Ed Chang 9/5/96

This text is an introduction and explanation (or at least of how I see it) of music classifiable as free improv/noise/intuitive/skronk. For those readers who already have heard and understand lots of this kind of stuff, just skip this and put on Evan Parker/Derek Bailey's "The Bones Of Contention" and trip out.

Improv is technically music that's created by the players (musicians) on the spot (spontaneously) and without any idea what the resulting music is going to be. There's no "let's do the fast one" or "in E minor" or "let's do 'Jenny', the one about my dead dog". The players just start playing. Sometimes someone will say,"Are you guys ready?", but that's about it. So how does it become musical (or rather, how does it relate to "normal" music)? The musicians listen and interact with each other in order to create "songs" or musical pieces based on what each person is doing at that moment.

It's alot like talking at a party or with a friend: someone says something, and then someone else adds to that comment or just responds, or everybody ends up trying to out-do each other with how witty they are, etc... And every performance/conversation is different, especially when playing/talking with different people. In fact, you can tell alot about a player's personality from their free improv playing. Which brings us to...

Free improvisation is improv without the rules of 'normal' music that's taught in schools and heard on the radio. It's freedom of sound, melodies, harmony and rhythm. There doesn't have to be a beat or a key or a repeated melody or anything like that, and in fact most of the time there isn't anything like that at all. It all sounds so "noisy" because the musical language here is completely from the players' own sick brains/spirit, and not something that's copied or derived from some existing musical style (even remotely). This music is reaching for new sounds and patterns and there are no acknowledged boundaries to the sounds that are being transmitted into the air. It's kind of barbaric, I think, because it's music that's being created as if there has never been any music before that moment. 'Forget everything - Begin anew' is what this stuff is saying. Speak with you own voice. It's also complex, because there's so many things happening at once and so many levels of interaction between all the different sounds. There's no safety net of a beat or repeating groove to fall back on usually - the key here is constant listening and constant creation, and with the more people playing, the more complex/confusing it all gets.

So how does one listen to and enjoy this kind of music? On one level I like it because of the language - all the weird sounds and textures that are natural to free improv music. It's downright punk - rejection of the status quo and rebellion against the establishment of Western classical music (including pretty much everything normally played on the radio before 1 AM, or anything your parents would ever like).

Another thing that's fascinating and absorbing is how people can play together and make music using all these different personalities. Most great improvisors have very distinctive voices, and when they play with someone else who has a different voice, it's interesting to see how they 'talk' to each other and find a common ground to join together on. It's kind of part-boxing match and part-mental health support group.

Also it's never boring, especially if you really listen to what's going on. This stuff won't be good as background music - you really have to get into this sound-field. Most free improv never repeats grooves or melodies, so it's a continuing story, like an aural movie. Of course from performance to performance (song to song) with the same players there's a certain stylistic/aesthetic focus, just like different movies by the same director (or episodes of a TV series) have a common style or theme. The difference here is that everybody has a say in what's happening and there is no leader or main composer here. Everybody shares in the glory (or the blame). And again, since there's no written music to follow, no one knows how it's going to turn out - it could be great or it could suck. Nobody knows how it's going to end (let alone how it's going to begin). It's like (my last analogy) a bunch of people jump out of a plane and try to assemble a parachute in mid-air in order to land safely, or at least with the fewest fatalities.

So check this music out, and you'll hear alot of noise, but you'll also hear alot of interesting conversation and original thought (possibly alien, but thought, nonetheless).

Recommended: Anything with Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Charles Gayle (jazzier), Borbetomagus (noisier), Peter Brotzmann, AMM, some John Zorn (the duo with Fred Frith - "The Art of Memory" - a modern classic), John Stevens... Or anything that has someone playing "prepared" anything (guitar, piano, tuba...) or electronics or contact mikes or...

Next time: Why Improv sucks.