Re: memory and improvisation

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

>gosh, i'm a little overwhelmed here...
>
>i feel like i'm just getting my head above water on personal 
>improvement epithets, ya know?
>
>just do it.
>be all you can be.
>is it in you?
>go farther.
>
>and now i gotta try to
>
>>"be the hose"... ???
>
>whew!  :-)
>
>rich

I hope I understand what you mean. If so, my intention was not to 
make anyone feel like "I have to make an effort not to remember what 
I play" or anything like that. It was rather about priorities, about 
valorizing (does that only exist in portugese? or what is the verb 
for "to give a higher value"?) what comes anyway.
When we had a shop in Winterthur, I often observed musicians while 
testing equipment. Its an intersting situation, because the musician 
just listens to the sound quality, but hardly plays just one note to 
compare "scientifically" but lets some music come through to get the 
feel of the sound, and when they like it they get off on it and when 
they come back they think they need the gadget because they feel 
good, while really they feel good having been hose. And sometimes I 
sad: "hey that was great music" and they reacted like: "but I did not 
play anything". I should have recorded some of the stuff, for them, 
mainly :-).

Maybe this observation is not limited to improv: I dont interprete 
any composition, so I dont know about it: Doesnt it happen that you 
play a composition you once studied consciously and you end up 
forgetting that you are playing it?
Or: someone interrupts you and you have no idea where you have been 
in the composition?
In the car sometimes: You drive a known way and suddenly get the 
feeling that you dont know where you are (because your ... really is 
somewhere else)... is this another kind of "being the hose"?
I am on ice here because I speak about routine, the apparent oposit 
of the improv, but there may be something related about it...

Maybe chanting mantras is the oposit of looping? One is routine and 
the other often improv... or does looping even close the circle 
between two ways to the same aim?
-- 


          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org