On improvisation
“You sounded like you were possessed!”
“Clearly a muse must have sat on your shoulder when you composed Whispers My Name.”
“Your talent is god-given. You have so much passion!”
These are truly complimentary things that are said to me. These are things that were said about Angus Young. Nicolo Paganini. Jim Morrison. Robert Johnson. Franz Liszt… Any club with those guys, even if ungrounded, I’m more than happy to join on occasion.
A pervasive assumption is that my work is the result of supernatural forces. The supernatural has been used to both minimize and posture artists for all of recorded history. My chosen religion does influence my vigor as a professional, and partially because of this, I am sure as hell not invoking any deities when I write, perform, improvise, or design instruments.
The observer always has the choice in how they interpret what they see; every experience a Rorschach test, every moment an opportunity to listen at face value or assign meaning. It is easy to gaze upon a light in the sky and call it a UFO. It takes more CPU to observe where it is in the sky and track whether or not it’s a satellite, a star, a planet, or whatever else it may be. It is easy to play a sound and call it “the brown note,” but it is more entertaining to play a very distorted, sustained, low sound, giving an audience no context, and wait to see if anyone happens to run to the restroom.
Part of being an improviser is to release the assumptions of the self and the assumptions of “other.”
Another important part of being an improviser is to allow the result of sound to do what it will upon the listener while resisting the ego’s judgment.
For anyone wishing to improvise, here are methods that I often converse with colleagues and students about:
Fully understand the mechanics of your instrument
It doesn’t matter what instrument you choose. Get incredibly familiar with your instrument as it functions physically. If you’re a vocalist, learn about the anatomy of your respiratory system. If you’re a cellist, familiarize yourself with the acoustics of your instrument and each string’s relation to the others. If you have a cardboard box, know the geometry of each side, how it resonates, and what you can use to make it sound.
It is necessary to understand your instrument as an object that engages with other objects.
Get present
While I improvise, I engage in meditation. Theta and alpha waves increase, and lower-order brain activity decreases. Time disappears, my breath slows, and I become much less aware of the self. The result of the thousands of hours of training I put into learning my instrument become a lizard-like sub-function of the engagement I have with what is audible, and who else is audible. This is where the “possession” begins.
If you wish to improvise, practice meditation and integrate it in your musical practice. Share this meditative practice with those you make music with.
Listen
As an undergrad at Berklee, I had the honor of being a student in Mitch Haupers’ illusive improvisation class. It was audition-only, and the audition consisted of watching how the student responded and reacted to audible stimuli. Virtuosic players who sought to demonstrate their skills were often compassionately not admitted, unless they were able to release the ego and embrace awareness. Once awareness was embraced, they would rapidly become. Everything I am as an improviser is owed to the experiences I had in that dark classroom.
A group of students would sit in a circle with their instruments and listen to silence until some internal or external impetus propelled anyone to make a sound. During one session, the group made a single, loud gesture together after several minutes of pitch black silence. We were listening so truly to each other that even our breath was united. The line between meditation and music-making was blurred for me forever, after that moment.
It became about trust.
Embrace inevitability
Performance anxiety sometimes can push us into making noise for the sake of making noise. The microsecond before I make a sound, I ask myself without judgment, “does this sound need to exist?” If it does, then it’s played. If not, I continue to listen. It can feel like catching a ball – the opportunity is hurled at you from a distance, from the guitarist across the stage, and you catch it in flow. It becomes second nature with practice.
Great music seems inevitable, not necessarily predictable. As animals, we’re deeply attracted to the inevitable. If you’re embracing that, you’re almost sure to form an organic communion with your collaborators and your audience.
Allow
Release the idea that your performance partners need to do what you want them to. Your Monkey mind may have desires, may have “needs” from people who you play with. In order to have a great experience, that capriciousness needs to be released.
What is audible is what is, and anything else is just as real as the demon, the muse, the deity.
As improvisers, the work is to reach into chaos and with presence and rationality and retrieve only what serves us.