Suggestions for Improvisors
Improvisation and composition have obviously had a close relationship for a long time. Few would argue at this point, that there isn’t (at least in this area of music) much shared ground between them. The improvisor composes in real time, and the players of a composition often improvise in the interpretation of their parts.
There is much to love in the tension between improvisation and composition, and what lines between them, that may still remain, have been blurred heavily over the past few years. Especially with, what seems a new trend of improvisors turning to composition.
In improvisation, I feel, I am constantly trying, against my worst impulses, to make music I am excited about. Often I find, my desire of some release through playing, or the feeling that a certain way, or amount of playing is expected of me, makes me play in a way which feels nice at the time (release/safety), but afterward, as if I have merely exercised, or exorcised, and not really been involved in the creation of something interesting.
To short circuit these impulses, I have begun making charts, processes, plans, etc, to guide improvisation into the areas in which I wish to go. I call this “assisted improvisation”, via “improvisational guides”. These guides should be seen as different from scores. Scores, for the most part, have a “right” way of being played, even if that right way encompasses a very broad spectrum. Instead, I am attempting to play in the field of tension between improvised and composed music, by encouraging situations more structured than pure improvisation, but riskier, in terms of outcomes, than composition.
Initially these guides were only for me, to use in practice to help break habits, but the more I worked on them, the more they seemed generally useful. And so, I decided to take the most finished of them, and attempt to realize it for use by others as well.
Suggestions for Improvisors 1, is the first of these, but hopefully will not be the only. My desire was to make something similar to a graphic score. A key difference however, from a typical graphic score, is that “Suggestions…” is compiled by a script, out of a set of images, on a website, each time it is loaded. This means that it will most likely never appear the same way twice. Each time the site is loaded, the images appear in a different order with different relationships.
This guide can be used in many ways. One could follow it somewhat linearly, but it could also be approached on the basis of shape relationships. One could play a single “load” of the page, or, they could re-load the page mid performance. An ensemble could each play a different load, or a single version could be used for all. There’s no wrong way to approach it.
In my own practice with this guide, I see the shapes only as suggestions. If they seem useful I use them, if not, I ignore them. And I tend to take as much time (space), as I feel I need to find inspiration, and turn it to action. I’m quite fond of the shapes, and they often make very interesting visual poetics. There are can be some very interesting relationships, and even themes, that emerge. A times I like to consider those thematic ideas as structure for improvisation, rather than playing the shapes themselves. I would suggest reloading the page until it catches your interest and working from there.
I hope some of you find this useful. Enjoy.
