Live Composition
Last night I saw a band that was just a guitarist and a drummer working through what were rough drafts of songs. It is interesting that when guitarists play basic chords as accompaniment, it suggests other parts (such as background vocals or counterpoint melodies) that you hear in your head. The guitarist may in fact be implying them in such a way that people in the audience might get up on the stage and play or sing them, becoming the ad-hoc collaborators. But then you realize that music done democratically would have a tendency to become a insipid broth of ideas and opinions (very much like what American politics has become). I thought, so what is the threshold at which a piece of art or music becomes perfectly composed, i.e. the point at which people aren't trying to add or remove something, or just saying they don't like it just because they can? Or what is the boundary at which Obama's call for change make for a country that is a finished piece of American history?
Improvisation done on-the-fly, where indeterminacy drives the creative process can be very exciting and effective, as when jazz solos drive the band in waves of tension and release. But perhaps it is better that things are never really fixed or worked out, and left open to spin-off new ideas. The crucial factor is knowing when to stop it and capture the moment (like a photograph). In politics this is done automatically every 12-18 months during the period between the zeitgeist of a political victory and a mid-term primary--at which time a state of affairs is frozen in time.
But composing live is a different improvisation than in jazz, where the form is fixed and different surfaces are applied to it in real time. In certain ways, this is the rarefied form of improvisation where the rules are prescribed and set in motion, without audience participation (except clapping after solos--something classical music never allowed).
Led Zeppelin's bass player John Paul Jones has [reportedly] stated that Page's riff on Whole Lotta Love probably emerged from a stage improvisation during the band's playing of "Dazed and Confused: In any case, it illustrates the condition where this type of thing can occur.
While it may seem to waste an audience's time to play songs 'al dente', it might be more interesting to see what everyone else thinks (or not). Jazz was great at allowing this to happen in real time with the intention that it would draw the audience in. Alas, it sometimes had the opposite effect.
In retrospect jazz never really earned a cognitive fluency at its core. The 'museum' version of jazz--that which is now performed in the same venues as classical music--is presented behind glass, as we might be examining a stuffed animal at a nature museum. It looks almost real, but is only a relic, or an old snapshot from post-war America.
My friend that was with me was saying that he was hearing a bass part, although I thought it needed a bass LINE. Very often when you have a strummed guitar you don't need a bass player providing roots, as the root is implied, both by the guitar and by the combination of kick drum and room acoustics creating enough 'boom'. This is a situation where the bass player needs to provide a counterpoint, which is an entirely different thing. The act of creating a counterpoint is compositional rather than improvisational, as ad hoc counterpoint may not always be executed optimally, as pre-arranged vocal harmonies for example (How often have we heard botched major thirds?!)
Improvisation done on-the-fly, where indeterminacy drives the creative process can be very exciting and effective, as when jazz solos drive the band in waves of tension and release. But perhaps it is better that things are never really fixed or worked out, and left open to spin-off new ideas. The crucial factor is knowing when to stop it and capture the moment (like a photograph). In politics this is done automatically every 12-18 months during the period between the zeitgeist of a political victory and a mid-term primary--at which time a state of affairs is frozen in time.
But composing live is a different improvisation than in jazz, where the form is fixed and different surfaces are applied to it in real time. In certain ways, this is the rarefied form of improvisation where the rules are prescribed and set in motion, without audience participation (except clapping after solos--something classical music never allowed).
Led Zeppelin's bass player John Paul Jones has [reportedly] stated that Page's riff on Whole Lotta Love probably emerged from a stage improvisation during the band's playing of "Dazed and Confused: In any case, it illustrates the condition where this type of thing can occur.
While it may seem to waste an audience's time to play songs 'al dente', it might be more interesting to see what everyone else thinks (or not). Jazz was great at allowing this to happen in real time with the intention that it would draw the audience in. Alas, it sometimes had the opposite effect.
In retrospect jazz never really earned a cognitive fluency at its core. The 'museum' version of jazz--that which is now performed in the same venues as classical music--is presented behind glass, as we might be examining a stuffed animal at a nature museum. It looks almost real, but is only a relic, or an old snapshot from post-war America.
My friend that was with me was saying that he was hearing a bass part, although I thought it needed a bass LINE. Very often when you have a strummed guitar you don't need a bass player providing roots, as the root is implied, both by the guitar and by the combination of kick drum and room acoustics creating enough 'boom'. This is a situation where the bass player needs to provide a counterpoint, which is an entirely different thing. The act of creating a counterpoint is compositional rather than improvisational, as ad hoc counterpoint may not always be executed optimally, as pre-arranged vocal harmonies for example (How often have we heard botched major thirds?!)
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