Clarinet Improv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEH5evQDffQ

I do not normally care for jazzy clarinets, but this one was rather nifty. I care for a more classical sound, but eh, it was nice. This relates to the improvising portion of our Drum Circle.

Maroon 5 Jam Session

First of all, Maroon 5 is my favorite band ever. This is a short clip of them at the very beginning of a 24-hour live session that they did for Coca-Cola. I chose to share this video because even though they aren't necessarily improvising, they are demonstrating parts of their process for creating music, which I think is really cool.

Immovable Do

I mentioned this in one of my comments, but I wanted to expand on this.  So as you can assume from the title, this piece is based on Do (C).  The C acts as a drone by being played continuously throughout the piece. I thought this was neat because after a while you forget that its even there.  Grainger starts it off by being consonant and pleasing to the ear, and as the piece moves on it goes in and out of the consonance.  This piece shows how droning can be done with instruments as well as just voices.

Jason Mraz and Scatting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9naL64p5o4

On the pop(ish) music end of the musical spectrum, Jason Mraz brings a spotlight to scatting.  His most famous song is "I'm  Yours" in which he scats for some of the song.  Usually when people think of scatting, they usually picture someone really jazzy.  Jason Mraz broke through this stereotype and made it more accessible to younger audiences.

This concept is pretty cool, basically the guy wants to Improv on percussion instrument everyday for one whole year. I think that would be cool to try sometime.

How Jazz artists Improvise

I love how his description of improvisation sort of mirrors how we were planning our stuff. Improvisation just doesn't happen, it has to be planned a bit. But god is the end result glorious.

You are the instrument

I think the most important thing to keep in mind about improvisation that was discussed in the readings is that the music comes from you. You are the instrument, and whatever you interact with is just an extension of yourself. The video is a somewhat free improv done by Hermeto Pascoal and his band. During this clip, Pascoal solos on the keyboard, sings, screams, talks, bangs the keyboard, and makes all sorts of noises, which all combines to create an intense expression of self. He demonstrates that the music comes from within him, and that he can do anything and everything to give his spirit to everyone listening.

Some people (including Professor Edberg) thought it was odd that I used the piano as a percussion instrument in the free improv I did with Kristin on the last day. I'd just like to say that things like that don't really matter in my opinion: people like Pascoal in this video teach me that all that matters is getting the music you want to hear out of your head, and you can do basically anything to achieve that, regardless of the tools you use or their intended uses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821bgUU_mY&feature=plcp