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Re: PrePrepared vs. Improvisational



Great description Kevin.  In answer: I've almsot ALWAYS felt like I
was going in the opposite direction than my audience—the more often I
experienced this, the less enthusiatic I've been about sharing it.
Beyond the consuming desire as a player to cover fresh, new, exciting
territory, lies the realization that an improv performance is such a
subjective experience that I'm often not even remotely interested in
what anyone outside of the ensemble really thought, and I'm often
troubled or just plain irritated by the responses, good and bad.

Regarding composition: I love nuance and find repeating set pieces
fascinating due to that. Free-improv, while totally enthralling for me
as a player, seems excruciating for most non-musician listeners.
Excepting the occasional brilliant, serendipitous, miracle of a
performance, I find the genre quite irritating.  I don't search for
great free-improv as much anymore because I have to wade through so
much that I don't enjoy.  I've become so set in my ways that I could
almost listen exclusively to "Pieces Froides", "Nocturnes" and "Danse
de Travers" by Erik Satie and die a happy man. (of course I'd still
play my guitars to raise hell and explore to my dying day as well.)

I fear there's no good reason to put it out there for me any more.  I
know the "if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it
happen?" argument, but I assure you, *I* was there and knew if I (or
ensemble) was in the zone or not. Maybe I'm just becoming antisocial,
or tired of the endless routine of carting gear etc. but it's really
lost it's charm for me. I'm pretty happy to record and play alone as a
personal expression, but otherwise find the going pretty tough these
days.

I'm not sure I'm agreeing with Mark Sotillaro's "world view" concept,
but find myself similarly repelled by the idea of music events with a
theme of looping, no offense to anyone involved, really! (I feel like
it's a personal problem or even a character flaw of some sort. *-))
-- 
Miko Biffle
Biffoz@Gmail.com
"Running scared from all the usual distractions!"

On 7/9/09, Kevin Cheli-Colando <kevin@minds-eye.org> wrote:
> > Personally,  I've never enjoyed
>  > purely free kinds of musics,  though I can appreciate them , 
>intellectually.
>
>  Here's the rub for me and maybe some of you as well?  I'm kind of in
>  agreement with Rick here on 'free' music and yet, EVERYTIME I get
>  together to play music, either alone or in a group, this is exactly
>  what I/we end up playing.  I record almost everything and will listen
>  back to get a feel for what went down, but I almost never listen back
>  again in a recreational mode.
>
>  So I spend my time making music that I don't really want to listen to
>  and yet is irresistible to me as a player.  I assume (perhaps
>  erroneously) that this is 'music' that would be very hard for a non
>  player to listen to and enjoy as well.  And yet, this is the music I
>  make at any given opportunity.
>
>  The potency of fully improvised music that has never happened before
>  and will never happen again is just too much for me to resist.
>  Whatever joys there might be in performing a 'known' piece just get
>  obliterated by the rush to make new sounds NOW.  I find it very
>  strange as I would like to be able to play a rehearsed composition or
>  song and I would like to share what music I make with an audience one
>  day as well, but everything seems to take me in the opposite
>  direction.
>
>  Anyone else experience anything similar?
>
>  Kevin