(first published in the Transbay Calendar/newsletter around 2002)
There have been some in this scene who, in years past — back when the testosterone levels weren’t perpetually spiking in the DUI range — who asserted that improvisation is a method, not a style (I was one of those who said so). I think that’s really the whole point of Derek Bailey’s Improvisation: its nature and practice in music — he’s saying, look at all this improvisation in different styles, but there are commonalities in the method, independent of style. Okay, it’s not the whole point of the book, but it’s a biggie.
That’s the ideal, but in practice it turns out that some players have succeeded in turning the method into a style, mostly made up of its own hermetic grab-bag of cliches. I won’t say who. As usual, it isn’t meekness or niceness that prevents me from naming names, but simply good sense — these, after all, are just my opinions: who’s “good” and who’s “bad.” Why stomp on somebody who’s working their shit out? Why invite pointless arguments about improvisor A versus B? (In other words, why add more manure to the same tiresome poop-pile that now shadows the local dialog? Besides, I’d be pointing the critical finger at myself, much of the time.)
However, I’m more than ready to name some of the gambits that have helped turn certain kinds of improvisation into style[s].
Gambit 1: Play only with those who you are certain share your particular esthetic.
This is the opening gambit. Assures you of “esthetic consistency” and “agreement” and, ultimately, screens out a rich source of spontaneity (a key energizer of improvisation). This gambit partially depends on Gambit 5 (below), identifying yourself/your music with a certain “school.” Free jazzers don’t play with noise boys. New-classicals don’t play with rockers. Glitch-hoppers don’t play with lower-casers. Boys, by and large, don’t play with girls. And so (yawn) on.
Gambit 2: Don’t talk about it!
After all, the argument goes, one can’t really talk about music in a meaningful way! “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” I used to buy that line, myself. I don’t anymore. Talking about what you’ve just played can be a powerful tonic in the aftermath of something that hasn’t quite worked out, and for a practicing ensemble, it’s essential to ensure that progress is actually achieved in finding a group voice and a group self-awareness. Talking also has the uncomfortable effect of identifying cliches, favored fingerings and other non-spontaneous glitches in one’s playing. And these are not allowed, so even though they’re often there, we just won’t talk about them. Better yet, let’s don’t talk about anything (except all the names we can drop.) Anyway, talking about what you’re about to play is — gasp! — the same as composition! And we can’t have that.
Gambit 3: Extend that technique!
This is a hard one for me to pick apart, as it’s something in which I’m personally heavily invested. But, to extend the self-critique, I’ve realized that lately I’ve been limiting myself needlessly by ignoring things like tone, phrasing, dynamics, in favor of how much sheer sonic hell I could generate with a new embouchure. The exploration of new sounds and techniques seems an inextricable part of music’s progress, and there will always be someone there to do it, but a singleminded focus on this one aspect of music — especially on the bandstand, where it’s tantamount to practice and not performance — is numbing. I see people indulging in this at practically every show I attend.
Gambit 4: Surround yourself with mystical mumbo-jumbo.
I’ve already alienated some friends with this one, but I stand my ground. The problem is not that you’ve had, as a performer, an experience of the divine onstage. (That’s between you and your idea of whatever “higher” power or entity you bow towards.) The problem is, threefold: First, you might very well be the only one up there having the experience. Everybody else is looking at you as if you’re a divine wanker, while you go on, listening to your muse and nobody else. Second, how do you bring it back down to Earth? How do you tell people about what you’ve seen, without either trivializing it or coming off like a UFO abductee? Third, are you using mysticism as a convenient avoidance of self-analysis? Mystical experiences are hard to explain or describe or deconstruct, so this gambit becomes really a subset of Gambit 2: Don’t talk about it, but rhapsodize instead about the “transmission through my Self of divine inspiration.” Shit, you can’t criticize Heaven, can you? The Gods are always right! I won’t deny that there’s something extraterrestrial about a really great performance, but cherishing that memory shouldn’t be an excuse to shun analysis and reflection on it. Sincerity is the cheapest of virtues, meaning: It’s easy to believe mindlessly; It’s much harder to believe and present a robust critique.
I will mention only in passing that there’s already a style of music closely related to freely improvised musics that has a heavy mystical element to it (called, variously, “ecstatic” or “energy” music, or, closer to the source, “free jazz”), thanks mainly to the long, deep shadow of John Coltrane (Ohnedaruth), whose memory now has its own church devoted to it.
Gambit 5: Proclaim yourself part of a “school” or “tradition.”
That way, you don’t have to think or talk, ever! You can just quote liner notes about this-and-such or so-and-so.
Gambit 6: If it sounds good, do it again! (and again and again and again…)
This is the tiredest cliche in the book. I know, because I do it all the time. And I hear others doing it all the time. Yecch.
Gambit 666: DON’T EVER REPEAT ANYTHING.
This is the second-tiredest cliche. To dig a little deeper into the deadly dyad of Gambits 6/666, let’s look at how and why repetition is utilized in improvised music. There are times when a repeated phrase or sound acts as a defining structural element. Matt Ingall’s recent solo performance at the Skronkathon BBQ provides a good example, where, after running through a little Mozartmuzik, the clarinettist gradually broke down the harmonic/melodic elements into an unending circular-breath workout (that had its own kind of “ecstatic” energy). Another is Roscoe Mitchell’s opening solo improvisation on the album Nonaah, wherein he mechanically repeats an off-kilter phrase from the eponymous composition for several minutes, until the audience is screaming at him. Finally the tension breaks, the notes change, and by the end the audience is cheering wildly. This perverse gambit turns an otherwise static, pedantic improvisation into a truly extraordinary, unforgettable exercise in tension and release, and asymmetrical form.
There are likewise moments in improvisation where repetition is a spontaneous discovery that is non-repetitive on a “meta” level. Sonny Rollins blasts into hyperdrive during his well-known (studio) solo on “St. Thomas,” by the use of a simple repeated six-note figure, wedged into an otherwise dense and baroquely filigreed bebop excursion. The repetition sounds non-repetitive simply because the event in toto is such a contrast to the harmonic/melodic maze that surrounds it. Again, the tension-and-release model gets a workout, too.
Another type of repetition is employed by lesser talents. This involves a brand of narccisistic onanism where the player executes a phrase s/he likes (“Ooh! That’s a keeper!”), and gratuitously repeats it, with or without variations, simply for the pleasure of hearing it some more and reinforcing the positive feedback loop. This is the essence of Gambit 6. It almost never adds to the sound, structure, or momentum of the music.
What I call gambit 666 is simply the ossification of an unwritten rule of the “non-idiomatic” school of free improvisation. Always being different, good. Repetition, baad. Virtually every “idiomatic” music uses repetition, so, logically, “non-idiomatic” music must eschew it. What a shock it must have been to the Euro-improv establishment when the quartet Alterations started inserting bits of pop songs, Reggae rhythms, and funk riffs into its otherwise approved non-idiomatic improvisations!
Obviously, repetition is an important factor in music. It helps our memory piece together a pattern in the musical fabric (as Feldman expressed it). Since a piece of music unfolds over time and can’t be apprehended “at a glance” — unlike the surface of a painting — virtually every piece of music must address repetition in some way. Unconditional avoidance doesn’t make it any less important. It just results in a different kind of pattern, since our brains can’t help but find patterns — even when there are apparently none.
So, in the pre-programmed flight from repetition and pattern, the “free improvisor” becomes quite a bit less free, and paradoxically makes the music more patterned and predictable. I might add that this gambit is probably the most virulent strain of stylization that afflicts freely improvised music.
Gambit 7: Canonize your heroes.
— and try to play like them. And argue endlessly about who’s better, and who’s suffered more for their art, and who’s more influential, ad nauseum. You don’t ever have to question what they’ve done, i.e., improve upon it, or go deeper.
Gambit 8: Gig more, rehearse less.
After all, if what we’re doing is spontaneous, shouldn’t what we do on the bandstand be untested, totally new? Then why rehearse? That’d kill the spontaneity!
Gambit 9: Keep churning.
Don’t stop the flow. The flow must go on. I have seen Very Famous Improvisors (is that an oxymoron?) commit this crime, past the point of annoyance — they just go and go and keep churning out sound. To stop might sound like we’re lost, or we don’t know what to do next. To stop — might allow something different to happen rather than the highly virtuosic show of technique and listening which has been honed over years and years of playing. We’re professionals, this attitude screams. You will be impressed. Okay. But is something truly unexpected and fresh going on? This is where professionalism becomes tyranny. Watching really impressive technique can be like watching an expensive Hollywood movie, where one becomes more conscious of the money being exploded all over the screen, than of the plot or characters — because, after all, the “FX” is the product really being sold.
Epilogue, and a final Gambit.
It’s tragic when something that prides itself on spontaneity, freshness, and the constant skewering of expectations morphs imperceptibly into its opposite. But it’s probably inevitable. Everything changes — even that which is supposed to be always changing.
It’s not impossible to overcome these deadly gambits. Free improvisation must always base its practice first and foremost upon listening. Listening is the one thing — call it a method if you like, but it’s woven deeper into the fabric — which remains fresh, because it’s about dealing with what’s right in front of you, the player, right now. And, of course, this rule creates its own exceptions — and traps. Great music need not be a slave to the listening gambit!
