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Re: Total Improv



On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, andy butler wrote:
> However, from my perspective I'd say that I'd seen you
> re-create what is essentially the same 'piece' at more than
> one show.
> It could be as simple as using the same instrument with the
> same loop techniques, but I got the impression there was
> a bit more to it than that.
Yeah, of course, I see what you say, and there have been some themes 
that keep popping up
in my music, for sure............certainly sets of instruments that lend 
themselves to themes and , even
occasionally, a melody that gets repeated.........

I think, specifically, of a piece that I have done
that uses an Orange bottle whose body I play that has a very limited 
melodic range controlled
by the size of the opening.   I think I"ve probably played that piece 
more than any other, but
the melody is constrained by the object that I use.   I think I only 
have about a 4th of an interval
and I'm not fond of major scales so it comes out minor each time.

Lol, I also have played some shows with specific conventional 
instruments whose grasp of are so tenuous that
I have , literally, only learned the one melodic approach that I 
originally learned on the instrument.
I think, specifically, of a piece I've done with Shakuhachi flute and a 
piece I've done with Armenian
Duduk...........both so difficult for me to play that I've just put 
enough hours into them to play
one scale that I like.

My performances are also constrained when I tour to the amount of 
instruments I can physically
carry with me.   By the end of a 2 month tour of Europe and the UK as an 
example,  I'm sick to death
of the instruments I carry with me, largely because when I"m in the US,  
I mostly take a completely different
set of instruments to every show I do.   One year at the Boise Creative 
and Experimental Music Festival
I actually went next door to a thrift store and purchased 1/2 of my 
set,  whose 'found' instruments
I left at the venue when I was done.

So, if you take all the performances I've done over the years (and I 
play lots of different kinds
of festivals, not just looping festivals) the lion share of all of my 
performances are actually improv
pieces.     One thing I dearly love to do is pick a set of timbres (or 
instruments) and walk onto
stage without a thought in my head and then just follow what comes out.

Again, just because of who I am as an artist, there will be themes that 
emerge.   I like minor keys as an example and love a few
ethnic scales that I tend to gravitate to (Lydian, b7  or the Rag 
Bairav:   1,b2, m3,4,5,b6,m7,8va).
I tend to gravitate to rhythms as well..........I just adore playing 
anything in 12/8 with all of it's polyrhythmic
possibilties and I love 5/4, 10/8 (in both 3322 and 3223 variants), 7/8, 
9/8 and many different African, MiddleEastern,
Indian, Caribbean, Balkan rhythms that I've studied over the years so 
those will be
non-improv aspects.

And, like you say,  I use several different live looping and digital 
processing approaches that I use over and over.
This past year I've been obsessed with distortion and fuzz and it's 
constraint, timbrally, as an example:
fond of playing a fretless stratocaster that is either tuned to an open 
tuning or most usually,  to
an entire set of D.......all of which are purposefully tuned just a few 
cents off from each other (to excite the
harmonics)

So, yeah,  not pure improv, I suppose,  but a hell of a hell of a lot of 
improv compared to most musicians I know.

I'd probably be a hell of a lot more popular if I didn't favor changing 
things up all the time, frankly, but
I've also loved being free to do just that.