As I said in class, there are two parts to your homework. One is to improvise on your own, and the other is to listen to three more tracks from 'The Darling Conversations."
Improvising on your own. Explore and experiment with the starting points we've worked on in class (and/or listened to David and Julie discuss). These include:
- "Release"--this might seem silly at times (putting your hands at the top of your head, and exhaling as your lower your arms), but it can make for a profound shift in one's state of being. Many of the Music for People improvisation approaches are designed to facilitate what the first statement in the "Bill of Musical Rights" describes: the need for express ourselves "in a way that invites physical and emotional release."
- Babbling--this frees you up, and gets the music/body connection going. It's silly, and helps us get over the need to do something "right."
- Articulate babbling moving into rhythmic vocal percussion.
- Sirening with your voice and on an instrument.
- Vocal grooves: percussive and scat sounds, pitched and unpitched. This can be very enjoyable to do while walking around. So what if people think you're crazy?
- Instrumental groves: use a pitched instrument like a drum. Pick just one or two pitches and find a rhythmic groove. You can let the pitches and rhythms gradually evolve.
- Long, "one-quality-sound" tones--both sung and played on an instrument (vocalists, use a piano if you don't play something else).
- Sing play a long tone and listen inside yourself for the next sound. That way a freely-improvised melody can develop.
Listening. Here are the "Darling Conversation" tracks from the syllabus:
- solo/drone (listen to “Solo/Drone,” track 20)
- solo/ostinato (listen to “Ostinato,” track 22)
- A-B-A form (listen to “A-B-A,” track 24)
Write a short paragraph (3 total) about your reaction to each track.
Coming up: Between Friday and Monday's classes, you'll be working in a small group (3-4 people), designing a structured, partially-planned improvisation using contrasting improvisation techniques .
Start thinking now about who you'd like to work with!
It was very interesting, improvising on my own. The exercises were okay, but I really enjoyed letting myself pick the notes. I really liked how my mind was always three notes ahead of whatever my current note was. I liked it very much because I had a really good emotional reaction to it. There is always music inside of me and sometimes I think I forget that or sort of overlook it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, for whatever reason, my Darling Conversations isn't working. I'll try again later, but as of right now it won't work. None of the tracks will.
-I really liked the Droning. I liked how Julie talked about when you're listening to what you're doing, especially when there is only one prolonged note, how it can help you later on to be more aware of what is going on around you. I think this is really true because when you start doing that closer, more in-depth listening to yourself, you will subconsciously do the same thing when you're in an ensemble. It's practice. Practice makes permanent.
Delete-Ostinato reminded me of class the other day. The vocalists actually sounded quite a bit like this track. I like how it's just jamming, just improv, with other people. It's really REALLY cool. Plus, I like that they kept it relatively simple. It gives lots of space to other people, like how we do it in drum circle.
-The ABA thing was a good idea, but I didn't really like the way it was executed. I think it could've gone better, but I did like the idea of everyone just sort of feeling when to stop with one theme and start the next. We definitely did that on Wednesday and it was super cool.
One thing that's odd to me about this class is the encouragement of vocalizing that doesn't necessarily have utility. A couple years ago, I realized that the weird background noise in every recording I made of myself was me vocalizing, but it was/is honestly a really weird, disgusting, unmusical sound, so I tried to get rid of the habit by learning to sing what I play. I've noticed this in improvised and non-improvised music, but generally not when I'm reading music. I don't know how the MFP people would categorize this, but it seems connected since we're on the subject of vocalizing improvisation. Sing-playing is strange because I can't sing chords and my ears/brain give me more things to do than my mouth can handle.
ReplyDeleteI like how the Drone discussion talks about experimenting with keys until you find ones you like. Letting myself see colors from certain keys was really helpful for composition, etc - learning what the different keys can do, what works, what doesn't, and so forth - and an improv/composition exercise I like a lot is picking a color and trying to play it. For example, I really like greens and blues so I like Dbmaj and Fmin a lot because Db is bluish and Fmin is dark-greenish to me (not always though, and F Lydian tends to be more green...but I digress. Seriously though, colors are awesome). The interpersonal aspect of drones they talk about is also interesting because I imagine the person colors the drone - me droning a D is different from you droning a D.
They don't really talk about this in the conversations, but it's interesting how on the first singing example on the Ostinato track, they sound a little off in pitch so it makes it sound a lot more percussive because I can't hear the melody as well. I don't know if that's the Indian influence or what, but I want to try that out sometime now. Repetition is really great to mess with because there's so many things you can do with it - you can build, cook, fade, swell, all sorts of things.
...I think beatboxing in the middle of Jingle Bells might be the oddest explanation of ABA I've heard. I don't know what to say about it besides that and that it's kind of funny that they treat ABA as a vehicle to exercise the "it doesn't matter as long as you end right" philosophy. Yeah...
When I improvised on my own, I started out the way I start practice in general, with long tones. I didn’t do anything fancy, I just really listened and tried to get to know each note. After that I did the thing where we listened for the next note. I really enjoyed doing this. It was soothing and let me let go, which is essential when improvising. That was a better release for me than the breathing thing. Since I was loose I did the groove thing, which wasn’t as fun to do by myself.
ReplyDeleteIn high school band we used the drone a lot, mainly to tune. We’d start out singing the pitch and then go half a step higher and lower than where the drone was. I liked doing this because I liked feeling the waves of the dissonant notes. Then we played scales and did etudes with the drone on as well. When we got to the pieces we were working on, we sometimes used the drone then as well. There was a song that our Wind Ensemble played my freshman year by Percy Grainger called “Immovable Do.” The Do was always present and played throughout the piece. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=3FJQYxp5Le8
Ostinato was what we did in class when we were in the groups of three. I really enjoyed doing that because of how surprisingly easy it was. What I love best about doing this is that you really can’t be wrong. If you played a note you didn’t like, you can “make up for it” with the next one. It was just a surprise.
I liked how they compared ABA to nature, and how everything always comes around full circle. The way they did it with Jingle Bells was kind of like theme and variations. There was the normal Jingle Bells, then the improvised beat box session, and then they came back to Jingle Bells, but made it different by harmonizing. That was pretty cool and an interesting thing to do in class.
Wait, let me understand this..... a teacher telling me to mess around with my voice and sing? OH JOYOUS DAY. ut seriously i love just making up melodies and rhythms and playing with my voice. It's a lot of fun and so this improvisational stuff is pretty normal for me. it is a bit hard for me to sing just one long note though... unless there is a harmonic progression above it.
ReplyDeleteThe drone track is interesting to me because I listen to a lot of traditional Celtic music from Ireland and western Europe. The drone is used in some settings and makes a great harmonic background. The drones exist in western music, it's not just an eastern thing. Even Appalachian music has drone instruments, or instruments with a drone string (i.e. the dulcimer). Whats interesting about using drone music for me is that even though there is a harmonic base, the music is not always tonal.
The ostinato stuff is very cool, it's a really easy way to build up an improvisational work. I like how we did it in class where we come in with a different theme to change the feel of the music.
ABA as compared to nature is SUCH a cool concept. nature is so full of cycles and circles that it's truly a perfect metaphor. that said..... jingle bell beat boxing is just weird... that's really all i have to say on that. I guess i didn't think about how removing music can make a B section, but for me it just felt sooo different that it was a complete departure from "jingle bells"
I'm still not sure how I feel about improvising on my own. When I practice all of the exercises, I have extremely mixed feelings. Essentially, there are brief moments and sections that I think sound really great or really interesting, but they are surrounded by long sections that I'm not really fond of. I think it might be partially attributed to the lack of structure, which is uncomfortable for me, but I think part of it may be a lack of confidence in my abilities.
ReplyDeleteThere is one thing that I really liked about the drone track, and that is the idea that there is energy in silence. Like David Darling said, "silence is a drone." I love this statement because it just strengthens the idea that there is always energy in music, even when we may not feel like it.
Essentially, I don't feel like the ostinato track really taught anything we didn't discover and experience in class, but I like that it reinforced the idea that an ostinato can be really simple. In fact, David Darling reminds us that a simple ostinato is even better at inviting others to join in.
To be quite honest, I didn't like the A-B-A track. Personally, I think that in a piece that follows A-B-A form, there should be one all-inclusive musical style that ties the piece together. Otherwise, there's nothing to tell us that it's even the same piece. Of course the B section should be different, but I think that the B section in Jingle Bells was absolutely nothing like the A section (nor did I think it sounded good). I appreciate what David and Julie are trying to do, but I really don't agree.
Whenever I improvise, I play at a slow tempo. I like the inevitable beautiful and emotional nature of a slow tempo. I like to play in a somber and dark, yet rich way. I love the rich tone that the clarinet produces because it is soothing and can easily create that dark/somber tone. I improvise by listening to movie soundtracks, classical, or even contemporary vocal music. By listening to it I am able to add to what is already there and to fill in the spaces.
ReplyDeleteDroning sounds rather ethnic. I like the sound of it, but like sirening it just sounds flat. Also, I don’t fully understand its beneficiary qualities at this moment. I’m sure that we as musicians can all benefit from it, but personally at this moment I just don’t know how. I’m sure that my opinion at this moment will change in class after our discussions.
Like Melissa said, Ostinato is what we did in class, which is where we added onto an already preexisting rhythm. It was rather exciting, yet nerve-racking. Not knowing which key the other chose to be in made me nervous. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t add on to the music with sour notes. I like dissonance, but plain out sour notes is not acceptable to me. Like Hanae said about herself in class, I, like her, am a “perfectionist” and need stability. Anyway, I love the overall concept of Ostinato and the technique of it.
ABA is what music is. The majority of music returns in a way back to its beginning, that’s how it reaches its conclusion, but there are those musical pieces that end without returning fully to its core sound from the beginning. I liked what Weber said about how “nature always comes back to the beginning again.” Music returns to what it started from.
The drone just sounded very much like the siren for me, just staying on a note and then sliding to the next. This is also the closest to an actual song as the Darling Conversations have gotten thus far in my listening. It is very simple, but it is approaching the start of making a melody.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of what we did when we did the trios in class. We had the people doing just doing an ostinato below someone doing a melody. We had people doing something very simple or the two-note rule and then the more complicated task of making a melody passed around. This is basically our activity and its interesting to have someone talk about the experience because they don’t really mentioning the effect it has on the people participating which is very cool effect indeed.
I would say that the A-B-A is like binary form and is the first we are singing musical form in improvisation. The improvisation is starting to get style and more refined. It’s interesting to think that improvisation can be styled and become an actual song, instead of just something random. In this form I could see improvisation being used as a composing tool.
So far experimenting with improvisation it has been a very cool experience and very chill. The relaxing effect it can have and also the sense of creativity mixes together in a really nice way. It is somewhat therapeutic in the way of just releasing the inner melodies. The trio was definitely a very cool experiment and I enjoyed it, so did many others in the class.
Solo/Drone: Like Kristi said, it sounds a lot like sirening. I like how they were talking about letting it settle within your own voice, which i think is a wonderful idea. Also they seem to be getting closer and closer to an actual musical melody rather than just drums or just one not singing.
ReplyDeleteSolo/Ostinato: This reminds me of what we did in class. One person would start and then other people would come in and add their own little thing to it. This basically describes exactly what we're doing in class.
A-B-A: I've never heard A-B-A described quite like that before. I think the beat boxing jingle bells is a little strange, but it did get the point across rather clearly. It started with jingle bells, then went elsewhere, but in the end returned to jingle bells. I like how they described it as a natural from, how its found everywhere, and I absolutely agree. We always return home in the end.