Interesting, was just talking to a friend about this on the way to lunch this afternoon. Taku Sugimoto's article in the new Wire is in ways about this very topic, It seems that he's abandoned improvisation in most regards, and now holds composition as his new "thing." From my quick read over the article, it looks like he thinks that improvised music is a new orthodoxy, "a tiny academy of the onkyo order."

An idea worth considering; although I find it hard to believe that a new orthodoxy could set in *that* quickly (when was "onkyo" coined to describe this music? maybe 3-4 years ago? maybe that's just when I heard it), there sure are a *lot* of records that are in this vein out there.

But, to the original message, improvisation never seemed to be about *replacing* composition, whether in acting, music making, poetry writing, whatever. It was about possibilities open to immediate, intuitive processes that didn't come out in the slow, methodical grind of composing. More about possibility and accident. But then maybe I misunderstand what you mean by "higher order."

it's obviously very difficult to continually find new areas to explore within improvisation. I don't know about Downey, Jr. or Fields, but Sugimoto has painted himself into a creative corner as an improviser over the last few years, continually stripping out sound until there was almost literally nothing left (the Rowe/Muller/Sugimoto excerpt on the balance beams DVD conveys this perfectly, I think). I'm guessing the double CD about to come out by Sugimoto and Radu Malfatti will be the final step in this approach.

it'll be interesting to see how the Sugimoto compositions sound (there's a CD of Chamber Music out soon on Bottrop-Boy, and a double CD of his compositions on A Bruit Secret next year). I've seen a couple of them live, and I'm guessing they'll be hard to capture on CD. a big part of the excitement of the Sugimoto Guitar Quartet (again, somewhat captured on balance beams), for instance, is the physical presence of four skilled guitarists, holding their instruments, totally focused, and playing almost nothing.

as for new territory within improvisation, it's not easy, but there are certainly possibilities. I've been working on the Sachiko M/Toshi Nakamura/Otomo Yoshihide trio double CD I'm releasing early next year, listening to the material a lot the last few weeks, and they've found a new approach for them, a new direction, which I think is very exciting. I'm going to Vienna at the end of the month for the trio recording sessions of Keith Rowe, Axel Dörner and Franz Hautzinger, and I'm optimistic they'll do the same...

I, of course, do not concurr with Sugimoto. But it's interesting to see whether this will predicate a trend...

For what it's worth, Sugimoto seems to be posing this in terms of high-modern formalism, Scott Handley describes it really well here, what applies to Malfatti basically applies to Sugimoto. But, there's something interesting and subtle and different about his approach (at least i as it through in his interview) that I haven't teased out yet. Maybe it'll come out in his work in the near future.

There's obviously a lot of ground to cover in this style. I'm particularly excited by the direction that some of the French musicians like Michel Doneda, Le Quan Ninh, and our own Dan Warburton, are taking with sound recordists like Laurent Sassi, Marc Pichelin, Eric LaCasa, etc, using creative mic'ing techniques, and unique locations to record, along with Julien Ottavi and Mattin using dense noise in much of their work (Mattin's "Gora" is probably one of my picks of the year.)

What's "the onkyo order"?

"The Onkyo Order".. sounds like a yakuza crime movie, doesn't it? I suppose Taku's referring to the community of lowercase improvisors that has sprung up over recent years in Japan.

I agree with Jon's comment above that Sugimoto has painted himself into something of a corner, but as his Wire piece by Clive Bell makes clear, he's still capable of the odd mighty surprise. I doubt the forthcoming (or is it out already?) double CD with Radu Malfatti will be one, though. [Let me take this opportunity to say once more (though everyone who knows me by now is sick of hearing it) that over half of Malfatti's email exchange with Sugimoto in the recent IMJ book was lifted verbatim from an interview he gave me (and one that's still up online for your perusal at www.paristransatlantic.com).]

Quite where this lowercase stuff will end up is something I find interesting to speculate on; it seems there's now a swing back towards good ol' noise (in the recent work of Tetuzi Akiyama and even within the Berlin crowd.. Andrea Neumann's 3"CD on the Berlin Strings set on Absinth is pretty industrial (not with a capital i)). On the subject, I also agree that Mattin's Gora is a kickass piece of work.

Whether composition is a "higher order" or not is a subject I won't get into, though as a university-schooled composer / theorist myself I used to think it was (maybe still is). We should make a distinction, though, between scores that consist of mere verbal instructions (several of Taku's, for example) and fully or partially notated ones (cf Scott Fields, Scott Rosenberg and of course Braxton). And then there are the graphic scores.. Jon, I hope your Japanese version of Cardew's "Treatise" is damn good, because I'm heartily sick of improvisors who now all want to "play" this piece. I still wonder whether Keith Rowe has done a genuine service to his erstwhile (pun intended) friend by promoting "Treatise" so heavily. Without exception all the versions of the work I have heard, either on disc or live, including one featuring Mr Rowe himself, have been uniformly and seriously disappointing.

"Quite where this lowercase stuff will end up is something I find interesting to speculate on; it seems there's now a swing back towards good ol' noise"

well, you'll find one interesting direction on the Sachiko/Nakamura set on the box, as well as the Otomo/Sachiko/Nakamura double CD I'm releasing early next year.

"Without exception all the versions of the work I have heard, either on disc or live, including one featuring Mr Rowe himself, have been uniformly and seriously disappointing. "

that's an odd statement I'd like to hear clarified a bit, Dan. since Treatise is a graphic score and the content of the music is largely left to the musician's own personal interpretation of the images, I don't think you can mean that the interpretation of the work is poor or incorrect. so you must mean that the music itself isn't very satisfying, which I can mostly agree with. let's see, versions of excerpts of Treatise on CD off the top of my head:

two by Formanex, neither of which are anything special. one by Formanex/AMM/etc., which I didn't like live or on CD.
the two CD version on Hat conducted by Art Lange, which is OK, kind of pretty, I think.
the AMM one on the CD version of Combine and Laminates from 1984 (I'm guessing you forgot this one), which I recall being pretty good.

"Jon, I hope your Japanese version of Cardew's "Treatise" is damn good"

you can judge for yourself in the next week or so, I'll keep my opinions on that to myself for a while.

FWIW Treatise is made use of on one track of Rowe's A Different Plane of Perfectly Ordinary Reality & also if memory serves the tracktitles of The Inexhaustible Document indicate that a particular page of it is in use.

ah, I already mentioned the Otomo/Sachiko/Nakamura record above, sorry about the duplication, but it really does fit this discussion perfectly.

It's possible, I suppose, that this "completely rehearsed" quality so highly valued by some people can be found even when there is no composition whatever. I think Jon has mentioned (though I could be wrong) that, while he likes to put people together who've never played together, he also likes to release stuff by long established "ensembles.

That is, maybe it's not the one-off character of the "piece" that produces (at least part of) the alleged lower value of certain performances, but the smaller amount of "rehearsal" time--even if whatever time used has been spent only in the rehearsing of free improvs. I mean, obviously, a Shakespeare play is written, whether any particular performance is well rehearsed or not. So, of course, none of Olivier's interpretations of As You Like It, either in rehearsal or in performance, can justly be called a free improv.

As an example, in my own experience of about 3 years with Kendig and Dicky, it was clear to all of us that we got better (in some sense). Again, many feel that AMM has improved greatly over the years.

OTOH, Fields and Sugimoto were certainly talking about what they consider to be a certain type of superiority of composition over improvisation. FWIW, I've heard Elliott Carter expound on this too. He feels that it takes time and conscious effort in the study to force music out of the grooves that unfettered improvisation inevitably brings. I think Cage felt that throwing sticks (or using star charts, or whatever) can produce an even more significant departure from the usual ruts than battling with tone rows in isolation at one's piano.

Not much to add to the lowercase discussion, but Ellery Eskelin (an improvisor & composer of high merit IMHO) wrote something recently over at JC that I think reverberates with the comments of Downey and Fields. He was reflecting on his practice regime:

“I don't want to develop too good a technique. I want to be able to keep the ear/fingers thing firing on all cylinders so that I can play what I hear in any situation, but I don't want my fingers to get away from me. I like to keep my technique just slightly below the optimal point so that it forces me to really be in the moment since at any moment I may have to change course… By the way, I’m not against methodology at all. You need that, especially in the beginning. But even then I always devoted a part of my practice time to the unknown.”

Replace ‘methodology’ with ‘composition’ and I think the argument works just as well.

"If something is well-written and you rehearse it to the point where it comes around to being spontaneous again, it's really cool."

I know this isn't a paradox, but I hope you wille xcuse for saying it sounds like one. Downey could just as well be be referring to interpersonal relationships with this comment.

Commitment, whether its to another person or persons, or whether it is to thqat aspect of one's self (individual and collective) that I'll here give the name "craft", is something one has to renew every day. And what is one trying to accomplish with and throught this relationship? If you are vying to achieve something that truly never has been achieved before, well... you'll choose accordingly. But that is not the only choice implicit in Walter's forumlation of this issue (in my mind, anyway). "Improvisation" and "composition" don't strike me as being the "either / or" answers to to that last question per se. Because it isn't an either / or question. But the differences between improvisation and compositions do offer a means of achieving an answer.

I don't think we can talk about any sort of a priori superiority of one category of music-making over another. If we find a piece of music succeeds for us or not, isn't whether it is improvised or composed -- or, more realistically, how exactly it is a little of both -- but one aspect of the music to consider?

I completely agree about the paradoxicality of Downey's remark, Joe. It's a strange, almost Zen, concept. (After "grasping" the river is the river again, and the mountain the mountain--but something more, too).

Derek, I think Ellery's quote is kind of paradoxical too. Or at least I don't understand it completely. Do you think he means that if one gets "too good" at an instrument, one can't be as spontaneous any more?

Walt, I think you’re right about the inherent paradox in Ellery’s contention if it’s read in the context of the ‘either/or’ Joe mentions. But I’m guessing he’s trying achieve (at least partially) a freedom from what he perceives as the familiar ruts of perfected technique, shackles that would inhibit new directions because they’re easy to fall back on, even at an unconscious level. Basically honing his ability to resist switching to autopilot on the technique side and still staying limber on the idea side. Then again, being able to play a complex chromatic run perfectly doesn’t necessarily mean that one is necessarily beholden to it. I’ll shoot Ellery an e-mail & see if I can get him to chime in here.

Not placing a greater/lesser value on either, there does seem to me to be something inherently ‘known’ about a written, predetermined ‘composition.’ The same could be said about improv, but the element of spontaneity (for all actors involved- players, audience, etc.) that’s supposedly present makes it seem less likely for some reason.

Just heard back from Ellery. Here are two other passages from JC clarifying his earlier post:

“Yeah, I think you got my drift even as the statement itself is contradictory. I mean, if my goal is to maintain my technique at a desired level than I guess that’s ‘optimal.’ But of course what I meant was that I could play more notes at a faster velocity if I practiced for that but personally I find that my fingers will start to think for themselves and go running off ahead of the actual ideas I’m hearing.”

“It’s kind of like walking and talking. Once you learn it you don’t have to stop and think about how to do it...you just do it. Instantaneous from impulse to action...but there can also be a beauty in the struggle since if it was all perfectly executed I’m not sure it would have the same impact. It’s an interesting issue to think about really...comparing improvised music to something 100% composed and performed with every attempt to attain perfection...there’s beauty there as well of course...”

And a response to this thread:

“I didn't have time to read all the posts there but the issue of comparing improv and composition in terms of "better than" is kinda strange. They are both pretty vast concepts. I can see how one musician or another may feel that they have exhausted themselves with either but that's a statement about the musician, not the concept of improvising or composing.”

Just backtracking a bit to Cardew's "Treatise", the version I'd forgotten Jon was indeed on the AMM (I dug the old Memorex cassette out from under the bed to check.. about time I invested in the CD methinks). I was (am) complaining about the apparent need of some improvising musicians to score some dubious kind of avant-garde street cred by "playing" contemporary music; as several people of my acquaintance would have trouble even playing a two octave scale, let alone perform a fully notated piece of complex contemporary music by the likes Ferneyhough, Lachenmann et al., they've jumped on the bandwagon of experimental music (especially Cage and, thanks to Keith, Cardew). If they spent some time really studying the nuances of Cardew's graphic notation (not to mention other similar works by Earle Brown, Robert Ashley, Haubenstock-Ramati, Bussotti and others which seem to have been totally ignored) they might realise that performing experimental music is not some soft option.
On the subject of great performances of graphic scores, get Santa to bring you a copy of New World's 5CD box MUSIC FROM THE ONCE FESTIVAL 1961-1966. Awesome.

Dan, please speak in specifics, not generalities. is it the yoots of Sonic that you speak of? Keith has similar problems with their dabbling, but I tend to fall closer to the camp of "if it brings new fans to investigate it, that's fine".

is your point that people should just stop trying to play Treatise because there haven't been many successful (to your ears) tries yet? should one have to attain some sort of musical training degree before being allowed to interpret works by "composers"? again, seems odd to me, maybe I just don't understand your point.

I'm kind of interested in the ONCE box, and have solicited some opinions about it, but I'm also fairly sure I'd never pull it out again if I bought it. I'd love to borrow it from someone.

"several people of my acquaintance would have trouble even playing a two octave scale"

Ouch.

"should one have to attain some sort of musical training degree before being allowed to interpret works by "composers"? again, seems odd to me, maybe I just don't understand your point."

I understood Dan as saying that the unnamed people are seeing only the "no technique needed!" aspect of experimental music, while avoiding any real exploration of the demands the music may make.

Interesting discussion. I don't have nearly the background (in anything) to join it, but it has caused me to pull out my copy of Treatise (the "Chicago version" on Hat), so that's a good thing. I like it a lot. It's real purty.

Haha, seem to have put the cat among the pigeons nicely here. Yes, Jon, I'll be specific: I think the SY4 Goodbye 20th Century is a well-meaning effort but their readings of the Cage number pieces in particular take considerable latitude with the demands of the score. Joëlle Léandre twigged it right off when I played her that during the Wire Jukebox a while back: "It sounds like an improvisation by a group trying to play contemporary music.." Fair enough, that such recordings might tempt regular SY fans into unexplored teritory is to be applauded, though I wonder how many Death Valley 69 fans have bothered to seek out the recent Cage releases on Mode, OgreOgress (and many other fine labels) as a result. All this discussion refers to a current work in progress of mine, a sprawling huge thesis on the question of technique in improvised music that will probably never see the light of day, though I'm still working on it. My basic argument is that the best improvised music (or at least that I find most satisfying) is made by people who actually know how to play their instruments, that some kind of grounding in classical technique linked to practice and study of the instrument (and other performers on it). That's why I find Greg Kelley, Scott Rosenberg and Scott Fields worthwhile and Masafumi Ezaki, Mr Dorgon and Ernesto Diaz-Infante (on guitar) unrewarding. The people who take time to really master the instrument (Jack Wright, Michel Doneda, John Butcher) are the people whose music I keep coming back to. That said, one of my favourite musicians is Arthur Doyle.. so, as Ludwig Van once said, please assume the opposite may also be true..

Oops, two Rs in territory. Got carried away.

"My basic argument is that the best improvised music (or at least that I find most satisfying) is made by people who actually know how to play their instruments"

yeah, that's what I thought you were saying, and I already knew that's where your bias/taste usually falls. for me, there's enough great improvisers on both sides of the trained/untrained line that I don't really think about (or sometimes even know) the background of the musician, just the end result. I do think that trained musicians have to unlearn or forget some of what they've learned to create their own voice in an experimental area, they'd usually be the first to tell you that.

"The people who take time to really master the instrument (Jack Wright, Michel Doneda, John Butcher)"

I've never seen Wright, or heard much of his recorded work, I'm looking forward to seeing him this Thursday with Phil Durrant for the first time. I really enjoy some of the work of both Doneda and Butcher (more than Doneda, usually), but they both lose me when going into more "old-school" territory at times. of course, this also speaks to my biases, which are also fairly well-known...

"My basic argument is that the best improvised music (or at least that I find most satisfying) is made by people who actually know how to play their instruments, that some kind of grounding in classical technique linked to practice and study of the instrument (and other performers on it)."

But, to play a little devil's advocate, what if one's music is predicated on the idea of finding new techniques through a kind of public experimentation? Isn't technique honed -- and even explanded -- as much through preformances as it is through practice exercises?

At the end of the day, I would hope we can all respect the differences between "improvisation" and "composition" without setting one against the other.

I’m with Joe, can’t ‘composition’ and ‘improvisation’ just get along?

But more seriously, Dan’s basic argument has been around for quite awhile, dating back to at least The New Thing and the moldy fig denouncements that players (Giuseppi Logan, Luther Thomas, etc.) supposedly lacking in technique were not qualified to play music considered ‘jazz.’ That screaming, caterwauling noise-based saxophone solos weren’t a legitimate facet of the music’s expression.

That said, I tend to agree that the more satisfying & engaging improvised music is made by musicians who have an understanding (though not necessarily formal training) of how their instrument works in more traditional settings. For instance, Coltrane was a far more fluent improvisor having the decades of incessant practice and performance in bop and hardbop vernaculars under his belt.

Jon makes a good point about ‘unlearning.’ I think it’s what Ellery was touching on a bit in his quotes above.

"My basic argument is that the best improvised music (or at least that I find most satisfying) is made by people who actually know how to play their instruments, that some kind of grounding in classical technique linked to practice and study of the instrument (and other performers on it)."

This is an intriguing argument though I must confess Mr. Warburton, I couldn't disagree more with this parallactic appraisal of the validity of improvising musicians. I see no palpable conclusion to a position quantifying or rendering cumulative the attributes of an improviser, wherever the source of applied technique may rest. Alas, your proposed thesis reroutes toward abject subjectivity if you plum prefer classically trained musicians.

Also. . .I'm curious to hear your thoughts per Tilbury's fragment of 'Treatise' off his Cardew Piano Solo Works disc.

Enter Herr Schaumann.

While I wouldn't refer to it as validity, I can agree with where I assume Dan's coming from: being able to use the instrument for all of its resources, to include traditional (rather than classical) techniques and uses. I have to admit that I get distracted when, say, a trumpet is used solely as a percussion instrument without so much as a hint as to why that musician is connected to it in the first place.

There are, of course, exceptions. Keith Rowe's radical reworking of the guitar as a matured, reusable source of controlled sounds almost completely detached from the instrument's conventional uses. Matt Davis also comes to mind for his treatment of the trumpet.

A recent e-mail a friend sent included the complaint that he finally had the opportunity to hear Rhodri Davies in a live setting, but left the venue frustrated due to Rhodri's refusal to sound a single "natural" tone from his instrument. The very essence of the harp was gobbled up by numerous artificial preparations and violent slapping and thumping. This probably would have annoyed me too.

So who meets the extremes in the middle? John Butcher?

Just a point: It's my understanding that Cardew was more interested in having 'Treatise' and later works undertaken by the Scratch Orchestra performed by people with visual arts backgrounds rather than musical ones. Call it 60s utopianism or what have you, but certainly a good deal of the music developed then which has since become recognized as the foundation for much contemporary eai has at least one foot in an anti-professionalist camp. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware that Sachiko M, for instance, has any particular musical training whatsoever yet she, imho, is creating some of the most beautiful music in the world. (or are we just talking about mastering "classical" instruments, not samplers or contact mics?)

Personally, I think there's room for both approaches (and more besides). If I'm currently finding more of value on the improvised rather than the composed front, it may be simply that that's where my current interests lie or that I'm listening in the wrong places. I will say that much of the new (Western) composed music that I love is of the "simpler" sort, from Feldman through Skempton, or of the unabashedly Romantic (at least I think so) attack of things like Guy's large groups.

"I have to admit that I get distracted when, say, a trumpet is used solely as a percussion instrument without so much as a hint as to why that musician is connected to it in the first place."

I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but as I've mentioned here before, I often get distracted when a trumpet is used as a trumpet, especially on record. the familiarity of the sound source pulls me out of the abstract sound world the musicians are trying to create, and I quickly lose interest.

"So who meets the extremes in the middle? John Butcher?"

yep, and Axel Dörner, those are probably the best two examples. Burkhard Stangl probably qualifies also...

Jon, you probably use ice cream as hand lotion. Seriously though, why can't the "natural" tone of an instrument reside in that abstract world?

Dorner and Stangl, great examples. Yet Dorner would be somewhat right of center. I just like that these musicians employ the full ranges of their gear, to include the farmost unconventional sounds. How much of which extreme makes it into the fore is of no matter to me, as long as I enjoy it, and that more often than not depends on the panning out of certain risks.

"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware that Sachiko M, for instance, has any particular musical training whatsoever yet she, imho, is creating some of the most beautiful music in the world."

she studied DJing at a broadcasting school, did sound effects in theater productions on open reel tape decks, met Otomo, he convinced her to buy a sampler and join Ground Zero (where she mostly just triggered preprogrammed effects, I'm not sure how much leeway she had), and the rest is history.

"why can't the "natural" tone of an instrument reside in that abstract world?"

for many people it can, I'm just talking about my taste. for me it can, in the right hands, but almost no horn players out there can pull it off, and virtually no saxophonists.

I'm going to a recording session in two weeks in Vienna with Keith Rowe, Axel and Franz Hautzinger, we'll see what emerges from that, but I doubt there'll be much recognizable trumpet in the finished product if Keith and I have our way.

"for me it can, in the right hands, but almost no horn players out there can pull it off, and virtually no saxophonists."

I figured it's just your taste, but what constitutes "pulling it off"? From your comments it sounds like you have your own set of criteria. Care to share?

nope, no criteria really, I just listen.

FWIW, Zeena P. opined a bit on this technique thing in my recent interview with her. Still got to finish transcribing the damn thing though....

the worms are out of the can (and I think one got in my pants)

the example i know best is me:

I got a cornet 6 years ago and started playing with no musical training at all (well there were a few years of adolescent church-lady piano lessons: Money ill-spent). Never stopped. I still don't know the notes.

I do know that playing for 3 hours a day for 6 years will teach a person "how to play" or at least "how to play what she wants to play." I'd never heard of Tom Djll, Greg Kelley, Franz Hautzinger, Axel Dorner, and I'd only heard a little Bill Dixon, but I had listened to a lot of "adventurous" music.

I was a listener. I'd had some training as a writer of poetry (which did as much harm as good), and I've spent over a decade trying to "unlearn" some of what I was taught by the "hot shit" poets (including the current US laureate). I was determined not to repeat that process with music: I just bought a $40 cornet from "Fairly Honest Bill's" and lo and behold I fucking loved it.

So, if "classical" or "bebop" training is a prerequisite for making one's own music, then what else must I know? gamelan? salmunori? baroque?

If I keep playing as much as I do, I'm bound to learn something. I already have. I can make sounds I never imagined before and have developed a distressing amount of "control," but as far as playing, I'm as much of a beginner as I was then, and I expect I always will be. That's as I wish it.

Of course most people fucking hate the music I make (I should know, I often play on the street), but the musicians I've played with seem to dig. And as for them, it's almost never apparent to me if they've been "trained" or not! When I left for my first US tour (2001, DIY stylee) I admit I was a bit nervous that other players would balk, but I quickly found out that at a certain level, nobody fucking cares!

Someone like Rowe, who's idiosyncratic technical approach has fully "matured," is a great example of what I mean! His techniques are sufficient to rival "classical" techniques (I won't even get into "natural") in both breadth and application, but they remain (relativel) sui generis.

I suppose "effort," "love," and "creativity" (whatever the fuck that means) are factors as well, but it's well clear to me that musicality isn't a function of training; I've know tons of trained musicians who are dead log boring. That's not because of their training, but their training sure doesn't exempt them from it. Of course, my lack of training doesn't exempt me either! Shit, the most interesting drummer I've ever met, Matthew Voga, can't even play basic rock drums!

My only teachers are my horn, my ears, and my lips. Especially my horn. It trains my face.

jean

ps:
I'm with Jon: "I just listen." Although I guess I do sometimes defy my better instincts by entering these discussions...

Forgot to mention that I think improvisation is just one way of composing. I won't say either/or or better/worse, but my intuition tells me that improvising (as freely as I can, hopefully with ever-increasing freedom) is more psychologically health for me than telling/being told what to do.

Uh, I meant healthy...

I feel like I should clarify what I wrote above in light of Mr. Foster’s comments. I don’t think any training is necessary as a pre-requisite toward making one’s OWN music. I make my own music on Tupperware™ bongos & by whistling in the shower (w/ no formal training in either, I might add). But as far as ‘satisfying’ listening experiences, I’m personally more often drawn to improvisors who approach their instruments with at least a modicum of conventionality. Especially if they’re operating in a structured arena like ‘jazz’ or ‘classical.’ Do I rule out cocking an ear toward others who don’t? Definitely not. But for me, a saxophone that sounds like a saxophone is a good thing.

And Mr. Foster, please keep defying those instincts, we’re glad to have you here.

My thanks to Michael Schaumann for reminding me that there is indeed a snatch (5'05") of Cardew's Treatise on John Tilbury's magnificent Matchless CD of of CC's piano music (MRCD29), which I recommend without reservation as one of the best (and best recorded) discs of piano music of the last decade.

You don't mean to deny though, (or do you?) jean, that there might be some people around who can (maybe against all expectations) play amazingly beautiful stuff on THEIR cornets the very first day?

I mean, the "elitism" (if that's what it is) of having-to-have-played-a-whole-lot isn't SO different from the "elitism" (if that's what it is) of having-to-have-been-trained-to-play-it-"right," is it?

Interesting discussion, and one that I would have joined earlier if I'd had time to catch up with the traffic.

I don't own the book, but I seem to remember Derek Bailey talking about instrument vs. anti-instrument improvisers in Improvisation. I also think there's some form of misunderstanding between Jon and Dan Warburton's viewpoints (although maybe not).

At the moment, in terms of "classical instruments", I consider there to be three broad areas of technique being used (I'll restrict this to wind instruments).

Traditional technique - basic tone production, finger co-ordination, basic tongueing.

Extended technique - alteration of the basic tone: growling, multiphonics, subtone - extended finger technique: usually connected with multiphonics - and extended tongueing techniques: slap tongueing, flutter tongueing etc. I'd also include preparations within this, although the vast range of possible preparations for wind/brass instruments, let alone guitar, harp, piano span across both this and the next category.

Non/anti/exta-instrumental techniques: contact miking, microphone induced feedback, percussive effects produced by hitting the instrument rather than blowing through it.

In the first two cases, the instrument one is playing is inextricably connected to the sound one produces. It may be possible for a saxophonist and a trumpeter to get high pitched whistles, but the process behind this would require very different techniques, same with multi-phonics, even white-noise hissing - there's a completely different process involved producing a hiss on trumpet compared to saxophone.

In contact miking, or feedback manipulation etc. the instrument being played becomes secondary - if I hit a brass tube with my fingernails it makes little difference whether that brass tube is a trombone or a saxophone - well maybe a bit, but not much. Similarly if I contact miked a saxophone, unless I was going to blow through it as well, I'd be playing the contact mics, not the saxophone IMO.

I do plenty of gigs where I use very little if any natural saxophone sound - this depends a lot on context, but it's an increasingly common occurence. However 90% of the sounds I produce involve me having the saxophone set up conventionally, and blowing down it with my lip on the reed - they are extensions of basic saxophone technique. I also use elk calls (although my favorite one melted over the summer :-( ) and a couple of other techniques using the horn without the mouthpiece (but still blowing down it).

I often think about trying hyper-amplification and stuff like that, but I'd imagine that it would still involve "playing the saxophone". Were I to get into contact micing, I'd probably not use the horn - there are much more interesting surfaces to drag contact mics across, just as there are much more interesting surfaces to hit.

So although most of the sounds I produce aren't natural saxophone tone, they couldn't be produced using the same technique on other instruments, therefore they are definitely sounds produced by the saxophone (and are considerably harder to produce and control than natural saxophone sound). I've a fair amount of tolerance for people who include varying degrees of extra-instrumental technique into their playing, but if it's only extra instrumental technique - nothing dependent on the instrument being played, there really isn't much point in producing those sounds on a (usually expensive) musical instrument. The resource is almost always under-used or mis-used. In that case, I'd much rather watch someone contact miking found objects, or playing something like no-input mixing board or empty sampler, which I consider to be invented instruments with their own intrinsic techniques.

No matter how far Rowe's technique has departed from standard electric guitar technique, he's still using an amplifier, cable, pickups and strings to produce much of his sound - generally the electronics and preparations are an extension either of the circuitry/magnetic fields/physical instrument. He's not dragging his guitar along to a gig, cutting all the strings of, putting it on a table then playing it with drum sticks unamplifed for half and hour. The instrument itself is still fundamental, regardless of the sounds that are made.

I'd be interested to hear whether Dan's frustration comes from a sonic or technical standpoint, and what exactly Jon considers to be recognisable trumpet or saxophone sound. I'd include a large number of extended techniques as recognisable since I've been producing and listening to them for a few years now.

Oh yeah, Joe's one line about the healthiness of playing freely as opposed to telling/being told what to do. That's pretty much my take on it. I don't mind listening to other people being told what to do, but I'd much rather play freely in response to similarly unfettered musicians than have something imposed first, either by myself or by someone else. Even a composition which you play yourself could be considered control by someone else - yourself when you wrote the composition controlling yourself when you play it. Much the same as some of the arguments against credit and saving I read a while ago (and have forgotten who by, Bakunin?).

Whether composition produces "better" or "more efficient" results or not is secondary in my mind to the fact that it reinforces social norms that free-improvisation has worked towards breaking down. Seeing improvisers run back to these methods of producing music suggests an ensuing conservatism I'm not keen on watching develop.

Nat -- excellent post with regard to technique. This was precisely the kind of thing I was driving at with an old post here called "Parallax Views", but you've stated your position more lucidly than I stated mine, and so its easier for me to see the aesthetic, even philosophical, ramifications of the discussion now. E.g., "Even a composition which you play yourself could be considered control by someone else - yourself when you wrote the composition controlling yourself when you play it." Or, as Pirandello wrote, "I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you."

Now... would it be fair to say that you do feel that improvisation is or can lead to a "higher" social order? This is not a question necessarily anticipated in Walt's original post, but I do believe a good many practicing improvisors over the course of music's history have thought of "order" in precisely these terms. This interests me very much, becuase it shifts the discussion towards defining an ethic within the aesthetic. And I do think that this parsing of "higher" is implicit in Walt's original post.

Can improvsation foster new / better, more dignifying / more egalitarian norms, in your view, or is it primarily useful as a countering influence? Is improvisation inevitably complicit in perpetuating a form of liberal humanism (terribly vague concept, but it will have to serve here)?

I, too, think Nat's discussion of technique is very acute, but I'm not too sympathetic with his later suggestions about the political uses of music. Guys like Cardew, Blitzstein and Mao thought leftwing movements were served by simple ditties, and now we hear that what really really will serve left anarchism is the totally free scritchy-scratchy.

I guess I just don't like the idea of music being subservient to this or that politics--Wagner's or Bakunin's--at all.

Nat:

"what exactly Jon considers to be recognisable trumpet or saxophone sound."

coincidentally enough, my long awaited box from Eddie/Matchless arrived today, with my copy of A Bright Nowhere. I haven't played it yet, but if you'd like, I'll jot down any moments in there that pertain to what I'm talking about.

Joe: I wouldn't say I think that improvisation could necessarily lead towards a higher social order. The biggest argument against that would be the small audience for it. However, it's one of the few human activities that approximates anarchist modes of operation most of the time; it allows egalitarian relationships between musicians of different abilities, incorporates both collectivist and individualist group dynamics etc. etc. This doesn't make all improvisers anarchists, or aligned with any form of politics necessarily, although from experience there appears to be a larger percentage of anarchists or marxists than you'd expect to find in the general population, much more in terms of sympathy than activity. What it does do is raise questions, for me at least, when "free" improvisers start trying to impose constraints on themselves and other improvisers. Aesthetic constraints that were unarguably the target of much of this music during its emergence in the '60s, and at least historically, constraints that were linked with social movements.

Again, one of the main arguments against improvised music as a social catalyst is its increasing status as a music governed mainly by aesthetics. A lot of the ideological underpinning that used o play a major part in the production of improvised music isn't a factor in the production of this music from the standpoint of many of the musicians I see playing in London. To produce one's own CDs holds little political content now - you can get software for that for free on the back of Kellogg's Cornflakes packets, aimed at aspiring 12-year-old rappers who want to make their own backing tracks. This corporate "democratisation" of music (the spread of karaoke, mp3, indies etc.) also masks a shift in power that's only just being noticed by the majors, but in many cases a shift only towards the hardware manufacturing, ISP and retail sides of their businesses. The self-reliance of improvised music may have been the first sign of that, but it's no threat to corporations now compared to freely available P2P software. I've made this point before elsewhere, but I consider improvised music to be almost entirely resilient to both corporatisation and a retreat into academia, as has happened with punk, "world music" from even the remotest regions and most "new music" respectively (hereby follow plenty of counter-examples). There are performers on the edges of all three of those loose categories, and also electronica, but that seems to indicate an increase in popularity and incorporation/combination with other genres, rather than "popularisation" in the usual sense. In other words, those doing improvised music that sounds more like edgy electronica, are more likely to have come from an electronica background than an improvised music background (come to think of it, who _does_ come from an improvised music background anyway?)

Walt: I'm not really a fan of what I've heard of Cardew's later works. Don't know Blitzstein or much Maoist music. The idea of music as subservient to politics, or used in any purely functional role is something that sent me towards improvised music in the first place - a spate of gigs doing background music in restaurants when I was 17 was enough to put me off ever doing that again. Again, what I consider to be one of the strengths of improvised music that its so difficult to put into that role. MIMEO's gig at the Serpentine was in an odd way the closest I've seen to this happening - most of the audience using it as a background to their conversations or alcohol consumption, even shouting over the loud bits in good old English pub goer fashion.

Jon, I doubt you'll like Conditions all that much, since it leans much more towards "normal" playing technique than the 9! CD, but if anything particularly provokes a response, good or bad, I'd be interested to hear it. There's been a postal strike here which might be why your box took longer than expected to arrive.

"Jon, I doubt you'll like Conditions all that much, since it leans much more towards "normal" playing technique than the 9! CD, but if anything particularly provokes a response, good or bad, I'd be interested to hear it."

yeah, you're right, I played it in the interim since I posted that. I will say that I like it more than most records I hear which veer in that direction, FWIW.

"There's been a postal strike here which might be why your box took longer than expected to arrive."

yeah, I'm aware. you'll be amused to know that Phil Durrant and Matt Davis both wrote me more than once, wondering why their boxes of CDs from me hadn't yet arrived, totally oblivious that there was a strike on, and there was something like a billion pieces of mail backed up at UK post offices (I got that number from Mark Wastell, dunno if it's right).

I don't think music "serves" anything. My comment about it being "psychologically healthy" was really just about me. I love listening to composed music (and I do compose solely for myself - my compositions are called Dan Reynolds and all take place in the weeks leading up to the performance/recording).

Can "anarchy-like" conditions present in free music affect the "social order?" Nah, prolly not, but they can affect ME. Playing has made me a better person. The end.

I *do* think someone could pick up a cornet and sound awesome their first try! Some of my playing partners thought I sounded pretty good back then, which is why I got to play with much more experienced players. That's what I mean by still being a beginner: while I'm capable of producing more and more diverse sounds, they don't mean jack to me if I haven't any ideas. The more I play, the better I get (on my instrument) not necessarily at making music.

"It's a lot like life..."

joel

ps: played last night with Chulki and Joonyong of the Seoul Frequency QUartet (laptops) and playing tomorrow night at Park Chang-soo's houseconcert with Alfred 23 Harth (Heart/Po$ter duo cdr upcoming on rasbliutto)

on a related note, Otomo told me when he was here recently that Alfred 23 Harth is going to be the new saxophonist in the ONJQ for shows in Japan, and Mats Gustafsson will do the European shows, thought that was interesting...

Yeah, and A23H is pretty positive about it, too! I've never heard that group (yeah, I know, they rule) but I'm sure Alfred will tear it up. He's fully recovered (so it seems) from his neck problem and is playing like a bad bad man.

Jeff

Very quiet in this thread lately. More comments please.