Comprovisation

[Mark Kleinhaut]

I don’t know if this term has been already coined by someone, but it popped into my mind this morning and perfectly describes what I’m doing. … a composition that is made up in the moment of its performance.

please enjoy and thanks for listening!

[pilotony]

Thanks for posting.

Tony D.

[guitarvegas]

I don’t know if this term has been already coined by someone, but it popped into my mind this morning and perfectly describes what I’m doing. … a composition that is made up in the moment of its performance.

please enjoy and thanks for listening!

This was like the most beautiful thing. I am a fan for life.

[Mark Kleinhaut]

This was like the most beautiful thing. I am a fan for life.

Thanks so very much. You know, I’ve made tons of videos so if you’re really game there’s hours and hours of material. Good luck and thanks again! Mark Kleinhaut jazz guitar - YouTube

[Bob_Ross]

I don’t know if this term has been already coined by someone...

Yeah, "comprovisation" is a pretty common term used to describe modern jazz (or jazz-ish, or jazz-like, etc.) players & composers who use improvisation as a compositional element. E.g., the score might indicate written lines for several of the instruments while some other instruments are free to improvise -- or given material to improvise with -- or, there may be a section of a piece where everyone is improvising, and then written cues are used to bring everyone back to the through-composed material.

The following artists (at least in some circles) have all been referred to as comprovisational: Ken Vandermark, Splatter Trio, Tim Berne, Ben Opie's Watershed Quintet, Herb Robertson, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis, Ronald Shannon Jackson, early Bill Frisell, John Zorn, James Emery, Anthony Braxton, and Ornette Coleman.

Also (warning! Shameless self-promotion ahead!) I spent a decade playing bass in Debris, a comprovisational ensemble that consisted of three or four composers writing for a band that was adept at free improvisation (though perhaps moreso in the European aleatoric sense than traditional "jazz" improvisation)

[Christian Miller]

I’ve never heard that term before, but it’s a useful one.


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[Cunamara]

Somehow I managed to miss this one. Very enjoyable. You know. I was/am a Deadhead and my favorite portion of every show was Drums > Space. Your videos often are like the essence of that distilled into a cordial.

I like to do this playing around the house when nobody's home. If I'm in the right frame of mind, it feels more like the music is playing me than the other way around- like the music comes to visit and find its way into the world for a moment. As kind of hippie-dippy as it sounds, Bob Weir has said that he believes songs exist as entities in the universe that find someone receptive and come into the world through them. It feels that way to me, too.

I've never been able to do it when somebody is listening, though. The presence of an audience changes my relationship with music somehow, probably due to becoming self-conscious.

[L50EF15]

Beautifully done.

This speaks to me, because it is exactly what I do. As I have mentioned before, I had a steady coffeehouse gig for the five years leading up to the pandemic in which I improvised/composed everything on the spot, though I would occasionally dip into someone else’s song.

I really need to get back out there. As it is, I try to get something recorded every night and posted to YouTube. Here’s one from tonight, on a bit of an unusually setup instrument:

[Mark Kleinhaut]

Beautifully done.

This speaks to me, because it is exactly what I do. As I have mentioned before, I had a steady coffeehouse gig for the five years leading up to the pandemic in which I improvised/composed everything on the spot, though I would occasionally dip into someone else’s song.

I really need to get back out there. As it is, I try to get something recorded every night and posted to YouTube. Here’s one from tonight, on a bit of an unusually setup instrument:

Hi Rudolph, thanks for posting. The daily routine of playing like this really becomes second nature and over time the ability to compose something on the spot feels completely natural. I’m encouraged when I see fellow travelers with this similar approach.

[L50EF15]

Thanks, Mark! It’s fundamental for me. In many ways, it’s how I learned all of my instruments: I am self taught on everything from kalimba to guitar, violin, mandolin, banjo (four and five string), and ukulele. I can get around pretty well on all of them, and the foundation for me (after understanding each tuning) is to listen and react. I can usually wrangle something coherent from this method.

I’ll add that when it comes to fretted instruments, at least with respect to jazz derived styles that don’t rely heavily on open strings, I have noticed a through line from the mandolin to the tenor banjo to the archtop guitar.

What I mean is that there are only so many ways to form a chord that you can move around the fretboard quickly. And listening closely to the range (certainly in the USA) of popular string instruments in jazz and related music pre-WWII, it’s clear to me that when the music got faster and louder at the start of the Jazz Age of the 1920s, mandolinists moved to the tenor banjo and brought their techniques and chord voicings with them. That process repeats circa 1930 with the start of the Swing Era Big Bands—louder but smoother, such that the tenor banjo players moved to the acoustic archtop guitar. And again, they brought their techniques and chord voicings with them.

I mention this because I have recently fallen down the ukulele rabbit hole; and of course that instrument has popular during the same period. And the similarities between all these instruments in this context has allowed me to take the comprovisation approach with my latest instrument.

If you’ll permit me the indulgence, here’s an example of what I mean: