Ed Chang - 1/97

It's always difficult to make a fair assessment of another person's music, especially in the "non-genre" of free improvisation. By what value system can someone use to judge someone else's personal language and style of composition? Nonetheless, I'm going to air (err) a few thoughts on things that I see as limitations and pitfalls of spontaneously composed music and it's performance. And change my name later.

By definition, free improv is spontaneous composition (making it up as you go along) and that's all there is to it. There is no pre-meditation on the part of the performer-composers before they play/compose (for more on this, see my previous article in Sonar Map #2). This opens up doors to surprise and spontanaiety, and "happy accidents", but it also closes the doors to some relatively simple ideas and musical textures, like having everyone suddenly playing in rhythm together, or everyone playing harmonic changes in a pattern together (like a chord progression). Of course, grooves and melodies do develop within a group improv, but it takes 1 person to start an idea, and then a few seconds (depending on the number, ability and agreeability of the other players) for the rest of the group to "catch on". If it's going to be a repeating chord progression of say, 9 measures, it could take minutes. It's basically impossible for a group of improvisors to spontaneously compose anything that approaches the rhythmic and harmonic tightness of a Green Day song, let alone Stravinsky (well, maybe Green Day). It's the nature of the beast (specifically the anarchic nature) that it's hard (and rare) for a group of 3 or more players to change all at the same time and exactly the same way (or even in a complementary way). For example, a composed piece played by a symphony orchestra can sound as together and focused as a solo piano sonata, but a free improv orchestra with just 6 players will sound somewhat less focused than an improvisor playing solo (though there are exceptions). Personally, I prefer to play in and listen to improvising groups of no more than 3 or 4 people (again, some notable exceptions).

Another door that improv closes is the idea of taking time to perfect an idea. In free improv there's NO time, just NOW. The idea of "over-dubbing" a section of a free improvisation would probably improve certain moments of certain pieces, but that goes against the whole ideal and definition of free improv. So when Bob broke two guitar strings while applying his power drill and then tripped into the drum set (still drilling)...well that's a wrap. Of course, that might've sounded pretty cool, but the point is that Bob might've wanted to play something different to accompany his co-composers' contributions. If the first 20 minutes were fantastic, well it's too bad that there were some technical problems at the end. Either it's scrapped, or it's released as unintended. The bottom line is - was it the best way to produce the best piece of music to be offered? In this case the concept disallows improvement in hindsight. Oh well. In sum, I believe that if I knew what was going to happen in the next few seconds (or minutes), and had time to try out a few different ideas to see which would sound the best, that end result would sound better than if I just shot off whatever just came to me first. But what about solo improvisors who don't need to worry about complementing any other players?

Now we're talking about the actual performance of spontaneously-composed music. Improvised music is composed moment-to-moment. What happens as a result of this is that most improvised pieces end up being relatively simple on a structural level. In fact almost all improvised pieces fall into one of 3 types.

The first is the "slide show", where an idea ("slide") is established, and then followed by another and another, until an idea that sounds like an "ending" finishes off the piece. There's no repetition or going back to a section, and half the time these "slides" could've been played in backwards order and it would have made no real difference (though that's not a criticism, just an observation).

The second type is the "drone" piece, where the music basically revolves around the same idea throughout the entire piece, with most of the movement coming from variations of the same texture. I sometimes think of this kind of structure as the "technique" piece, since it usually functions as a virtuosic display of some cool-sounding extended technique, like reed multi-phonics, for example.

The third structure is the classic "ABA" form. An idea ("head", in jazz terms) is set up, then there's a movement into another idea (usually louder and building to a climax) and then a return to the first idea as a quieter coda.

Now, I want to be clear in saying that those 3 structures are great! I love all 3 types and use them all the time. But my question is, as composers of an advanced form of music, shouldn't there be more complex structures being developed here? Most improvisors spend the bulk of their energy in developing a personal "sound-language" (collection of weird noises). This I consider to be the 'style' or 'content' of a piece. But typically the 'form' seems to lack the same sense of exploration. Maybe Beethoven only used 12 notes in a scale (closer to 8, really) and his piano sonatas only used key-pressing techniques, but his sense of structure and form are way beyond anything any free improvised pieces I've ever heard. This is because most improvisors don't spend much time composing (the long way). When there's a blank page to filled with notated ideas, well, that's when more questions about Why and Where become more obvious. More improvisors need to develop their sense of overall story, as well as their story-telling techniques. They need to see where an improvisation is going, not just in the next few seconds, but also in the next few minutes.

These thoughts on the subject of free improvisation shouldn't lead you to believe that I hate listening to and playing improvised music. In fact all of my work, composed or not, uses large doses of free improv. But these are some basic observations I've made of the limitations of pure spontaneous composition and some valid questions about its continuing development (Western European free improv has been around for over 30 years - how has it progressed?). Playing improvised music and having fun is easy (nothing wrong with that) but to improvise in the true spirit and intent of the term (creating new sounds AND forms) is what free improv in the future should strive for.