When is it music?

[shaggaz]

yeah john john. i think the key is preparing with the other people involved. I think logic tells us that in order to embrace 'the moment' (and the other people involved and what they have to offer) the players should all get along etc. But some of the best music I have seen has been between people who are feuding off stage ie. browne haywood stevens ball at half bent last year. What's that about?

[johnnymastropaulos]

well thats anger I reckon. It's an amzing emotion, and particularly useful to the creative process. It's an intense and creates an ACTIVE emotional space. I'm not quite sure what I mean by that. but basically if you're seriously pissed off with someone youi're not gonna let them play something good and you something bad. you're gonna go "Fuck you mate! cop this shit!"
just because the gang were feuding doesn't mean that they're not close, just that they hate each other. I mean - it's sort of hard to really hate someone that you don't know.

except maybe lleyton hewitt.

Getting lessons off scott, I brought in his new quartet CD, and played it, and got him to talk about it as it was playing.
one of the things that he said was that him and ken and phil and grabber will often play AGAINST each other, rather than with, and baically see who's idea is strong enough to win. That that tension is as important to the music as the synergy.

what where they fighting about? who has the biggest personality disorder?

[johnnymastropaulos]

and scott: feel free to correct me if I'm paraphrasing terribly.

[timothystevens]

I was going to say something in reply to Shannon's post but I've got here and I don't know what to say.

[tuggsey]

Anger is just another form of honest expression - (except for when you have kids and you pretend to be angry when they are behaving atrociously) - its how that fits into the process,and its context in the music.Music means alot to most of us - so therein lies an individuals vulnerability to anyone who decides to exercise their anger against them- usually by fucking (badly)with their groove. But I also think it can be subconscious - or at least subliminal.But if control over musical elements(form ,dynamic, timbre) is lost as a result of anger then everyone loses.....

[tinky]

Johnny you got it right. Its something that Simmonds used to always talk of to me. He was such a strong player that when he'd join me in a blow I'd be drawn to his idea, sort of follow him. He'd get pissed at me and say "man you gotta stay strong on your idea so that mine can work against what you're doing, if you follow me the arse drops out and I've wasted my time"(or something like that). It took me a long time to really stick to my game and learn to play with that type of tension. If you get it happening then the "against" as you put it is the synergy and that is what makes it work.
As far as preperation goes, couldn't agree more, though that prep could be alot of things, even a nice bottle of wine shared with a few limericks.

Shaggaz, you have to fill us in on the fueding?

[tuggsey]

So is that anger expressed in the music or anger that makes you hold your groove?I think they can be different.

[shaggaz]

oh geez, not my business at all. It was just mentioned to me by a member in the group. Tim? I didn't mean to offend anyone, it was just an example where I knew the explicit feelings of one of the members of the group so yeah.

see I think the 'anger' thing is hit and miss too. I guess its how you channel it. If i get shitty at someone on a gig I usually play worse because i spend so much time thinking about how much they're shitting me, y'know? I have to learn to go, well you're fucked so I'm gonna play real good .

[antboy]

johnnymastropaulos said:

Personally I find the X-factor issue so frustrating that it has nearly made me give up playing free music completely. I've done two gigs with lawrence folvig over the last couple of months, the first was so good that we both walked away feeling like rockstars despite the fact the there were only about 8 people in the room. the second was a month or so after that at the miuc festival. we both argeed that it was fairly terrible. boring more than anything. which is, I think, terrible thing. because the last thing the world needs is boring, uninspired free music. there's enough dodgy, uncreative noise being made and it puts people off the whole genre which is a tragedy.

for me I like having a mixture of lots of styles of music to have some kind of balance to what I'm doing, when I am doing really diverse things l usually feel more open to what the moment is offering, and also preparation is definately part of it too, but not only "instrumental" preparation, mental, listening to stuff, reading etc...
for me playing improvised music ( and when I say improvised music l mean jazz, rock, free, whatever, but music that requires improvisation, creativity etc ) you can prepare all you want but that still won't garrentee any X factor working or not, and there are definately instrumental skills that you can work on, prepare etc, but it dosen't really garrentee any kind of winning formula,
I have the feeling we are trying to articulate the unarticualtable! or l am anyway so hopefully my first post and this one is not too confusing...
but isn't this what we kind of love about this music? it dosen't work all the time...

johnnymastropaulos said:

...because the last thing the world needs is boring, uninspired free music. there's enough dodgy, uncreative noise being made and it puts people off the whole genre which is a tragedy.

yeah sure, but you could say this about any style of music just as much about free music! listening to a bad improv concert is no worse than lstening to bad rock band, jazz group, african band, anything...


ps...has anyone read Derek Bailey's book: IMPROVISATION ?
well worth a read on this subject...

[sophie]

i've always felt that this music is reliant on intent as the major factor in whether it 'works' or not.

there's nothing worse than listening to free improv that is seemingly directionless, even contrived in its efforts to be free and formless. the improvised music that I am attracted to continually treats the play as a compositional exercise. i guess this is obvious, but just because there isn't a tune written down on paper or a particualr form discussed, doesn't mean that every moment of music played shouldn't have a place and context in relation to the other parts around it, ie a composition.

it doesn't matter is you're playing conventional jazz instruments or a screwdriver and bells, if the awareness of shape, dialogue and space is there something interesting will be made..

[timothystevens]

There may have been some tension before the half bent gig and it may have contributed in some way to the music - perhaps playing was a way of sorting things out, to a degree. But if the music worked it's also (speaking for myself) because I love those guys and we have a long history of playing together. By playing free, which we hadn't done much previously, we drew on what we'd experienced together and apart and went somewhere new. By doing Eugene's wonderful tunes, the same thing (again, for me, because I'd not played them before). Tension was only one in a number of ingredients contributing to that music, and by no means do I feel it was the most important. My issue before the performance was that I didn't want to cover old ground by doing all the tunes I wrote ten years ago for that trio. They don't seem so fresh to me anymore and I'm wary of trying to force any musical issues. We wound up doing something else, agreeing simply to meet wherever we were and see what we could generate collaboratively. In the moment of playing I felt no tension at all, honestly, it was just an engaging and rewarding journey. I'm very glad that people liked it.

And to plug it yet again: my trio's recent CD is almost entirely freely improvised. It seems topical to say so.