mr improv
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« on: 18:26:56, 13-10-2008 » |
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has anyone read this book?  ? it's a very in depth analysis of free improv in particualar the music of evan parker i'm working my way through it but a book called zeros + ones has got in the way |
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Chas T
Posts: 24
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« Reply #1 on: 18:38:34, 13-10-2008 » |
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Improv: Indeed I have the improvisational opus of which you speak.
(Such a subdued post for Griselda's Creator, btw).
It's a work of l a b o r ...especially for a non-musically trained reader.
Toss-up between that and David Foster Wallace's - Infinite Jest, to read...all 1,078 pages (w/footnotes) of it.
(Wallace, who took his own life recently, is incredible to read. If only he realized his own true value...)
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mr improv
Posts: 80
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« Reply #2 on: 20:17:44, 13-10-2008 » |
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chasman wat you doing over here?
have you been banned too?
i'm about halfway through the sync or swarm book
it's a very good intro to chaos theory and complex systems
for some1 such as i who has little or no knowledge of either
and i like the way it anyalyses free improv within this context
it makes a lot of sense
i've not come across the book by wallace
ms griselda pollack is me charles t
sometimes she's less epxlosive than others
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supermarket_sweep
Posts: 45
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« Reply #3 on: 21:48:58, 13-10-2008 » |
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I found sync or swarm surprisingly easy to read, considering I'm not very mathematically/scientifically minded. As an introduction to the chaos theory and so on it talks about it, it does a good job - though I did read a review somewhere which said the science wasn't always accurate. It strikes a good balance between musical and scientific analysis (and wider philosophical issues they raise).
Would be nice if it actually came with the CD it was supposed to, however.
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Ubu-Impudicus
Posts: 44
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« Reply #4 on: 22:08:35, 13-10-2008 » |
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Lack of CD caused me to send the mail-order product back; even if you think 1 Evan soprano solo sounds much the same as any other (which in a way is handing fuel to anti-improv reactionaries) the book is partly at least meant to be a commentary on the music.
But making sense of this music in the light of theories that aim to find new principles of causality, an ingenious idea.
To use the findings of chaos theory, fractals etc. as a template for creating new music, has anybody tried that?
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martle
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« Reply #5 on: 22:15:37, 13-10-2008 » |
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To use the findings of chaos theory, fractals etc. as a template for creating new music, has anybody tried that?
Ubu, I think Xenakis got pretty close, for one; but that's not iprovved, mostly computer-generated and then fed into score-based composition. I think others here could pick up on this. Interesting. Going to have to get hold of a copy of this. |
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Green. Always green.
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mr improv
Posts: 80
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« Reply #6 on: 19:00:32, 14-10-2008 » |
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yes indeed amazon vile marketeer claimed that the book came with a cd mine didnt but the nice man at aprohead responded very nicely and sent me a replacement for the 'faulty product' but the replacement had no cd in it either i'll see what the nice man at aprohead comes up with next i believe there's one out there on the net available for about 5$ or maybe someone can put it up somewhere for free i liked the idea that complex systems such as an improvisationary peice can be shaped and swayed by seemingly tiny components and i liked the idea that altough with some comlpex systems you can more or less predict the next bit of sound or patterning but you cant predict where it's gonna end up which is quite apt when i think of derek bailey cos often people say 'well it's supposed to be improvised but it's all the same really' well yes it is and yet you cant predict where it's going which should be an a priori element of improvisation surely ?? sweep man how's the ear trip going are you getting responses now? or what?? |
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supermarket_sweep
Posts: 45
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« Reply #7 on: 20:42:59, 14-10-2008 » |
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no, not that many responses actually. I think it need to do better 'marketing', set up a domain name website, something like that. All about 'spreading the word', innit.
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mr improv
Posts: 80
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« Reply #9 on: 13:24:27, 15-10-2008 » |
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i think development is a new fangled idea
and either doesnt apply neccesarily to all experiences
or can be registered in ways that the patriarchal hegemony
doesnt tend to want to register so declares it non existant
the world can exist
and appear interesting and/or beautiful
without it having to develop
so i dont see why such a narrow constraint should be applied to music
but also i'd say a lot of free improv does develop
if you wanna apply that particular lens
then you can perseve development if that's waht you want
i mean
the idea that music develops
is just a construct of applying certain criteria
white eurocecentric criteria at that
plenty of sound exists
plenty of music exists#
outside of that criteria
self replication?
how would self replication apply to music calum?
and why is self replicationj important
i'd say self replication of certain swathes of current humanity
is detrimental to life itself on earth
and jupiter dont give a toss about any of it
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supermarket_sweep
Posts: 45
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« Reply #10 on: 13:31:20, 15-10-2008 » |
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all about continual #progress# innit. certain things that people have said to me/ i have heard said over the past few days have made me think that this notion which we see as so natural in our 'progressive' society (in which capitalism is supposed the means for progress - and look at what that's cost us), may need to be readdressed. but I do not have much to go an as yet to support this, so i can't say any more!
but yes, I think you would have to be very naive to think that improv is about continual non-replication - but it doesn't fit into the conventional forms of 'development' (sonata form, let's say, or theme followed by solos which then transform the restatement of the theme (as in coltrane)). things can be picked up on, echoed - sometimes hard for the listener to notice these, often there are things about improv which I think you can only really notice when you are so really INSIDE the music as when you are playing it. Thus when I listen back to records of group improvisations in which I have participated, I feel that something is lost. Replication, reduplication, product, etc, don't sit too well with improv. this is why some have a problem with evan parker's solo soprano improvs as all being, essentialy, the same. not improv-related, but I was talking to a classical pianist (about Webern and some modern russian composers like silvestrov), and the idea emerged that the composer 'taps into something', that they do not create as the lone individual genius as such, but tap into some sort of universal song/pool of ideas. sounds a bit mystical, I'm sure mr improv will say, but it does imply some sort of transcendence of ego which I think is attractive, and which may also be pertinent to improv. I think mahler says something about this sort of tapping in, but I can't remember where.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #11 on: 20:29:02, 15-10-2008 » |
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I've read Kauffman's book and I'm not really convinced at all. Some of it (particularly when he starts applying his "theories" to capitalist economics) gave me the impression that those who emphasise the social construction of supposedly pure science are on to something. Also, he claims at the outset to have basically solved all the problems in his chosen field, and this I think is a wildly exaggerated claim.
Calum, I seem to remember Kauffman's definition of life was based on being able to perform a "work-cycle" rather than self-replication, but I haven't looked at it for a while to I may be thinking of something else.
Using scientific theories to think about improvised music (and other kinds of composition) can be interesting, but sometimes I can't help thinking it would also be interesting to start from the music and derive the theories from that. Xenakis said that musicians "knew" about fractals a long time before Benoît Mandelbrot defined them mathematically. I have a feeling that music can indeed be a way of understanding reality and even discovering things about it but it's a bit like theories written in a language nobody can understand (yet?).
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King Kennytone
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« Reply #12 on: 11:10:49, 16-10-2008 » |
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jeez, i turn my goddam back & everybody's chattin away on this bOREEEd Yes I have sync or SWARM book hardback with CD so I will try & rip the CD & upload it here for you lot since you're all big Sam Rivers fans & whatall ... I am 1/5th the way thru it cos like I only just gave in to peer-pressure & bought it last week or so AGO though I found that in places it reads like a student text, MOOKlike it's his thesis that at some point became a book, the tone of the tome more than owt else
ah(|"! |¬\ -0 Hem ahem I will return to this Additional Options... SYNC OR SWARM AUDIO EXAMPLES(details are on page xi of the book, innit) |
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« Last Edit: 17:09:32, 16-10-2008 by King Kennytone »
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calum da jazbo
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« Reply #13 on: 22:59:15, 16-10-2008 » |
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RB - yep that is what kauffmann defines as a living organism; the self replication is my unoriginal thought as an essential feature of life, at the cellular level within organisms and at the organismic level; i have always liked the 'chance & necessity' linkage as well
..and yep Mr K sold his soul to the corporations long ago and is an establishment figure, i leave his economics out of it, his ideas on emergence are still of considerable interest to me in some work i am attempting to see the development of a person as an aesthetic project in which emergence displaces the determistic thinking so rife in my field...
mr i - for me development is neither a moral imperative, nor political construct so much as a fact of life; develop, stagnate or rot, since nothing is ever the same and i think that the music you prefer does not stagnate or rot since you are so hot on newness and non repitition of what has been done before, and if living beings make the music ....
in one important sense i have come to agree with you mr i - i have been listening to a number of live performances of music that was new to me totally, or unheard live - i have come to the realisation that recorded music is another experience altogether, whether commodity or not, or just an emergence from a child's collection of stones, toy soldiers/cars/teenagelps&books, all of which were personal, one is forever revisiting a product, sorting it tagging it reliving its contigent conjunctions - in short a primitive possession, not a market product, but an object in my life; hearing live music is an experience of a different kind and i realise my preferences are far more open to live performances than objects - this feels to me something like the construction you espouse from time too time... hearing music for the first time takes serious work on my part, but i relaise that i have more open ears and follow more intently just the music - so yes taken on its own terms...
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It's just a matter of time before we're late.
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mr improv
Posts: 80
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« Reply #14 on: 23:32:18, 18-10-2008 » |
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mr i - for me development is neither a moral imperative, nor political construct so much as a fact of life; develop, stagnate or rot, since nothing is ever the same and i think that the music you prefer does not stagnate or rot since you are so hot on newness and non repitition of what has been done before, and if living beings make the music ....
calum hello. I’m not sure development is a fact of life. For one thing each and everyone of us is gonna die and rot. That’s not development is it? I think the notion of development is one in which you focus on discrete items as if discrete items really exist. I mean we’ve had years of so called development in the west, but many aspects of life such as happiness seem to be deteriorating, and we’re on the brink of destroying the planet, so I think development cant be seen or argued for when looks instead at a complex whole that is contingent and unnecessary and transient. It may well be that this piece of rock we like to think of a discrete item called earth is actually in a black hole and we’re heading into oblivion[whatever that is]? So you can only see progress if you look at things in a certain way. The planet is gonna be consumed by the sun one day, so is anything we’re doing now progress?
in one important sense i have come to agree with you mr i - i have been listening to a number of live performances of music that was new to me totally, or unheard live - i have come to the realisation that recorded music is another experience altogether, whether commodity or not, or just an emergence from a child's collection of stones, toy soldiers/cars/teenagelps&books, all of which were personal, one is forever revisiting a product, sorting it tagging it reliving its contigent conjunctions - in short a primitive possession, not a market product, but an object in my life; hearing live music is an experience of a different kind and i realise my preferences are far more open to live performances than objects - this feels to me something like the construction you espouse from time too time... hearing music for the first time takes serious work on my part, but i relaise that i have more open ears and follow more intently just the music - so yes taken on its own terms...
calum I’n not sure I’d exclude live performance as outside of the realm of product fetish object spectakel. The doors open at 7.30 we are ushered . it never starts at 8a.m. when we’re quiet and seated the music begins. And then it ends. Everyone claps [heinous racket.] the babble of human chittering ensues. Someone may even make an announcement advertise the next specktakel. Music may be pumped out over the pa system. We have all bought tickets. Heinous farce. Yes I think I prefer the sound of what happens. Windchimes stones falling off a cliff. Or just sitting on the city centre on a stunningly overcast morning digging it all, the engines the footsteps, the horns. The phones going off, voices behind me, wheels on tarmac, a weave of sound. The thing with the windchime is there’s no .expert executioner’ to applaud or to be recognized. I like it when you’re making music and you don’t who’s doing what. And cassettes or radios demand no strutting maestro or genius, they play themselves.
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