Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
In all cultures people danced to music and music was needed to dance.
There are many ways it can happen though:
Most frequently the musician plays in a place where anyone can dance.
I hardly did that, so I will not talk about it.
In African religions, each Saint can be called with a specific rhythm
and incorporates in a dancer. Although I admire such "radical" use of
music, I keep rather distant from it. Still, we have to consider the
trance nature of dancing! It may also happen if we are not quite
aware of the Saints we call "by accident"...
Sometimes we manage a job to compose music for a given scene and movement.
I have done this, and found it very interesting, but its rather work
for the computer than for real time looping.
I want to talk about what I know reasonably well: Improv with dancers
Looping is perfect for that, because it provides a precise repetitive
part they can rely on and the freedom for the musician to illustrate
the interpretations of the dancers.
It starts at the dancing lessons. I think many musicians could do
that. Its not so demanding in the details and a brilliant way to
practice, since you immediately see what you do! ** You have a public
of artists ** ! Dancers are used to understand music and will extract
the useful part of what you do.
Even if you dont play very well, as soon as you manage to follow the
instructions of the leader of the group, setup some rhythm at the
right speed and start and stop decently when its needed, you are more
useful than CDs.
If you can also interpret some of the details of the movement, they
love you! Just put some accent where arms flow in the air, a quick
line where they run, a dark sound when they are on the floor... with
time you go deeper...
If you can also feel the mood of the movement and put the right sound
and can do smooth changes from one mood to the other to create a
story, you deserve payment :-)
Then the real improv starts: Interaction as you know it from playing
with other musicians, only that you are free to change harmonies and
themes as you please. Suddenly the feeling comes up that no one
follows the others yet all are together in one story!
I played for contact improvisation off and on for over a year now.
More and more it turns into a ritual, the story becomes more dynamic,
people let go their craziness. Its incredible refreshing also for me!
Now I have been called again to improve a modern dance piece about
Peace I recorded the music for a while ago. The choreographer, former
diva at the city theater for 15 years, started to become interested
in improv. Before, she symbolized Peace as a flower, a mandala, a
complex circular arrangement of the dancers with a complex loop I
built according the form. It was beautiful, but now she sees Peace
not so organized and "heavy" any more, rather free, happy, light... I
could not agree more and supported her impression that this was best
expressed through improvisation. Now, what surprised all of us: The
dancers that were almost afraid of the improvisation learned to let
go in only 10 minutes!
There is a trick to it: Start with some nicely educated loop and let
them all show how good they are. After a while they feel that this
does not lead anywhere, and you can follow this feeling by letting
the music fall down into some strange chaos which leaves space for
their unwill and depression. So there they start to let go. From
there the real thing can grow and usually most participants come
syncronized out of the chaos!
Respectfully slowly abandon the original directions and restrictions
more and more while they like it, until you are totally free to fool
around. At the end of the second session they all built a pile in the
center and burst out in laughter!
Then they started saying that they dont want to study anything fixed
any more, just enjoy...
And you feel reeeealy useful ! :-)
--
---> http://Matthias.Grob.org