What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Joseph K]

Are there any tips you can pass on for licks?

For what purpose/use? Are you interested in learning jazz?

Really though, while I've just spent about an hour writing two iterations of the Take the A Train A section, and I've just played through it, I am not sure whether this will get into my playing - I mean, there is nothing more unnatural trying to shoe-horn in something you've written down. So, I guess the aim is to cultivate a process of writing so things come out naturally without deliberation. Some of it sounds better than other bits; four-note enclosures sound more chromatic than two-note ones because there are more notes and tension there till it gets resolved. Things like enclosures and encirclements and chromatic approach notes and other endless ways of embellishing triads and fourth-chords are found throughout the canon, whether that's jazz or classical. So Dave, my advice is to check out some Mozart and Bach, Beethoven and Charlie Parker.

So I guess my advice for licks is: don't play them! They're not really improvisatory. Ok, I'll admit I tend to reuse bits of ideas - like small cells - but you want to cultivate the idea of variation to such an extent that things don't sound like licks.

[Serial_Apologist]

Are there any tips you can pass on for licks?

[Dave2002]

For what purpose/use? Are you interested in learning jazz?

So I guess my advice for licks is: don't play them! They're not really improvisatory. Ok, I'll admit I tend to reuse bits of ideas - like small cells - but you want to cultivate the idea of variation to such an extent that things don't sound like licks.

I'd like to be able to play more jazz, or at least understand some of it. I do sometimes listen to jazz, even if that's not obvious what from what I post here.

In my past I've even heard some of the jazz greats, and also some rather wayout people. Ellington and Oscar Petersson spring to mind, as also Orphy Robinson, Jerry Mulligan and some others. I'm sure I head Bill le Sage at least once, and Roland Kirk was another, as well as Johny Dankworth. I haven't been to any jazz events for a while. I used to go to pubs quite a lot where jazz featured, as one of my friends was (and still is) keen on jazz and live music, but we've not been out like that for a while.

So yes - I"m interested, but it's not going to be a big thing.

I found this a few days ago - https://musescore.com/user/3541/scores/1603616 and there are quite a few links to jazz licks if one looks - such as https://musescore.com/user/55576/scores/3936071 and https://musescore.com/user/47458/scores/1285701

I have limited understanding of these, though, which is why I asked.

[Richard Barrett]

there is nothing more unnatural trying to shoe-horn in something you've written down. So, I guess the aim is to cultivate a process of writing so things come out naturally without deliberation.

That reminds me tangentially of Derek Bailey's habit of writing down things that happened "by accident" in a performance so that he could then practise them and make them a seamlessly integrated component of his vocabulary. I'm sure this applies to jazz also, but it seems to me that practising improvisatory music is in a certain sense the opposite of practising classical music, in that practising a piece by Mozart you're approaching a more or less consistent interpretation, while practising improvisation you want to have the maximum flexibility to go in whatever direction you spontaneously decide on at any time. Maybe it could be said that licks are a way of packaging materials so that there are fewer elements to remember to keep in the air at once, but in themselves they're a stage on the way to a greater fluency, which I think is equivalent to what you're saying. Maybe though, looking at the history of jazz, one could see the whole harmonic approach you describe as also a stage on the way to a fluency that's only possible when the harmonic framework is removed! (Or at least when it's being shaped by the improvisation rather than shaping it).

[Joseph K]

That reminds me tangentially of Derek Bailey's habit of writing down things that happened "by accident" in a performance so that he could then practise them and make them a seamlessly integrated component of his vocabulary. I'm sure this applies to jazz also, but it seems to me that practising improvisatory music is in a certain sense the opposite of practising classical music, in that practising a piece by Mozart you're approaching a more or less consistent interpretation, while practising improvisation you want to have the maximum flexibility to go in whatever direction you spontaneously decide on at any time. Maybe it could be said that licks are a way of packaging materials so that there are fewer elements to remember to keep in the air at once, but in themselves they're a stage on the way to a greater fluency, which I think is equivalent to what you're saying. Maybe though, looking at the history of jazz, one could see the whole harmonic approach you describe as also a stage on the way to a fluency that's only possible when the harmonic framework is removed! (Or at least when it's being shaped by the improvisation rather than shaping it).

At some point soon I'll buy Bailey's book about improvisation (it was recommended to me by Joel Bell).

It's interesting that you say he would write down ideas he came across while improvising, because I was recently pondering doing that with respect to the video of Billie's Bounce I posted, since there are a few things that took me by surprise, ideas that fit the chord changes well and sound good, but which I had never played or practised before. However, I am not sure if I'd like to turn them into my own clichés... (so my thought process goes) but on the other hand it would be good to write it down to analyse it and add it to my conscious vocabulary.

[Richard Barrett]

At some point soon I'll buy Bailey's book about improvisation

That is essential reading IMO. And as you probably know it isn't just about free improvisation, although what DB has to say on that subject is probably the most valuable stuff anyone's ever written about it, that I've seen anyway. I think the idea of writing down the accidents was exactly to exclude clichés, in the sense of being consciously aware of one's material to the greatest extent possible, rather than the accidents becoming unconscious habits. In other words the purpose of writing down and practising them was as much directed towards not using them as towards using them!

[Dave2002]

Currently playing around with a short hymn like piece. I wonder if I can use it to expand into a short set of variations. For the moment I'm deliberately using diatonic harmonies, but that may change. Very much WIP, and may go nowhere, but it's an interesting experimental/experiential/learning experience. Current sonorities are for strings, though I tried winds as well, which didn't sound great. I may try a few more instrumental variations.

[Serial_Apologist]

That is essential reading IMO. And as you probably know it isn't just about free improvisation, although what DB has to say on that subject is probably the most valuable stuff anyone's ever written about it, that I've seen anyway. I think the idea of writing down the accidents was exactly to exclude clichés, in the sense of being consciously aware of one's material to the greatest extent possible, rather than the accidents becoming unconscious habits. In other words the purpose of writing down and practising them was as much directed towards not using them as towards using them!

Keith Tippett had interesting things to say on this subject, claming that prior to sitting down to perform one of his solo concerts before an audience, he would empty his mind of all thought and musical imagery, and "know" when the moment to proceed had arrived by the way his hands would be attracted to a certain part of the keyboard, which would then be his starting point. What was always clear was that you always knew what was coming, in a general sense, because you instantly recognised his idiomatic approach. The salient issue would seem to lie in an inborn capacity to generate a continuous flow and, in his words, "remove the listener from chronological time". Where this happened one could indeed lose all track of how long one had been listening, and be amazed that half an hour had passed in what subjectively had seemed like ten minutes. While outlining the ideal conditions for himself, he also admitted that circumstances were not always propitious - a poor instrument, inattentive audience - on one occasion pictures of tortured children in an exhibition that happened to occupy the space where he was expected to play: he asked for them to be taken down. But it could be the result of fatigue, or indigestion. As such he would then have to fall back on that same vocabulary, formulated over the years of practice and performing, that was effectively synonymous with his technique. He would say that, unlike other improvisers - and I would say he had Derek Bailey in mind - he himself made no distinction between improvisation and composition: the latter was his own improvising written down.

This struck me as comparable in some ways with the saxophonist Trevor Watts, inasmuch that in Keith's music one could hear all the stuff he'd done and gone through throughout his musical lifetime. In Trevor's case ideas would come in collective improvisations alongside colleagues, over a number of years, in a process of building up a group musical identity. Ideas would arise spontaneously in the process of jamming. How, I asked, did he arrive at ideas that would become the fixed materials he used to carry a piece by the band he ran at various stages, Moiré Music, through from start to finish? Trevor said that he would as much as possible record his improvised sessions, and, if he found some idea, maybe even just a motif or passing rhythmic configuration, that had come up "unbidden" and probably unnoticed at the time, and that he liked, he would use it. In this way musical evolution could in broader terms be generated within a community of co-operating musicians, which struck me as one possible way to get away from the lonely image of the composer in his or her garret, battling against deadlines with intractable materials or mental processes.

But to finish, if I may, with an amusing anecdote. One of the few really good jazz violinists from this country, I feel, is Graham Clark, who works mostly in and around the Derby/Manchester/Liverpool region these days. He spent several years with one of the last editions of Daevid Allen's Gong - but that's for another time, maybe... probably not... Graham has done a lot of free improvisation alongside leading musicians, Keith Tippett included. One of those I remember his frequently playing alongside was Andy Sheppard. A few years ago I managed to catch up with Graham at one of the annual Ealing open air jazz festivals, where he was participating in a biggish jazz-rock fusion group. He told me how much he missed all those once plentiful opportunities to work with Andy, now that he (Andy) was spending much of his time in Norway, recording for ECM etc. "I did feel his playing became rather cliché-ridden, though", I said. "Yes", Graham replied, "BUT HEY - WHAT GREAT CLICHES!"

[Richard Barrett]

He would say that, unlike other improvisers - and I would say he had Derek Bailey in mind - he himself made no distinction between improvisation and composition: the latter was his own improvising written down.

There are many shades of opinion on this subject. As I've probably said before, I think of the word "composition" as denoting any kind of musical creation, whatever strategies are used, and "improvisation" as denoting a method of composition characterised by spontaneity, which may be used in a more or less pure form, or in combination with other methods. Arriving at this way of looking at things, around 2002 and certainly very much influenced by the music and thinking of Evan Parker, was a liberation for me, since I'd been pursuing improvisation and notated music in parallel at that time with a strong feeling that there existed a deep relationship between them which I hadn't yet grasped. So I judge its success in empirical terms: in having encouraged me to take musical directions I wouldn't otherwise have thought of but which (on my own terms at least) have been and still are fruitful. I think the antipathy towards composition evinced by Derek and others has two principal causes. Firstly, it's always been difficult for many people invested in notated composition to "get" free improvisation since they tend to understand this method as somehow illegitimate compared to their own. I remember performing an improvised piece with two colleagues (one of whom was familiar to me while I had never even heard the other before) for the participants in a composition course in Austria, and one of the students coming up all impressed at the end and saying "that was great, it sounded really composed!" - to which my reply was that it was "really composed", just not in the way you're familiar with. Secondly, when free improvisation started in the 1960s, players would often be asked by composers to perform their experimental works in such a way that the players' input to the result was at least as significant as the composer's, yet the latter always received most of the credit, because most composers at that time - with a few exceptions like Cardew and Evangelisti - weren't prepared to take the logical step of becoming improvising performers themselves and letting go of the need to always be the headliner.

[Dave2002]

There are many shades of opinion on this subject. As I've probably said before, I think of the word "composition" as denoting any kind of musical creation, whatever strategies are used, and "improvisation" as denoting a method of composition characterised by spontaneity, which may be used in a more or less pure form, or in combination with other methods.

Seems reasonable to me.

Currently I'm just experimenting with harmony - since I discovered that using musescore I can quite easily create harmonic sequences using chord notation [ctrl-k - or cmd-k for Macs - followed by an encoding for the chord **], and then preview them - by enabling "Realize Chord Symbols and playing the results ...". Then the challenge is to use the harmonic outlines to create something else. I am not assuming anything like classical sequences.

Is this sort of thing actually taught in schools with tools such as Sibelius? One of my teacher friends may have been a bit of a pioneer in this, but I suspect that few music teachers embraced technology including notation software and DAWs, and managed to impart any of their enthusiasm to students. Some may have had success though, but since music seems to have been generally downgraded as a school subject, I doubt that many students are learning in this way.

** https://musescore.org/en/handbook/ch...-symbol-syntax

[BBMmk2]

Recently I’ve been asked by a friend in the south of France to arrange three carols for a brass ensemble. Just finished the first, now onto No.2!

[Joseph K]

Take the A Train

[Joseph K]

Been shedding the tune Bluesette quite a bit but it's proving a bit intractable. It's a 3/4 tune for those who don't know - and I practice it with the metronome only on the second beat - it's difficult. I feel that I'm going to have to compose on paper about a dozen or more choruses of this so I develop some real vocabulary because whatever my brain/fingers produce after practising continuous scale and arpeggio exercises just isn't cutting it.

[Joseph K]

Hmm seems like I'm hogging this thread but oh well. Here's a recent attempt at Bluesette:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAuSJkOR14Q

... I think there are some nice ideas some of which however could have been turned into sequences, so I think what I'll do is write down some of what I played except turn the good ideas into sequences. It's quite a common response for me to hear something I've played that I like and think that could have been a sequence, rather than being discarded as it were...

[Suffolkcoastal]

Completed a Piano Quintet last week, quite contrapuntal in places. Have added it to my musescore collection, can't believe how many pieces I've composed, edited, revised and added extra music for this year. Will all probably never be performed in public