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Hal put this up Facebook. Thought it was interesting
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Presentation
“All art is the projection of an illusion.”
Maintaining the listener’s attention throughout a performance is an art.
Suspension of the sense of self is a rare, pleasurable but not an everyday experience in most people's lives. People can fear "letting go," however, the audience has given their willing permission to put the state of their emotional well-being into the hands of the performers. They’ve agreed to be vulnerable to any influence the performers may exert upon them while immersed in the transcendental experience of a musical performance. This offer of vulnerability is a rare gift every performer must cherish and treat responsibly. Your responsibility in this reciprocal commitment is to take the listener outside of themselves for a few moments, to "take them on a trip," to affect the listener emotionally and intellectually, for you to be vulnerable as well as you allow the listener into your musical world.
Cannonball once advised me to "Make sure you have a good, strong beginning and ending to your solo because the listener doesn't hear what's going on in the middle." Although his advice may appear cynical at first, it is founded on a First Principle of presentation psychology; it’s your responsibility is to get and hold the audience’s attention, involve them in your performance, then release them from that involvement so the next soloist can do the same. Cannonball’s band didn't give their audiences a chance to be uninvolved with their music. The intensity of the band's emotional output overtook their attention, thereby honoring its social contract. Taking Cannonball’s advice to heart, the next time I got home I revisited my record library, surprised I’d missed this detail of live performance. I collected a variety of ten different styles of beginnings and endings putting them to good use the next time we hit the road.
Presentation and creativity are often considered mutually exclusive, but they need not be thought of in an either/or context. You don’t have to sacrifice artistic integrity to communicate with an audience, but you do have to have the basic desire to communicate. The key to successful audience communication is not dependent on the kind or content of what you play but your commitment to your audience. Many musicians have experienced a phenomenon of live performance, the feeling of an emotional connection between themselves and their audience. It is through this connection we take our cues from the audience, honoring a form of social contract between performer and listener.
Wikipedia defines Rapport as “a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are “in sync” with each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly.” A band’s ability to listen to each other engages an audience in its performance and an essential element in creating “rapport.” The group activity of deep listening creates for the audience not only the sound of rapport but a visual aspect as well. The audience can feel it, and see it, an element of performance enjoyed by the naivest to the most knowledgeable of listeners. Viewing the process of active listening described in the “ listening logistics” article acts as a form of aural aid, enhancing an audience’s listening experience.
It’s a truism, you don’t get paid for the gig, you get paid for getting there. Touring Italy with Phil’s Quintet, our arrival at a concert was delayed by a transportation strike, a frequent hazard traveling in Italy. I don’t remember where we were coming from, but we’d been traveling 12 hours, had no rest, nothing to eat, no time to check in at the hotel to shower and change arriving at the venue a half-hour late. We were exhausted and completely drained of energy. I could hardly keep my hands on the keyboard, knew everybody else was just as tired, sure we were going to bomb but the audience loved us, honoring us at the end with an extended standing ovation, demanding an encore, if you can believe it. Thankfully Phil walked off the stage the band in hot pursuit. Phil’s band was a listening band, no matter what, we had rapport and rapport carried the day.
My good friend and partner in crime for forty years, drummer Steve Ellington, relayed this story about his time playing with Rashaan Roland Kirk. Every touring band has days like the one Phil’s band had. Just before a concert, tired and hungry from a hard day’s travel, Rashaan would start a fight among his sidemen. By the time they got to the bandstand their competitive sprits were fully aroused and they’d swing like crazy.
Every musician begins their musical history from the first note they played. From that point on their musical experience is stored in memory forever, in neural networks the brain evaluates and categorizes for retrieval when needed on demand. Every song has its history, its own neural network. All the songs you know are collected in neural ensembles. Everything musical is collected in larger neural ensembles that might be designated as “music.” Complex Adaptive Systems takes the position the brain shares its information globally throughout the brain, suggesting these networks may be connected or potentially connected if a connection needs to be made. Every time you play a tune you add more to its history. There’s quite a difference between the first time you played Stella By Starlight and the way you’re playing it ten years later. Phil’s band took the creative approach, rejecting a tune when its history became finalized into a complete presentation. The focus for Cannonball’s band was to maintain the audience’s attention with the mix of presentation and its attendant intensity and the opportunity to be creative.
Chick Corea wrote an article in an April 1976 issue of Keyboard magazine called “The Myth of improvisation” in which he made a historically well-documented case that the presentation of your music is more important than its creative content. At the time I didn’t take his argument to heart, eventually making a complete asshole out of myself by writing him a personal letter asking him to detract his statements and the bad example he’s setting for everybody on the distaff side of the argument. We were born 20 miles from each other and friends for years, which was my excuse for taking liberties. But the concept did put a bug in my ear, the many years on the road and my own research eventually altering my position. For example:
Chick and Herbie were on tour promoting a new duo album and I got the chance to hear their concert at The Beacon Theater in New York. It was, of course, an absolutely wonderful musical experience. Later than evening, replaying the concert in my mind, I realized Chick had blown Herbie away. Herbie was approaching the music from a looser “in the moment” creative perspective, completely unplanned. You could feel it. But everything Chick played he’d worked out and refined into an impressive and powerful artistic experience. You couldn’t compete with the strength of his presentation.
From the musician’s point of view, it’s a choice between extremes, musician’s tastes falling somewhere within the spectrum from totally spontaneous to completely worked out.
In Phil Wood’s Quartet, he’d hand out a lead sheet, I’d work on the reharmonizations’ and send them to the other cats. We never rehearsed the tune, making up our arrangements as we played them. On a rare occasion, we’d refine a point or two in the van on those long rides between gigs. Spontaneity was the band’s feature so when a tune became completely developed we’d take it out of the book and replace it with a new one.
I was a frequent member of the house band at Connelly’s in Boston’s “Soul Town.” In those days, Master’s, to fill in the gaps in their own band’s tour schedules, would tour from city to city as “singles.” For two weeks, six nights a week I backed up Ellington sidemen Johnny Hodges and Bret Woodman. They played the same songs, in the same order, soloed in the same order, and played the same solos every night. This allowed the rhythm section to learn and embellish their arrangements to complete the music’s presentation. Never said anything to the sidemen, just walked on the bandstand, started playing and walked off at the end of the set, all the time not uttering a word. Didn’t have to say anything since we knew what they were going to do anyway. But man, once the band got tight, its presentation was awesome.
Cannonball and Nat hated to rehearse. We’d play the same tunes for a year. Eventually we knew how each was going to start and end each tune, their signals for changing gears, when they wanted the rhythm section to play background riffs, etc., but in between all that was a lot of room for creativity. The effect was very powerful.
Being well prepared is a First Principle best exemplified by the proverb, “If you find something that works, save it, but don’t use it more than once a night.” (Jackie Paris)
Rehearsals with Sam Rivers were often as creative as our gigs. First, we’d smoke a cup of coffee (ahh, well not all of us). Starting with a lead sheet, we’d confirm the tune’s basic harmonies and discuss and agree on any reharmonizations’. To get familiar with its ins and outs, we’d jam on the tune allowing serendipity to suggest ideas on how to arrange it, playing the arrangement enough times to embed this version in our memories. We’d take a break and smoke another cup of coffee, taking the moment to reflect on what we’d done and discuss any possibilities for building a second arrangement on the first version, repeating the process of embedding the second version in our memories by jamming on it again. After another coffee break we’d create a third version based on the second one. However, we used the first version on the gig, which allowed us to play parts of the arrangements from the other versions during our solos, the audience as well as musicians in the venue wondering “how the hell did they do that?
Rehearsing in this manner created a history for these tunes, a resource of information from which we could refer. History as a source of
information, forms a continuum in the oral tradition, in the micro as well as the macro, from the millennia to the present and is, as in Chick Corea’s article, a major component for creating presentation.
A group’s presentation depends how much control you wish to exert to create the sound you want to present, its organizing factors varying from none, what is often called “free music”, to the composed-through music of the Brazilian composers.
Sam’s quartet played a lot of the music from The Classic American Songbook. But sometimes Sam would call “E-anything,” the only organizing factor being the pedal-point “E.” The general rule being, “you can play anything over a pedal,” playing over a pedal-point offers freedom for the soloist, while establishing some degree of tonality. Afterward I’d always ask him “Hey Sam, what note do you want to play next?”
I really began to concentrate on playing in the trio format after I left Phil’s band in 1980. As happened with my sudden interest in Bill Evan’s playing in early 2000, my attraction to Ahmad Jamal’s trio playing was trying to tell me something. I knew I could never figure out what he was playing on the piano and even if I could have, I doubt I could have been able to play it, so I concentrated on what I could figure out, his arranging concepts. Ahmad’s approach was orchestral since with only three people playing you had to make the most of it to maintain an audience’s attention. It took me years of writing yards-long charts with built-in signals, vamps and sometimes two different interludes in a tune, to find my way of using his arranging techniques to understand stand the lesson he was trying to get across to me. “Form is content.” In other words, content is what you play. Form is how you use balance, rhythm, harmony and unity to design a frame for the content. The surprise take-a-way from my Ahmad period was I was now able to apply this sense of form within my soloing, in a sense, making form content.
The organizing factors of Background and Foreground also play a crucial role in controlling a group’s sound. The background created by the accompanists adds color to the foreground. Changing the background will change the complete sound of the band, even the way a soloist sounds. A change of bassist, pianist, or drummer will affect a background’s color.
Famed Charlie’s Tavern in midtown New York City was the jazz musician’s hang of choice. As the story goes; Stan Getz was sitting outside the bar whining about how he needed a new sound. Miles happened to hear him suggesting “you don’t have to change your playing to get a new sound. You change your background and play the same shit over it.” That’s how the Bossa Nova was born!
Mile’s guitarist Mike Stern said in a Downbeat Magazine article he had the same feeling about Miles. He transcribed a solo from one period of Miles’s playing and compared it to a solo from a different period. The solos were the same.
The organizing factor of “Magic,” is somewhat ephemeral but its powerful effect is rooted in a band’s choice of musicians. It’s another general rule that “a band is only as good as its weakest member.”
Miles was a master at picking his bands. He wasn’t hiring an instrument, he was hiring that particular musician’s character. He could tell which combination of characters would create the chemical reaction “Magic.”
It seems “color hearing” comes to you only after many years of being a practicing musician. I didn’t know it existed until it happened to me, though the clues were around. For the reader who has yet to experience it I can only offer its description and you’ll know what I’m talking about only when your time comes. It’s a form of aural synesthesia, like hearing yellow or blue. Elvin used to talk about the color of his cymbals. In color hearing, rhythm, harmony, color and form take on different colors, often mixed together, switching their presence in my ear. Color exists on every level of music.
• A band has a color.
• Each player has a color.
• The song has a color.
• The changes in the song have color.
• The melodies have color.
• The notes in the melodies have color.
• The sound of your instrument has color.
• The notes on your instrument have colors within them.
• The rhythm has color.
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It is said, composing is a matter of making decisions. Improvising, as a form of instantaneous composition, is a decision-making process. As its effect is pervasive on every musical level, the ultimate organizing factor for decisions about presentation is color.
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11-25-2024 05:16 AM
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Chick's article
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KEYBOARDS & MUSIC
Myths, Part II: The Myth Of Improvisation
I was talking last issue about how the process of learning depends on copying what other people have done. There's a myth to the effect that you should try to not sound like anybody else, but this can be very destructive because it can keep you from using what you've learned. There's a similar myth about improvising, which is that if you know ahead of time what you're going to play during a solo, you're somehow cheating. I'd like to blow this myth, too, because it puts some severe limits on the soloist, limits that aren't necessary at all.
I see improvisation as a decision by the improviser to not know what he or she is going to play. There's always the possibility of a fresh idea occurring, even in a piece that the artist knows well; but if you interpret your own decision (to not know) too rigidly, you can get trapped by the myth. Trying too hard to be spontaneous, to always be creating something new, can hang up your ability to build an effective solo.
There's a mysteriousness that surrounds improvisation. There seems to be some element present in the playing of the music that isn't known about. But it's really very simple. A musician learns his instrument and his art form, learns about melody and harmony and rhythm, and this gives him a certain knowledge of music. But for him to be able to con*trol his music, he has to be able to imagine a piece: he has to be able to conceive how it will sound before he ever plays it. This is the only way he can make that piece of music be that piece of music, and not some other piece of music.
So with improvisation, he conceives of and controls some of the aspects of what he's going to play before he starts, but other aspects he decides to not know about. In bebop, for example, there is a chord progression which follows, say, a 32-bar form. The chords are very predictable, so that's not improvised; and the player knows that there are certain notes that fit into certain chords, and he knows he'll use those notes, so that's not improvised. What happens is that he takes certain fragments of melodic phrases and strings them together. And they're usually fragments that he already knows. If he didn't, he wouldn't be able to execute them on his instrument. Obviously, those fragments are what people started referring to as licks.
The thing I've discovered is that the better the improviser gets at what he's doing, the more he's able to predict the shape of the longer phrase. He can predict whole four or eight or sixteen bar units before he plays them. He just decides before he starts a particular chorus that he's going to do such-and-such.
I've heard a story about trumpeter Fats Navarro that illus*trates this. I'm not sure the story is true, but I could conceive of its being true, because I do this myself, and I see other musicians doing it. Navarro would write out a whole chorus of improvisation on, say, "I Got Rhythm." He'd write it down, note for note. And then he would take that chorus of solo and improvise on it. He would string out five or ten choruses based not on the original melody but on the cho*rus he'd written out. It would be like writing his own tune. And that process put him very much in control of his art form.
Another way of looking at it is that the more capable a musician is, and the more logical he is about what he's creating, the harder it is for him to not know what he's going to play. It starts to become an effort to improvise, unless he's willing to admit to himself that improvising is a game he's playing. He'll get a strained expression on his face, and contort his body in all sorts of weird ways, because he's trying to be spontaneous. [I wonder who he might be talking about here? - Ed]
In Return To Forever, we find that as we perfect each piece, as we perfect the improvisation within it, the improvisation becomes more stable and predictable, and even more lyrical. It's a thing that we acknowledge to be a good thing, it's not harmful. The myth is that you always have to play something different for it to be spontaneous. But that's not true. What's important is how 'there' you are when you're playing; that's really the point. Good music is just good music, whether it's composed, or improvised, or whatever.
When a musician decides to not know what he's going to play, it can still be very unspontaneous, for the same reasons That composed music is not always spontaneous. It simply has to do with whether the person who is playing has his whole attention and control of what he's doing there, at the moment that he's doing it. That's what makes something spontaneous. How different it might be from the last rendition has nothing to do with it. There's a myth that spontaneity has something to do with the musical phrase being different from anything that has come before. But newness is just viewing something from now, from the present moment. It doesn't matter if the tree you're looking at today is the same tree you looked at yesterday. If you're looking at the tree right now, it's a new experience. That's what life is about.
It's a constant problem for a classical pianist to make a piece come to life, when all the notes and all the expression marks are set in advance. The way it's made to come to life, of course, is by the performer's being right where he is at the moment that he's there, playing the piece as though it had never been done before.
There are various decisions that the performer could make about how to improvise. Certain things can be set up in advance, while others are left open. You could have only a set rhythm, or a set chord pattern. You could also have to a large degree a set melody, which you would leave open to minor alterations. Or any or all of these things could be left open. The thing is, the less you decide in advance, the more effort it's going to be to put a piece of music together. The more you decide to not know, the further away you put yourself from the truth, which is that on some level you really do know what you're going to play.
When a musician really doesn't know what he's going to do next, the improvisation tends to be very erratic. You've got to go along a path once or twice or a hundred times before what you're doing comes out as a flow. When a piece comes out as a flow, it's because it's being controlled by the musician. He knows about it. He's done it before. It's a question of relative degrees of composing. From a present moment, you can decide to compose the next note, or the next five notes, or the next phrase, or the next two phrases, or the whole piece. What makes a good improvisation isn't lack of advance knowledge about the solo; it's the way you put it all together at the moment you're playing, no matter how often you might have played those notes before, that makes the difference.
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good stuff. i think most good players i met over the years had some sort of mapped-out solo inside them for most tunes. and there is so much recorded evidence that we have access to these days. the recent wes montgomery releases are fascinating stuff.
don byas had a steady gig in amsterdam. he played the same solo over stardust every night, according to frans elsen. when asked about that fact, his response was "dont you like it?" a sax player i knew was sometimes trolled on stage by his band members who sang along with his solos.
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But it's long... too long... I don't have time to analyze it, sorry...I have to practise!
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Good stuff, the Chick Corea article resonates with his truth from his experience, both are writing about a very high level of improv.
It's good to hear that great Miles' quote again: “you don’t have to change your playing to get a new sound. You change your background and play the same shit over it.”
If only we all had Miles' ears.
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A musical comedy choreographer I worked with years and years ago, whose bread and butter was choreographing shows with a one- or two-week rehearsal schedule, told us his approach to a solo dance turn in the middle of a number:
"Trick on, energy-energy-energy-energy, trick off."
Christian, thank you for these two very provocative and interesting essays. They make me understand Barry Harris' observation that one should always be able to repeat one's improvisation.
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I feel so validated by this.
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Agree on the Wes stuff. I think the album is called Back Home in Indiana but you can here him playing the some of the same tunes he plays on other albums and the solos are very similar in some cases, though not quite identical.
Originally Posted by djg
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While I take heart in the knowledge that I'm "kinda" doing what the above essays are referring to, you know that there's a compelling counter that prefers one's improvs to be 100% spontaneous (ie, the Tristano school etc).
But let's face it, there probably have only been a handful of truly great improvisors that were anything close to that lofty ideal (Tristano's acolytes?), and you can't say that they were any more appealing to an audience than the somewhat precomposed showboaters. It's the cruel reality.
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There’s still judgement going on there. “Oh they aren’t doing it properly, they are just showboating.” Who is? Wes? Miles? Louis? Joe Henderson? Originally Posted by princeplanet
I want to get rid of all that baggage. This isn’t coming from the music itself. It’s coming from misconceptions about the music. All those players could improvise from nothing of course, but often they chose to refine a musical statement during a run of shows. That’s improvisation too imo.
Yes the Tristano school were very hardcore about the improv thing. I don’t really see that as bop, more like something else.
I’m not a Tristano person really. As much as I admire those players I’ve never felt the visceral appeal in the same way as the great Blue Note musicians for example. Some I feel have a foot in both worlds, Dave Cliff comes to mind on guitar. Tristano has been very influential in UK jazz education - starting with Peter Ind at Leeds in the 60s.
Ethan Iverson says this, which might connect to my feelings about the cerebral aspect of this school.
“The Tristano school likes to bang the “pure improvisation” drum. However, a big space of “improvisation” in modern jazz is interaction. Paradoxically, the three greatest Tristano school players sound best with a fairly placid rhythm section — just one flaw of their whole “pure improvisation” rap. (To be clear, I love Tristano, Konitz, and Marsh.)”
Is Jazz Improvised? and, What About McCoy, Herbie, Keith, and Chick? (Twitter Files 1) | DO THE M@TH
Paradoxically that music feels more “classical”.
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The Venn intersection of Tristano scene and musicians I actively listen to is one person, Chuck Wayne.
I think it’s elite BS to look down on people who aren’t on the same journey as you, or aren’t at the same level as you.
Even if that’s not the ideology of Tristano, his followers have that attitude.
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Well I’d humbly suggest expanding your Venn diagram to include Cliffy Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Tbh I much prefer his playing to Chuck’s but that might just my taste. Cliffy has such a great sense of swing and fire in his playing.
Of course Warne is great. They all have that effortless linearity in their playing, though. It can get a bit eighth notey sometimes…. But I never feel that with Cliff for some reason.
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Oh great, now I'm mad at color
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Are there any substantive references as to what Tristano actually taught or believed with regards to improvisation? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
From the wikipedia article and things I've heard elsewhere it says that he had his students learn to sing the melodies of jazz standards and to sing and play the solos of Lester Young and Charlie Parker, all eminently reasonable, in my opinion.
I think Konitz advocated varying the melody as a basis of improvisation, which also seems fairly standard advice.
I, personally, also haven't found much of the Tristano school that enthralling, although, I haven't listened to them extensively. However, the one exception for me is Tristano, himself.
While the context in which he plays isn't always the most interesting, I find his lines stellar. Here is a side with Parker where he sounds great. Unfortunately, the rhythm section is subdued.
I guess what I am trying to say is that if you learn solos and heads of the greats well enough to sing them note for note, I am not sure how you can avoid just playing bits and pieces of that in your improvisations.
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Yes there are. The Tristano school is pretty well understood. Originally Posted by charlieparker
My usual source for the method of study is actually via Warne Marsh, his student John Klopotowski (a guitarist) wrote a book called A Jazz Life which has a clear account.
A large part of the work is slow improvisation. Set the metronome to 60-80 bpm and solo in eighth notes. Dave Cliff put me on to that when I went for a lesson.
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I think most people agree, jazz musicians and non musicians alike. And this is just so unfortunate for those that spend decades cultivating the skill required to do the Tristano thing, which is perhaps the most admirable thing you can aspire to in all of Art, not just in Jazz. It's an art form where the required skill is unfortunately invisible to most people, and while you argue that's even true for the standard (if there is such a thing) Jazz musician, it's perhaps 10 times more true for the Tristano-ites, yet they probably can expect 10 x less gigs than everybody else. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
So, I reckon they're entitled to look down on the rest of us!
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If you sound great nobody cares if your solo is 10%, 40%, 90% improvised.
I'd also argue if you're playing within the parameters of a tune in an accepted style, there's no such thing as 100% improvisation.
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Of course we admire skill, in fellow musicians, but in the wider sense, what does it mean? Originally Posted by princeplanet
I think most people agree, jazz musicians and non musicians alike. And this is just so unfortunate for those that spend decades cultivating the skill required to do the Tristano thing, which is perhaps the most admirable thing you can aspire to in all of Art, not just in Jazz. It's an art form where the required skill is unfortunately invisible to most people, and while you argue that's even true for the standard (if there is such a thing) Jazz musician, it's perhaps 10 times more true for the Tristano-ites, yet they probably can expect 10 x less gigs than everybody else.
So, I reckon they're entitled to look down on the rest of us!
I feel the most admirable thing in music is finding an intersection in the Venn diagram between ‘stuff you are interested in’ and ‘things an audience of some type enjoys.’ Everything else is kind of … model train sets, painting Warhammer and stamp collecting. Or playing five a side at the weekend. Not knocking my those things as hobbies, and I’m sure if you are into that stuff its nice to talk about your Special Interest with like minds but it doesn’t mean that the wider world should respect it.
I feel those kinds of hobbyists are more self aware than a lot of jazz musicians who go on and on about how they did eight years at jazz school and no one appreciates their mad skillz.
(You wouldn’t find Larry Goldings doing that on one of those sessions when he gets booked to play basic chords. Which he does a lot.)
If you can find that overlap you’re golden (and it’s not always predictable what they do enjoy which is wonderful), and may be able to monetise it and become professional even. You don’t need to be Ariana Grande, you just need a room full of people… (I respect Ariana a lot - what a professional.)
Maybe you’ll even create music that connects and touches people. That’s when it really means something.
Which is exactly what all of those artists name checked have done.
if you don’t and moan about how your talents and the work are unappreciated, I feel that maybe that person is in the wrong gig. And yes, I have been that person.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 12-01-2024 at 05:13 PM.
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Well, I don't know about all that heavy analysis but, yes, presentation is often more important; the audience want to be entertained. But, of course, the word presentation also includes a good level of technical skill otherwise it simply stops being entertaining.
I think that's why Wes Montgomery, for example, was so popular. He combined excellent playing with a huge, warm presence. Perfect example.
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1975
1958
What’s so impressive about spending your whole life rejecting licks, doing things the hard way to end up sounding like Miles Davis on a blues anyway?
The end result is only impressive to people who bought the pill.
At the end of the day, the recordings are what sticks around, and people hear music, not difficult fingerings or noble improvisational pursuits.
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Don't have time to read through the long pieces right now (have a jam session in an hour), but I do have an audience-centric question: When I hear a recording that includes extensive improvised material--and listen to it over and over--am I hearing its made-up-on-the-spotness or its appeal as a musical composition that happens to have been made up on the spot? In fact, how would I, on a single hearing, be able to tell it from a passage that was worked out in advance? And if I were to hear multiple live performances that include pretty much the same passage, would my enjoyment of it be diminished by the recognition that it is not being generated on the spot? Or might I want to hear newly-generated variations on the original?
As it happens, I have something like 60 Grappelli albums in my library, which means I can hear not only the whole range of his playing style but multiple versions of given tunes. What I think I hear is a stylistic vocabulary from which he could assemble elements to deploy to a particular instance of a tune, always sounding like himself.
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I forgot about Billy Bauer. He’s great too.
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The converse is also true. There's a local sax player with incredible technique whose solos are a deft interweaving of nothing but bebop cliches and he may as well be playing along to an Aebersold record. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Glenn Gould suggested Mozart tended to write “empty passage work” BECAUSE he was an improviser.
I think he was wrong about Mozart - that passage work might look dull on paper but it serves the music. But Gould being wrong - perhaps intentionally doubling down on an eccentric position as a sort of devils advocate - is more interesting than most people being right. A bit like how he played piano I guess.
It did make me think - perhaps composing stuff or crystallising stuff (emphasising things discovered in previous performances even by accident) might result in a less uniform and stereotyped result than simply playing the ole cliches.
Maybe sometimes one owes it to the music not to improvise too much, but to crystallise and refine what works and serves the music. There’s other ways to be alive to the moment than making different pitch choices.
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I totally agree, but if I had to bat for the other side.... it's all very well to view this whole improv debate from the standpoint of the listener, as in, what do they care how the lines are constructed (or not?). Originally Posted by AllanAllen
But let's face it, many of us here are not playing in front of audiences as much as we are playing for ourselves, and like the way that all Art is its own reward, there is something to be said for the way that improv is more satisfying for us as players the less contrived it is. I don't know about you guys, but when I was into learning entire solos well enough to play along with recordings, it never really felt satisfying. I would be thinking to myself "now, imagine if I was actually improvising this, how cool would that feel!"
So don't feel sorry for the Tristano-ites, they're probably not making much money (who is?), nor getting the respect they probably deserve, but I bet they're having a blast every time they pick up their instrument (I mean, even more than the rest of us). At least I hope they are.
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