is something very appealing and fundamental in music about the juxtaposition of two contrasting ideas.

I also love finding contrasting figures in other mediums like art, literature, in nature, in many places really. Contrasts and opposites are very useful, they helps us to understand the world around us.

I cannot help thinking of Ives with the hymn singing versus the thunderclaps in Hawthorne

I really love this piece. They really do push the idea of contrast in piano and that hymn vs thunder has same feel to what my improv is sorta working on, the RAAAAAARRRR vs aahhhhh so calm.

4:07 is the ahhh so calm... then 4:23 RAAAAR lol

I thought I would not like this improvisation but I do, and I have listened to it a number of times so far.

I like the last half, the strumming strings vs playing worked out pretty ok I thought, I am glad you gave it a few listens thanks!

The ordinary English meaning of chaos, in the sense of total disorder, is of course not at all what the mathematical study is about. That was a very unfortunate name to have given the science but it can hardly be retracted now. Yes Wolfi, I have a pet theory about mathematical chaos and improvisation which I might have discussed ages ago somewhere on the forum. I wasn't aware that somebody else had written about it.

Yes there is some order in chaos, what does Einstein say: God does not play dice with the universe. I like looking at Chaotic maths like the Mandelbrot set, I use to love going deeper and deeper into it and looking at the pretty patterns.

[ted]

Thanks for the links to the Ives. I have Mayer's and Kirkpatrick's recordings of the Concord and MacGregor's and Lee's recordings of the first sonata. Of these I prefer Lee's and Mayer's but the choice is purely personal. There is a less well known "hymn/thunderclap" section in the first sonata which is also very effective. The first sonata, with its meditative, almost pastoral effect, a sort of aural equivalent of a landscape painting of the naive type, actually resonates with me much more than does the Concord, which has many more recordings.



I too like algorithmic art and enjoy writing code to produce it. My pictures are not fractals, strictly speaking, although they may contain fractal areas. I like code which runs very quickly and produces unpredictable results which constantly surprise - a bit like improvising !

[lostinidlewonder]

Thanks Ted for mentioning the other recordings I will chase them up!

Ted these images are really bizarre do you mind elaborating on how you produce them? These are a bit like freestyle improvising in the way that the unexpected blends with a more concrete body.

[ted]

The simplest answer is that it is nothing more than a colour plot of a very convoluted f(x,y). It does not purport, like fractal and chaos programs, to use or illustrate profound mathematical ideas. In other words, the results are important, the algorithm in itself is not. The whole trick was finding ways which generated pleasing variety and preferably surprise. Also, I wrote it for people with no mathematical knowledge or inclination to get results more or less instantly, so if they didn't like one picture, a quick push of a key would render another, quite different image.

Going up an order of detail, what it does is start with a small selection of varied functions (six I think, but that is arbitrary). Then a random chain of many operations and substitutions among the six functions is carried out. For example, one such operation might be "multiply function 3 by function 4 and substitute the result in function 5". It selects this chain from a library of likely operations. The good part about this is that if every operation can itself be represented by a number, then all the code needs to redraw a picture in a couple of seconds is a file of a few thousand bytes. This eliminates the need to save pictures at all until you want to use them for something else. Once the chain of operations has been carried out, the six resulting numbers are translated into a colour value (by rules which are very simple in principle but too lengthy to describe here) and the point is plotted.