Week Four: 14/10/14

Improvisation

In the session today, we explored 'improvisation'. The thought of improvisation instantly makes me connect it to drama and how we explore characters and situations through an 'on the spot' performance. However using it through music is also important and can help the musician to become more creative and imaginative with their music. The three main points to think about when preparing for improvisation is to firstly;
have a collective goal, central/general ideas,
have a pre-discussed set of rules,

allow space for the improvisation to happen.
Improvisation is important as it gives the musician the chance to personalise their music. It gives them the opportunity to display thoughts and feelings of the time.

We then used these in action and began an activity which would help us to feel comfortable with the use of improvisation and understand it better. The activity involved us laid in a relaxed position with our backs on the floor, touching shoulders with the people next to you sot that you are connected. As you exhale, create a sound in any pitch. Sounds commonly used where; Ah, Mo, Me, La, Sh, Zz and Mm.

The activity gave us a clearer understanding of improvisation and how the group could connect and communicate without making a physical connection. Even when not planning the performance the group aligned and became in tune with each other. This was through communication with one another and how the brain is connected through music. It was clear to see who had the most musicality in the group and who struggled as those who tended to come in with each other through timing and pitch found it easy to to improvise once a main sound had been found. As the activity carried on it then shown how much people were trying to use their natural skill of harmonising trying to create music over the top of others. A huge part of improvisation.

Improvisation was originally made through jazz musicians who wanted to experiment with their music, to create something new. 'The revolution of improvising in the western world came through jazz. Jazz wasn’t only revolt, but also an expression for a desire to live and create beauty at the same moment.' (http://bergmark.org/why.html)

What I found the most interesting about the history of improvisation was the fact that it was swayed mainly from black musicians, they wanted to embrace the culture and freedom of their race which was mainly the issue in the 1960's when this was usually found. 'To the same degree that self-respect increased, the respect for the classical music culture was given up. The choice of instruments often became exotic and experimental, a.o. things many used toy instruments.' (http://bergmark.org/why.html)

Improvisation is closely linked to the traditional use of 'scatting', when looking at examples of improvisation I found it interesting as to how easy these musicians found it, firstly looking at the famous Ella Fitzgerald (1969):

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In this piece I found that she already had a prepared structure as she sung the blues because of this it gave her the initial overall idea of what she was going to do, she often used the instruments as a base and mimicked their sounds keeping this in mind she would then mess around with the vocals and vary her pitch and tempo then return to the original structure.

This is not unfamiliar with improvisation as musicians like to know a structure to base their piece on, which gives them more ideas as the improvisation progresses. Artists tend to draw on their past experiences whether it be vocally or through movement to create improvisation, they mix all of their knowledge together to create something that has been heard but not heard before. Long held notes, repeated sounds, constant communication and signals to one another are commonly found within an artists creative piece. Which makes us question whether it is actually improvisation or not? Improvisation is a dialogue.

When putting improvisation into practice we used a stimuli of a storm. This gave us a rough idea of how we were going to create this. Our ideas generated from the weather that is created in a storm, this gave us the perfect opportunity to use instruments such as shakers, chimes/bells and drums to create the chaos of a storm.

I felt as though it was easy to create this piece, especially with the given stimuli as it gave you a starting point. However if this included vocals I feel as though this would have been a lot more of a struggle.

After experimenting with our own piece, we then discussed the use of chance music. Personally I thought this would have been around the same thing as improvisation, chancing what you do with music. However, chance music has an element of pre-planning whereas improvisation has an idea. Chance could be simply done by rolling a dice to determine what comes next within a piece. John Cage – a performer who is famous for his chance music experimented with this procedure, he done this by using an ancient Chinese book called 'I-ching'. His most famous performance is the 4'33" piece:

this performance is based on silence and only sounds from the audience. For example. Sniffing, coughing, and rustling. The audience almost where the performers without knowing. The book used dictated this abstract piece, the strange 'music' was disorganised and messy like. I found it overwhelming how someone could use nothing and be famous for something he regards as 'music'. Chance music is not so dissimilar to improvisation although the piece's contrast in so many ways.

What is improvisation and why improvise? [online]. (2014). Available from: <http://bergmark.org/why.html>. [Accessed 21/10/2014].

diegodobini2 (2012). Ella Fitzgerald : One note Samba (scat singing) 1969. [online]. Available from:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbL9vr4Q2LU>. [Accessed 25/12/2014].