Project: You Can Improvise

[quantum]

A project for those who have not yet ventured into the world of improvisation.  Post an improvised piece.  It can be on anything you want. 

For the experienced improvisers here: try improvising in a form, technique, environment, style, ensemble setting, etc. that is outside your comfort zone, or which you have little experience. 

[Derek]

Well since nobody has posted yet I'll start. Typically my music comes out rhythmically lifeless, so I attempted to tune in to rhythm a bit more later on in this piece. I'd say the first 5 or 6 minutes are the typical Derek sound, then I step out of that comfortable place for a couple of minutes.

[pianowolfi]

Rhythmically lifeless?? Your music?? I really don't think so and I don't hear so either! But yes the structure of the rhythm gets different, like some new person would enter the scene

[nanabush]

Hmmm I'll post one.  I usually never record my improvisations because they get so choppy in sections, and I don't think up a structure or form before improvising. 

Here's one I did a few days ago.  My camera was right on the edge of the piano, so you can here the clicking from my fingers hitting the upper keys (sorry!).

I kinda like the part at around 1:30, pretty creepy hehe

[Derek]

nanabush, I like this! I don't think that thinking up a structure or form before improvising is necessary or even desirable (depending on your goal). To me, the most generic definition of form is sufficient: "Repeat something recognizable, according to your taste, in multiple spots in an improvisation." Sometimes this might happen in recognizably delineated sections as in classical composition, other times it may be more subtle and certain "properties" of some cell you may be playing will be inherited by later ones. It's organic form. Ted might have more to say on this topic     I think one of the biggest problems with modern musical thought is we want to make absolutely everything consciously analyzable. What happened to intuition?

[ted]

Let's keep this thread near the top. It took me a while to come up with something "out of my comfort zone" as quantum suggested. It's like trying to think of anything but elephants. Could I play something almost wholly chordal without using a single section of my trademark rhythmic finger work ? I find this restriction very difficult.

[ted]

certain "properties" of some cell you may be playing will be inherited by later ones. It's organic form. Ted might have more to say on this topic     

It's a principle of improvisational form, not the only one and not necessarily the best one for everybody, which seemed to me very promising. Indeed, it hasn't run out of steam for me yet after several years of sophisticated fiddling with it. It is dead simple in principle and therefore might have value in getting beginner improvisers past initial block.

Play any reasonably short idea well within your technical grasp. Don't worry about inspiration. Anything, and I mean anything, will do as long as it isn't positively unpleasant to you personally.

Play it repeatedly. Exact repetitions are not important, indeed, "nearly equal" or "almost periodic" sounds are in fact more fertile for this purpose and usually much more interesting musically than a string of clones.

After a while your ear will latch onto some feature of this "cell" as being more musically interesting or exciting than the rest of it. It might be an internal phrase, a couple of prominent notes, a certain rhythm, an exciting harmony, a physical or haptic motion - absolutely anything.

When this happens, commence repeating, or rather "almost repeating" a new cell based around the perceived special feature.

After a while this new cell will in turn throw content at your mind for a third cell.

And so on.

If this sounds nothing like any accepted musical practice it is because it isn't. But it gets attention on pure sound and spontaneous response to sound, gets the mind into the eternal present and gets rid of Mr Noah Lott and his coterie of conscious analysts and critics.

[ted]

It is a pity no one has taken up quantum's suggestion. I had an idea last week while with my one and only pupil, who starts beautifully but tends to meander. Forget about notes and chords. Play any notes and chords you like without worrying about restricted subsets. Concentrate on rhythm instead. Repeat, or more productively perhaps, "almost" repeat a rhythm in any position until it is felt at a deep level. This might take few or many repetitions; it doesn't matter. Then make another rhythm and so on.

Rhythm implies flow, it has to. You can't have rhythm without flow of some sort. Therefore perhaps it can be used to break down inhibition in beginning improvisers. Stick to figurations well within technical capability, even single notes in each hand will do. I think a relaxed detached, rather than legato finger technique is more conducive to generating rhythms. I suddenly realised that maybe the less starting improvisers are concerned with the static "what" of notes and chords, and the more they embrace the dynamic "how" of rhythm, the sooner inhibition might be released.

Notes and harmony are really a cyclic block because you can't play them fluently until you know them intuitively enough to do so. Trouble is, the converse is also true. It's a catch 22. Rhythm might break this block in a beginner. It's worth a try. Maybe everyone has been trying to teach beginners back to front all along.

Accordingly, I pretended I was a beginner tonight and tried it out. I find it hard to believe that anybody with a reasonable physical ability and minimal musical experience couldn't produce a similar result.

[m1469]

Okay, finally I feel I can post something in here.  This little improv. is certainly not anything even remotely profound in any way.  However, I find it satisfying enough to go ahead and post as though it has some form of substance to it.  

I'm sure this will still sound very much like me, and my approaches to "something different" are fairly loose frameworks.  I used a main motif/subject, I haven't done true counterpoint, but there is some element of point against point for awhile, or at least at times, but the idea being about that motif/subject.  I was more or less thinking in terms of modulations (though not in a way I can actually explain) and trying to explore a few things here, though I don't believe I have done so in any conventionally acceptable way.  For now that's OK with me.  I had at one point thought it'd be fun to try to get back to D Major, but I only made it back to A and ended it there.  This is somehow me putting together (maybe crudely a little) different ideas from the past few months.

[m1469]

Forget about notes and chords. Play any notes and chords you like without worrying about restricted subsets.

I hope it's okay that I borrow this thread to ask a question here (I am listening to yours at the moment, Ted).  When you say this here --maybe this is a stupid question-- you mean to not worry about what order certain defined chords come in, vs. not worrying about what types of chords notes might make ... right?  I mean, are saying to play random notes/chords without worrying about the sounds they make together, basically, or are you suggesting to play whatever chords you want without worrying about what harmonic progressions you make?  Are you suggesting to still think "within the confines" of a particular scale, for example, but who cares what order the notes are within it?  Or not even a scale.  Okay, I'll stop trying to ask the same question in all sorts of ways now  .

And, I'm just curious, when you say to concentrate on rhythm instead, do you mean to think things like "triplet ... dotted eighth to sixteenth" or something more without words?  

I'm sorry if these questions drive you nuts, because you and I think differently than each other on these things, and of course I'm trying to translate something that makes perfect sense to you into "my own language" ... but, I thought I'd ask anyway.

[m1469]

Okay, here I have somewhat attempted *an* impression of mine of Ted's "style" of articulation/improvisation (at least to begin with).  At first I thought nothing might come of it that was innately meaningful for me, but then suddenly I connected and went with that.  Also, I have used a "new" kind of technique (for me) which I have used in some improvisations from years ago that I am now calling a "flutter" technique, but have just recently grasped it as an actual technique (despite the fact that I think I recall having heard it in at least one of my improvs from years ago).  I was thinking in c minor for sure, for awhile, and at some point f minor, and I don't think that the overall recording could be called a composition as though the overall composition says anything in particular ... it was more just me being experimental.  I am obviously still attached to low bass (when I go with that connection, it very often seems to draw something out of me).

Also, I was thinking much more rhythmically and while I realize I have done so before, I also realized while I was playing this that my musical-thinking is extremely linked to melody and that has been difficult for me to break free from.  So, this was kind of a freeing experience for me.

heeeeeeehhhhh ... I very much need improvisation in my life!

[ted]

Play any notes and chords you like without worrying about restricted subsets.

That way is just something for beginning improvisers to hang onto to get them started, m1469. It probably isn't the way you or I would go about it, but then we can already improvise. I took quantum's thread to be an encouragement to those who cannot improvise, or hopefully merely imagine they cannot. Intuitive rhythm is probably more common than intuitive conception of harmony, scales, chords and melody, therefore I thought it might be a more appropriate means of breaking down inhibition. The very simple example is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

And, I'm just curious, when you say to concentrate on rhythm instead, do you mean to think things like "triplet ... dotted eighth to sixteenth" or something more without words?

Something more without words. Forcing a beginner to think in terms of notated rhythm is the exact opposite of what I would try to do.

 

[m1469]

That way is just something for beginning improvisers to hang onto to get them started, m1469. It probably isn't the way you or I would go about it, but then we can already improvise. I took quantum's thread to be an encouragement to those who cannot improvise, or hopefully merely imagine they cannot. Intuitive rhythm is probably more common than intuitive conception of harmony, scales, chords and melody, therefore I thought it might be a more appropriate means of breaking down inhibition. The very simple example is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Something more without words. Forcing a beginner to think in terms of notated rhythm is the exact opposite of what I would try to do.

hmmm ... well, why can't I follow the advice and try to understand more clearly what you mean?  Sometimes, I admit, I have come to a place with some of my students where I realize they want to intellectually understand something and the reason to spend time doing it, when, in fact, it can only actually be understood through doing it and collecting information based on the act of doing.  Perhaps that's what I'm sort of trying to do, I don't know!  But, I wouldn't have asked about it if I hadn't felt like it might be something helpful for me (maybe in several ways) whether I am a beginner or not (I really have no idea what in the *** anything is (ooops, my temper a little)).

[ted]

Perhaps my suggested trick just isn't right for you. Nothing wrong with that. It probably isn't right for thousands of people. Practically the whole of accepted musical education doesn't fit me, so I am certainly in no position to make assertions or be all things to all players.

The reason I posted the method was that it worked a treat with my one and only pupil, who had previously struggled to keep a flow going, despite having good chord vocabulary and melodic understanding. Improvisation by its nature is likely to magnify, indeed celebrate, individual differences in the way our minds work, whereas many musical activities build on tradition and commonality.

I don't think you have too much to worry about.

[m1469]

Perhaps my suggested trick just isn't right for you.

I have felt that it's already been helpful for me to even try to do what I have even remotely thought you are suggesting, not just in improvisation but in my Classical repertoire, too.

[ted]

Okay, here I have somewhat attempted *an* impression of mine of Ted's "style" of articulation/improvisation (at least to begin with).  

An interesting sound, but very much m1469 and not Ted, which is how things should be, of course. Like me, you are getting an orchestral effect through very rapid finger work, but our means of doing so, physical and mental, differ considerably. Unlike you, I have had no training in legato (little training of any sort really). I've never been able to do legato properly without tensing up. It's why I am having such a wrestling match trying to make the Chopin studies sound like Chopin and not like an improvisation by Ted using Chopin's chords.

I'm flattered you would bother attempting "Ted's style". Most of it is produced using a really bizarre technique and a perverse mentality acquired through lack of education. Nonetheless, if doing so provides another outlet for your own ideas then so much the better, I suppose.