Thursday, July 2, 2015

Solo gig: Signal Intelligence



Signal Intelligence



Flags are expressive beings, not because of what they happen to represent, but because on the whims of a breeze they can reveal or conceal their meanings. A flag without wind is an ambiguous image, unfulfilled perhaps, since what it symbolizes isn't being expressed completely. (I speculate here, but a pennant without a breeze might be unhappy.)


 
This questionable analogy reminds me of playing when nothing's happening with the sounds. No wind. The prodigal muse has left the room, and the playing has entered a doldrum.

 

Especially in performance, one way out of this situation is to stop playing and make idle conversation instead.
(Note: for some reason, 'railroad crossing safety' seems a good topic for stalled improvisation.)



 
Back to flags, I particularly admire those maritime signal flags, ingeniously designed to be readable even when hanging limp. But that's only partly why signal flags are the coolest of all, and why they have something to do with music making.
 


Not only are they independent of wind, but unlike other types of flags, they are parts of a mutable language. Their various designs are elements of a code, a collective message which at any moment is likely to be changing, as in playing.


 
Except for that absent breeze. Like flags, I guess, you have to be patient, but ready to move at the slightest stir. Or, unlike flags, you can just make the wind yourself; try different things
until something emerges.


In any event, you won't make much music if you get run over by a train.

Paintings by Mark Tobey
 Dave Williams


SOLO GIG


01.- CALL IT ANYTHING YOU WANT 
02.- CONCERNING ACCIDENTS 
10.- WHEN IT'S OUT OF OUR HANDS
11.- GLAD WE DIDN'T ORDER THE SPECIAL
12.- WORKING JUNG'S RIFF
13.- KNOW THE ENEMY
14.- THE MUTABLE FORM 
15.- CONCERNING INMORTALITY
16.- MACH NUMBERS
17.- CONDITIONALITIES OF QUIETUDE
18.- THEN AND NOW
19.- WHY NOT SNEEZE
20.- WE PASSED JUPITER and THEN HEADED NORTH
21.- PRODUCT PLACEMENT 
22.- COMING UNDER FIRE
23.- LONGEVITY OF THE UNPREDICTABLE



Based in a noted musician's decades of personal experiences, his book Solo Gig: Essential Curiosities in Musical Free Improvisation (CreateSpace  Independent Publishing Platform, 2011) examines some crucial and  far-reaching aspects of musical free  improvisation, with particular  regard to live performances.  In this  illustrated collection of  narrative essays, the author looks both into  and from inside this  uniquely paradoxical, challenging and rewarding way  of making music,  within the context of an inherently eccentric milieu. 

Available here. (U.S.A.) (Europe)



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