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Thursday, July 16, 2015

Solo Gig: FUBAR to the Rescue



FUBAR to the Rescue




By an absurd stretch of the imagination, musical notes and sounds could seem a little like soldiers. Some of them, or so me groups of them, are destined to command (or to win medals), while the vast majority draw the yeoman's duties. Millions of flatted seventh chords chunking through blues vamps; whole formations of orchestral passages discharged rank and file, falling upwards by the wayside like so many spent cartridges.

 
Unlike soldiers though, disobedient or wrong notes need not always face discipline. (Drunk C major ends up in the brig.) The "wrong" note is usually an indifferent or inattentive sound. "My best riffs" solos. Lack of diligence of some sort on the part of the musician. I'm speaking from experience here, by the way. 

 
In practice, certain "wrong" notes can turn out to be inadvertently "right" in a way of discovery. Mistakes as keys to innovation.
The best mistakes occur suddenly, by accident, and always beyond the player's control. Intentional mistake making is a performance technique which can be funny and developmental, but only real dams can be true show-stoppers.
 
 
(Note: For some reason, musical notes don't seem very much like sailors, or the coast guard. Or merchant marines either; get outta here with your merchant marines.)

Dull similes notwithstanding; inattentive playing is one mistake that really is detrimental, especially in improvising. Happens all the time with ensembles, but it's even more likely during solo playing. The music runs into some interesting area and I sort of settle in there with it. 

 
Then I begin to notice that I've been kind of a long time in this same area, and suddenly it's alarmingly uninteresting. I've taken much too long to notice that the only thing interesting about this area is that it's quicksand.

 
 
In fact there's another, somewhat arcane aspect of this inattention business in free improvisation. It's almost syndromic: there's some point in the playing when everybody looks around and realizes that we're out here in some beautiful, seriously uncharted territory. No idea how we got there, of course; we weren't thinking about it while we were playing it.

 
 
Partial amnesia when you get back from the stargate jungle. Hallmark of collective musical automatism, as in psychoanalytical or surrealist automatism. This is the superior inattention. Completely different deal than mere situational distraction, for it is evidence of paying complete attention in the sonic elsewhere. 'Blank-face music.' It's good for you, too. One of those balancing things, like meditation or something. Psychic fitness workout; trance, what-have-you.


Paintings by Joe Black
 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
24.- Signal Intelligence



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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