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Looper's Delight
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Whow Rick,
once again you managed to start a thread which has created some huge
interest, resulting in some 25 replies in about 16 hours - and even
hadn't time to respond myself. The "stir up some" obviously worked
(though in my case, not necessarily "thought", more of "writing it
down", which I had planned anyway for some time). So here I go...
A: MY OWN POSITION
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Starting in 2000, all of the music I have performed for an audience or
released in recorded format (including posting clips on the web) has
been freely improvised (this meaning it had a composition index of
"0", to use my metric defined below), both for solo and ensemble work.
And although returning to composed music, at least in part, has been
on my list for some time now, it hasn't happened with regard to
releases or performances. During that time (and also before), I
explored a lot of different possible formats for improvisation and
also spent a lot of time simply thinking about improvisation in music.
B: SOME THEORY ON IMPROVISATION: ATTEMPTS AT DEFINING A METRIC
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How do put a metric on improvisation? Is it true that if you play a
through-composed work, nothing is improvised - and vice versa, if you
don't follow anything written down (or otherwise specified)
beforehand, then everything is improvised? A first thought in that
direction will fall short, but is a good starting point.
i) composition and performance.
Let us assume that there are two indices, here named "composition" (C)
and "performance" (P). "Composition" is just that - the stuff that the
composer of the piece defined. "Performance" is what the performer
makes of it - how much of his own ideas and interpretations are in the
performance. Start out by defining that both indices are normalized to
range from 0 to 1.
Now it's obvious that a piece can't at the same time be "all composed"
and "all improvised". So it makes sense to define an equation like
C+P=1 (a piece can't be more than one piece). With that equation, a
two-dimensional object reduced in dimensionality by one -
geometrically thinking, a square is reduced to a line, on which you
move from all left ("all composed") to all right ("all improvised").
ii) tradition and other effects
This however falls short if you think about it: assume a typical
bebop-rooted jazz player is performing, say, "A Night in Tunisia". He
will start out by playing the theme (and add some ornaments to it, no
doubt), before going into his solo. Now even if that bebop-rooted
player will during his solo break completely move away from the melody
and also the chords by Dizzy, he will still not be 100% improvising.
Why? The way I thought this guy up (to be a bebop-rooted jazz cat), he
will most probably play fast lines in syncopated rhythm, he will hint
at some kind of turnaround at the end of the chorus, and he won't
start to play quarter-tone sequences in 13/7. Thats because his
performance is based on some tradtion - regarding that you play in
some scales, in some rhythmic schemes, and think in some harmonic
structures when playing a bebop standard. We found a new index, which
call "tradition" (T). Including that into our normatory equation
making it C+P+T=1, we get a three-dimensional system which by this
condition is reduced to two. Again geometrically thinking, we have a
cube, which gets projected to a triangle.
(Note that in that discussion, "T" does not include the effect
tradition has on the composer and on the composition - only the
performance of the (improvising) player is under scrutinization).
However, we can't stop there, and that becomes immediately clear to
all of us who either have dealt with the aleatoric concepts of
contemporary composers or used a random S/H filter effect: There are
effects which are beyond the control of the performer, either because
he wilfully gives away this control, or because he simply can't
control them. There's lots of them - strings breaking, the acoustics
of the venue, a hiccup suddenly developing.
Although some of these effects aren't strictly that, I call them
"aleatorics" (A). Again, incorporating them into our equation, we get
a four-dimensional hypercube, projected onto a triangular pyramid.
iii) what to do with it?
This metric will by no means be able to describe all aspects of
improvised music in any way, but rather, it has been very helpful for
me when coming to terms with thoughts like "how much of this is
improvised, how much is composed" etc. And by simply thinking about
some works of art and trying to place them inside that pyramid, some
understanding may surface.
Like: is it possible to make music that is "all composed" (C=1,
T=P=A=0)? You can get very close, think of "Studies for Player Piano"
by Conlon Nancarrow or "Jazz from Hell" by Frank Zappa. But if you
include a human being (and use a composition which hasn't been
"programmed" by the composer), you automatically move towards the P
corner of the pyramid.
Take a piano sonata by Joseph Haydn, which may say "allegro". Now you
can look that up in a book, and that book may tell you that it's
"quite fast". How fast is quite fast? Another book may tell you
(although that information can't be exactly validated) that it's
somewhat beetween 120 and 168 bpm. In other words (to bring that to
the world of dance music), play that sonata's first movement somewhere
between house, tech house, hard house, cosmic, trance, jungle, rave
and drum'n'bass. A work by Gustav Mahler may tell you to play it
"rasch aber nicht gehetzt" (apace but not hounded) - and no book tells
you what that is. And finally, taking a fugue from "Das
Wohltemperierte Clavier" by Johann Sebastian Bach will tell you
nothing at all. The choice is all yours (and so far, we've only talked
about the overall tempo).
Conversely, is it possible to make music that is "freely improvised"
(P=1, C=T=A=0)? I rather doubt it. Yes, it's possible to bring A close
to zero, and having no composition in place is simple, but the whole
block of "tradition" (which also includes that a grand piano only
offers specific pitches etc.) will always influence the player and
thus the result. Completely aleatoric? Yes, you could use a random
source and hook it to everything, but first, either composer or
performer choose that "everything".
C: RICK'S ORIGINAL MAIL (AND INCLUDING REFERENCES TO OTHER POSTS)
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Let me just start with some dissent:
"pre-rehearsed and already thought out pieces of music using live
looping feel as sterile to me as people push playing on DATs, I-pods,
CDs, DVDS or computers."
To which I have to say that I found some creative DJ performances (aka
"pushing play on CDs") very rewarding.
"the last ten years or so of my life have been all improvisational."
This is finally where I can bring the ramblings from section B to some
use. From what I remember, this is not at all true. I take as one
example the piece which opens the recording from Antwerp. Upon first
listening to that recording, I thought "Hey - I like that tune!" You
played that same composition (!) on June 11th 2008 at Pasinger Fabrik,
about 21 minutes into your set - and a few other times on that tour as
well. So you definitely don't have a C=0 index. And actually, your T
index is very high. True, you don't play bebop runs, but you have
created quite a fascinating array of "Rick Walker Tradition" you use
all the time.
So rather, I'd call your work "The Rick Walker Tradition (with
improvised content and audience interaction)", rather than
"improvised".
(this is by no means intended to critizise what you do - rather to get
into perspective how you use the word "improvised" and how I
understand it. For me, "improvised" implies C=0).
I really find your concept of playing with a clock to make the
individual pieces be shorter to be interesting. "Interesting" in that
context means I don't like it. Why?
Specific pieces of music develop in a specific time frame. You have
that starting idea - like that one three-tone motif with a chord - and
then think about it further and it develops into a composition lasting
four hours. Would it have worked if you put your seven-minute clock
next to Richard Wagner when he wrote "Tristan und Isolde"? So if you
believe that your pieces are too long (to which conclusion you may
have come either because you or the audience get bored, or for some
other reason), you should rather work on your creative process.
(In the following, I assume you want to play shorter pieces, for
whichever reason).
First, thinking considerably in advance before you start playing
(that's still going with that "C=0" approach) can help. How will that
piece develop? And consequently, how can you make it work with your
performance approach (including your looping gear)? Preprogramming
stuff, as Kevin suggested, helps a great deal here. Also, Per is very
active in that realm by writing complex scripts for Mobius to do
complex looping maneuvers at the push of a button so he can make
transitions in a few bars that otherwise would take considerably
longer.
Another thing: think about your gear and how you work with it. Say you
have a repeating three-beat drum sequence on top of which you want to
overdub a five-beat-long sequence. Now you could first play that first
sequence five times into a loop, then overdub the second one three
times. Or you could play that three-beat sequence once, then multiply
and overdub the second one three times. Or you could play the first
sequence once, then play the second one once onto another track. The
time necessary for establishing that loop has been reduced to 1/3 of
the original amount.
Finally: change what you're playing. Only record two-beat-long loops
and play on top of them for ten times. Extremely short song.
This however, should all be preceded by making up your mind what you
actually want to play. Perhaps your musical approach requires
ten-minute+plus pieces. Perhaps you need to optimize so your audience
doesn't get bored - perhaps you actually care. These are the things
that should go first.
And finally, I found that longer, more slowly developing pieces work
better in a live than in a recorded context. If you're hit by that odd
piece for the first time, it takes some time to get it - if it's on a
CD, you listen to it repeatedly, after you already "got it". And for
that reason, I find it perfectly ok to trim a live recording a little
so that what felt good live also feels good on an album release. As
the liner notes of one of Fripp's soundscape albums say: "nothing is
left out - it just happens a little faster".
And so (I'm getting carried away a little) - why don't you ask your
pupils instead to first think why their pieces are of the length they
are and if they feel right?
D: COMMENTS ON SOME REPLIES
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Yes, there had been a lot of jamming during Bach's time. This started
with the fact that the continuo part (e.g. for a cembalo) - which
somewhat was the "jazz piano" of that music, just in a leadshet, did
not get an actual written-out part, rather a bass line with some
numbers over it or a bass line and a melody - basically, a lead sheet.
Check out recordings e.g. of Glenn Gould playing continuo on some
ensemble works! Also, that endless repetitions of the main theme in
works from that period start to make sense when you know that the
musicians actually had to play improvised solo chorusses after the
first time.
Ted, I'm somewhat surprised that this pressure to "get it right" only
hits you when you playing composed material. Why don't you feel
pressured to get it right when you play improvised stuff? Or to stay
with your metaphor - why can't you perform the compositions (your own
ones or those of others) like a child?
That "don't care" statement actually refers nicely to some other posts
(and easily links back to the last section): I would not suggest that
you play as if you don't care if you sound good or bad - rather you
should play as if you don't care if you sound good or bad to the
audience. And with that, such ideas to force yourself to never play
longer than seven minutes suddenly disappear, because with that
approach, you will stop anyway if it gets boring (to you).
And Zoe, I believe that the classical stuff you play feel new because
they aren't all composed beforehand as you say - the feel new because
you make them something new everytime you play them (and if you
wouldn't, your audience would most probably disappear anyway).
Finally, there's that nice Mark Sottilaro vs. Rick Walker dialogue:
Thanks, Mark! Although I don't agree with your post in the least, it's
nice that at least someone for once gets away from that "we're such a
supportive community so we must tell everyone every single time how
great and inspiring that disposable sound menace is" approach of some
institution caring for the challenged (for those with a good language
background: what is the English translation of "beschützende
Werkstätte"?).
I disagree with you in so far because you say that you prefer
loopstation, Kid Beyond, Amy X Neuburg and Brian Kenney Fresno to all
the other artists, and believe the reason is that these artists play
composed material. The reason is that all of those are great stage
personalities per se, and have obviously worked hard at their stage
appearance independently of the musical content. How many of the
artists not in your list do you believe do have a consciously laid out
concept for their stage appearance, including clothing, how the walk
and move, how they make use of lights etc.? Furthermore, Kid Beyond
(at least what I remember of his work) plays a lot of cover tunes -
which also makes people happy. Finally, all of the named examples
sing, and "singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for
longer than they would ordinarily" ("Stop Making Sense" liner notes).
(I have to agree that Andre LaFosse doesn't fit into those categories,
but Andre is just an oustanding composer and guitar/EDP player.
Sometimes, that's enough. Another example in this category: Andreas
Willers - at all costs go see him if you get the chance, he'll blow
you away).
Another great example in this category is Rick Walker. I have to admit
(and Rick, you know I told you that in all friendship) that I don't
like his music, in so far as I find it boring. This ist totally untrue
for his live shows - I greatly and deeply enjoyed every single one of
them, be it to a large crowd or to half a dozen people, be it his solo
programme, some spontaneously created duo settings or his comments on
a world championship soccer match. At least some of them were
improvised - but they worked equally the same for me, because it was
Rick being on stage and performing them.
E: WHAT TO MAKE OF ALL OF THIS
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So, what do we make of all of this? Most of my ramblings are rather
inconclusive, but there are some messages:
I. "Composed vs. Improvised" is not a simple as most people believe
when they think about those two concepts, which seem complementary.
II. "Composed" doesn't necessarily make a performance enjoyable.
"Improvised" does not necessarily make it less enjoyable.
III. Rick - please do some singer-songwriter stuff - looking forward
to it! By my definition, you're doing composed stuff by a large
percentage anyway. ;)
IV. Great discussion - the messages are still coming.
Yours,
Rainer