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Looper's Delight
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On Jun 14, 2005, at 21:45, Hartung, Kris wrote: > Since I started looping and playing mostly improvisational, > spontaneously composed performances, I don't practice or rehearse for > them... >> That's interesting! I guess it depends on what you actually read into >the word "practicing"? I like to practice very much, almost all my waking >time, but more in the essence of "preparing". Definitely different than my approach. The only time I play my instrument is if I have a new piece of gear and I'm trying to work out new sounds...that forces me to play my instrument. One reason why I don't practice anymore (I say "anymore" because 8 years ago I practiced hours a day) is that my technical ability from playing jazz and progressive rock all those years has surpassed my improviational learning curve. I can play scales and arpeggios and rudimentary exercises at speeds I would never used in an improv context until the end of time, but they don't improve my improv ability. What improves my improv ability is to make my mind a blank slate (as much as this is possible) and simply perform or record. And I know my fretboard well enoug that I can turn the lights off and express myself emotionally on the fretboard. For instance, on my debut solo CD "Places", I simply sat down and started improvising. About 50% of the pieces that I finished in one take made it on the CD. The rest I threw aside...I guess you could have called that practice material! :) But in the strict sense of sitting down and practicing as in playing the rudiments - scales, arpeggios, runs, phrases, chordal progressions....I never do it. I only play my instrument if it's a performance or something that I would hope to make it on my next CD. So, you are right, the word "practice" is sort of ambiguous. I practice if you call working on a CD or performing practicing...I don't practice if you mean sitting down and working on scales, reading charts, technique, etc. When I was playing jazz standards with combos, I HAD TO practice. I sat down and read charts for the tunes, memorized the heads and chord progressions, and practiced soloing over the changes (if I had the tune on Abersold's CDs). >> Sometimes the best preparation is to isolate oneself from any music at >all and try not to hear music in your head all the time. So true. On a related note, I once read an interview where someone asked Robert Fripp if he had heard one of his peer's new CDs. His response was that he never listened to other musicians' music while he was working on his own CD, especially musicians he admired, because he was afraid it would influence his work. >> Very difficult, but if you only succeed half ways it will pay you back >enormously when you finally pick up an instrument to improvise. Yes! It's like discovering your instrument for the firt time, but your fingers and brain already know how to play it and play what you hear in your head miliseconds beforehand. > Sometimes I play a lot as preparation, but use a different instrument >than I will be performing with. Or I play a different musical style. One >of the greatest advices I have ever been given was to never ever practice >"the easy way"; When you do a mistake during practice, take it seriously. >You have to do mistakes to avoid them or turn them into something good. I believe Miles David once said that if you're not making mistakes, then you're not playing jazz...or something like that. I like to play off my mistakes during performance. For instance, if I'm playing a run or phrase that is totally diantonic, and I hit an outside note that is non-intentional, I use it again as a platform to play outside of the tonal center. > Do not make a difference between "practicing" and performing! (By >"mistake" I'm not talking about a sloppy note here and there, merely the >attitude of being lazy, delivering a fad expression which leads to not >feeling inspired by your own playing). Before given that advice I did not >improve much (musically) by practicing. I'm glad things have changed now. It is easy to become a cover musician of your own cliches. This is part of that laziness of which you speak. Again, back to Miles Davis, he once berated a sax player on stage because he played a lick he had played the other night...guesss that pissed Miles off, because he said that wasn't improvising. It is re-inventing yourself....become Nietsche's "Ubermensch" of music, constantly overcoming oneself...easier said than done of course, but I get your drift. > But in a shorter perspective - like the last five to ten minutes before >you will perform - it may be a good thing to fool around a little with >the instrument without actually playing anything. Just letting your body >melt into the instrument while emptying/focusing your mind. Good point, especially for guitarists who play more than one guitar...fretboards vary, etc. > I'm very interested in mental attitudes concerning performing and >practicing, since it seems to play a very big part for what comes out as >music. I would be delighted to read what others think and what you are >using for tricks to get it right. Generally my attitude is one of concentrating on taking risks and playing something other than myself. I can tell when I play something that I've played before - a phrase, run, cliché, progressions, etc - and it pisses me off on stage. I feel ashamed because I know I can do better. So I focus my attitude on runnning into the unknown blackness of creativity....sometimes my brain will produce something that sounds random and chaotic when I do this, but I learn from it, piece it a part and throw the good stuff I my bag of tricks. Sometines I just close my eyes and place my index finger on some random place on the guitar fretboard and say to myself, okay....this note sets the stage..,what are you going to do now? I'll start on the first fret by accident and end up at the 24th fret, like a spider creaping up a ladder, creating twisting and new melodies. Playing the box pentatonic scales, same old minor and major scales that you see in thousands of books....screw that. That's aint improvising in my book. Any fool can do that in his sleep because it is all finger memory. Create new scales that you;ve never played before, on state...force your fingers to stretch and synthesize a chord you won't find in any book...these are thing I like to do. That song "Place" on my CD "Places" you have...the first part and unlooped section was like this...I just let my fingers flow. I couldn't reproduce that piece now if you asked me too. It came, and it's gone like the wind. Kris