I want to take this blog to express my satisfaction with how well we did as a class on Tuesday. We rocked and that is no understatement. The first piece was incredible, Ben was able to segregate the sounds and conduct the flow of the piece in a way that let everyone shine through the music. Even though there were like 6 guitars, a bass and drum set, the keyboard, saxes, theramin, and the bells Elliot played all had vital roles in the music and I thought the odd sounds the combination of instruments made was great. The individual group performances were spectacular too. Even though the John Fox co. had technical difficulties they still pulled off their set in exciting fashion as we all knew they would. I was very impressed with Sean and Grayson’s piece; the two of them really played well and got a great sound, I really enjoyed playing the bass to back them up. The final game we played came out perfect, though I did not expect the “Speed” genre to come up at the end, but isn’t that the heart of improve, uncertainty? I have to say we really have come along way as a class, I know I am proud, and I think everyone else should be as well. Cheers!

One genre of music I often turned away from as a musician is rap. A few of my close friends are big hip hop fans and they are always listening to it. For a while it annoyed me, but then I started to pay attention to the music itself along with the poetry, and true hip hop really takes a lot of talent to pull off, especially free-styling. I have a hard time putting sentences together let alone stringing them together in a coherent rhyming flow. My friends Nate Petersen and Charlie Creagh have the ability to do this and it really amazes me how fast they can rhyme words off the top of their heads. After countless free-style jams in my room, which is my apartment’s jam room, I decided to help The Blanket Plan, Nate’s hip hop group, by jumping on the Bass. The music (Hip Hop) is so easy to get into and dance to. I am not a dancer by any stretch and while I play the Bass in The Blanket Plan, I jump around and really get into it. We played in the 2008 battle of the bands and came in second place which was cool, but disappointing at the same time. We thought it would be cool to improvise the last song in the finals. I laid down a bass line, Matt Duddy who played guitar came in, and Nate free styled an entire song on the spot, and it sounded pretty good. However the other band had a solid last tune, and a pretty ripping guitarist which elevated them to the victory. I am glad to finally be able to accept and actually enjoy hip hop, after many years of simply turning my noise to it for no reason.

So I just got a new guitar, a Koa Fender Stratocaster. It is amazing how much more one plays music when one has a new toy. I felt it was time for a new guitar because I have been bored with my other ones lately. Either way I am happy with my purchase, now I want to talk about TONE. One thing I often over obsess about is my search for the perfect guitar tone, I think I have a pretty good sound now, but there are so many possibilities when it comes to effects. Right now I have two Tube simulating overdrive pedals, an Ibanez TS-9 Tubescreamer, and a Maxon OD-808 Overdrive pedal. To pair with my distortion pedals is what I call my secret weapon, it is a little Guyatone compressor/sustainer. The beauty of these three pedals combined is the rich, smooth and full distortion tone that sustains for days, which together they produce. Playing through a tube amp with a little reverb thickens the tone even more. I read a lot of reviews for tubescreamers that present a world of praise, however there are always a few that say that there isn’t enough distortion. I found that if you combine them with the sustainer pedal, there is no need for any more crunch, but I am not one to play metal or hard rock. I feel that tone has such an important role in guitar playing. Mine is very similar to other guitarists tone, but unique in other ways; finding a tone that fits ones playing style often enhances the ability to sound even better, than with your ordinary amp distortion. I plan on continuing my search for the perfect tone, I would like to try a VooDoo lab sparkle drive pedal, that combines a clean signal and a distortion signal to create a smooth tone. Echo and delay effects also add color, and if anything sometimes help cover up unwanted notes, I know I am thankful for that on occasion. One pedal I think that has staying power above all is the Dunlop Crybaby Wah Wah pedal, this pedal offers one the ability to make their guitar literally cry, even scream or make a rhythmic chord progression funky. Anyways that’s it for my rant on tone.

I was reading one of Nate’s blogs and picked up on a very important concept he introduces in the world of improve, the concept is space. For a musical group to work well, there needs to be space for players to build around within the music. This space is the room to build inspiration and take the music to a new level, by feeding off one another. I have had the fortune of playing in two groups that embodied this concept to the fullest. The first being my high school band, Villa. We were a three piece acoustic electric jam band which seemed to extend each song we played well beyond its limits, to us this was a good thing and it was fun. We each had certain roles within the band that we fulfilled to make to outcome of the music exciting and different each time we played. We defiantly played off each other pretty well, but I remember not having the ability I have now to listen more closely to what others are playing. I often wonder what it would sound like now if we had continued as a band. The next band that I found space to breathe in was my most recent and successful band, the Pond Duck Trio. We as a band we similar to my high school band, however the music we played was far beyond anything that Villa touched upon in technicality. However there was even more room to move within the music, and I loved it. Nate and Graham had the great ability to provide the rhythmic backing at the core of the songs, but then turn around and stretch the improvisation in radical ways. We as a band embraced dissonance and were not afraid to include sour notes to add color. However we would turn around and resolve the dissonance and sour notes to complete what I saw as coming full circle in the jam. Often I hear jam bands that certainly jam well, but are so limited in their musical color. One in particular is the band Strangefolk. In high school these guys rocked my socks, but they made a transition as a band, their original lead singer/rhythm guitarist left the group, and was replaced by a goon. Since the band’s transition they play the same songs at every show and restrict many of their jams to four chord parts. Their music is boring because the only person who is improvising in the group is the lead guitarist, the rest of the four members play the same four chords over and over again, sometimes for fifteen minutes or more. This is not always bad, The Grateful Dead did this. However they did it in a different way. There was space in their music, an uncertainty that kept the audience intrigued. No one ever really knew if Jerry, Phil, Bobby, Bill or Mickey were going to branch off and do something unexpected. With Strangefolk it is almost certain that one can expect the same four chords over and over again, even though John Trafton is an incredible guitarist. So to bring this full-circle, space in a group is fundamental to create new and unique sounds.

Improv class

I have certainly learned a lot from all the different music in class. There are a wide range of musical styles and ideas that just seem to flourish in a class like this. Much like electro-acoustic class, I have been introduced to new ways of thinking about music. Chaos is a genre in these two classes that fascinates me the most. Students in music classes traditionally are taught about structure, music theory, and rhythm. Chaos contains all these facets of music, but it stretches them to uncertain boundaries that in many cases can not be duplicated again. I think that uncertainty is at the heart of improvising. Improv means to make it up on the spot; someone might have an idea of what the outcome might be, however a performer never knows until the moment has passed and the music is played. I embrace uncertainty in life, living in the moment allows one to enjoy it and not worry about the past or future (even though it is good to think these things when necessary). I feel that after this class I will be more apt to let go and not be restricted by structure; if I hit a wrong note in a song I will embrace it and work with the note rather than try to fix it by returning to tones that bind one to a particular scale. I feel that my performances last week with the funk group, and the one with Ben, Graham, and Nate are examples of both these styles. The funk group was restricted to a key, and when a wrong note was played it was abrupt and obviously not wanted. I feel that with more practice a poor performance could have been avoided because the four people in the group are great musicians. It also could have been better had we embraced the wrong notes and played off each other more. The other major problem was tuning. I should have tuned the guitars before class to the sax; they were not in tune with one another. However this is all in hein-sight, I should be living in the moment. My other performance was in the moment, with no restrictions, full of uncertainty. I have no idea how it sounded now, but I think we accomplished what we wanted to. In music it is uncertain how a performance will go, that is why I like to embrace the good and the bad to learn from both.

Currently

Over the last year I have seen a decline in my improvising because I have been focusing on more structure. I feel that there is a fine line between structure and improv but there is a lot in between the two as well. I find that my favorite music is the kind that uses both. That is probably why I like the band Phish so much. They certainly improvised a lot, however they composed very structured music to base their improv on. Today in class one of my groups will be playing free jazz, which completely turns on the ideals of structure, so it will be interesting to drop all the chains that bind music in structure. I would also like to say that the second groups performance last week was excellent. I think that the combination of sounds in the performance really made it a great piece.

The Body in Music

As I was reading Sync or Swarm by David Borgo, I came across the passage The Body in Music. I never really stop to think about my body and what its doing while I play. However there is so much going on that we don't even think about. So many things go on around us that extend our expirence much further. Emotions have a major impact on improvisation, and emotions can be sparked from anything, a sight, a color, a smell, all have an impact on what is happening. Sometimes when I play I don't realize that a color I see in the lights might create a feeling that directly influences the playing. The body has such a major impact. The ability to use hand eye coordination, and muscle memory in playing is one that is second nature, we don't think about what happens on the inside when music is created, but our bodies influence it so much. Earlier this year I broke my pinky on my left hand, and I was unable to play guitar in my normal manner for months. I had to play through the pain however, because I had a very important concert to prepare for. After my pinky got better, it healed in a way that helped my guitar playing. I was lucky, but I might not have been. Our body is so important to music, and sometimes that is forgotten.

Using our mind with our body is important. As David Borgo explains in a quote of Wayne Bowman, "...the body is in the mind. Mind is rendered possible by bodily sensations and actions, from whose patterns it emerges and upon which it relies for whatever intellectual prowess it can claim. At the same time, the mind is in the body, in the sense that mind is coextensive with the bodies neutral pathwasy and cognitive templates they comprise."(42). In short, the mind influences the body, and vis versa. Both must be used to perform, making the playing of music a total physical expirence.

Improvisation has a special place in my heart. Since I was a young boy I have always been fascinated with sound, and how it can be manipulated to be spontaneous. My first experience with improve probably stretches back to the second grade. I was involved in a play called Rosie… something or other, and I had a solo to sing in a song. The song was called “One was Johnny” and while I sang I had to hold up signs with numbers on them as I counted down to one. However, bad luck struck when I dropped the signs backstage. They spilled into disarray all across the floor. There was nothing I could do, and there was no time to pick them up because I had to be on stage. I thought fast and “improvised” for the first time. It might seem rather simple, but at the time I was rather proud of myself. In place of the paper signs, I used my hands o count down the ten numbers in the song. It might have been fate or just coincidence, but since then I have been directly involved with improv whether it be in music, or theatre.

Some people are slaves to sheet music, without the ability, or reason for that matter to wander into a world of improvisation in music. I however am the opposite. While I can read and write (not well) in theory terms, I am much happier improvising. I sang in my school’s chorus, and played in the band, beginning in the fifth grade. I often found my self spacing out and humming new melodies in my head as other people were playing or singing. I will certainly say that I was a space case most of the time, but I always wanted more from the music. I don’t like to be restricted. Singing came naturally to me as a child and I was quite good at it. I had and still have a good sense of pitch; although not perfect I’d say I’m close. While I still have a good ear, my vocal abilities left me at age 13 when I hit puberty.

I could still sing, but was no longer the singer I was when I was younger. So I had to look elsewhere in music for things to do. My mother told me she always wanted one of her sons to play the guitar. Apparently I was the one. So she bought me a five dollar shitty acoustic guitar at a lawn sale in Greenville Maine. I picked it up a few times, strummed it and pretended to play songs on it. I really liked it. So about the same time I picked up the Baritone horn in fifth grade I also picked up the guitar. My ability in Band never really went anywhere after that, I was too busy picking. So then the next step; guitar lessons, and once again restrictions. Looking back on it, the lessons I took in fifth and sixth grade made me the musician I am today, but at the time I hated them. I didn't want to play Ring around the Rosie, or Mary Had a Little Lamb, I wanted more. So when my parents made me set aside time to practice the guitar, I would just doodle and do my own thing. I played the doors, and Nirvana, but little from "Mel Bay's Intro to Guitar". When it came to lesson time, I habitually made a fool out of myself because I sucked at playing the songs I was assigned. After two years I quit and began my own journey, and discovered the one thing every parent hates, Electric guitars, amps, and distortion. I played along with Led Zeppelin CDs and AC/DC cds for hours. Between seventh grade and eleventh grade I probably played five hours a day when I could. In Ninth grade I discovered two things that altered my playing forever: Jam bands and Marijuana. Since ninth grade I have played in four jam bands, and gained some success in two of them. My skill at improvising on guitar at this point in time is at a professional level and I attribute it to my ability to listen above all. I believe that the key to improv is the skill to listen to those you play with, and react. That is a little about my life in the world of Improv, I will discuss the elements, and not myself in blogs to come.