broken families
“Did you know how loud you were?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“I thought you did.”
[Read the rest…]
the continuing adventures of an improviser/guitarist:
being an unplanned collection of thoughts about the technical, social, pedagogical and practical dimensions of loosely idiomatic, sometimes experimental, mostly open, always traditional improvisation
“Did you know how loud you were?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“I thought you did.”
[Read the rest…]
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 9:51 PM 0 comments
Labels/Keywords: group, identity, interaction, listening, social, strategy, tradition
Is ‘exposure’ (the official currency of the arts) inherently inflationary?
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 6:06 PM 0 comments
Labels/Keywords: social
The most boring man in the world plays the most boring music in the world on the most boring instrument. He does this, why, he does not know, but he does this for that is what he does.
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 11:29 PM 0 comments
Labels/Keywords: audience, identity, instrument, social, solo
Four score and seven minutes after the soundcheck, as the technicians made final checks, and as the ensemble found their places on stage, in an event that would still be speculated upon for decades to come (freak hyper-energetic neutrinos? spontaneous human combustion? an act of god?), the musicians were lost leaving no trace but an afterimage in the retinae of the audiences’ eyes.
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 9:04 PM 0 comments
More comedy from the arts sector (or is that the creative industries (I forget which)):
I’d heard that the Young Composers’ Collective (founded 2003) had changed their name to the Irish Composers' Collective (allegedly) because its members, who grew not-young, did not want to relinquish the organization. It turns out, however, there’s a little tradition of doing this: the Association of Young Irish Composers (founded 1972) dropped the ‘Young’ and became the AIC some ten years later.
Anyone tempted to do a Bourdieuian analysis of this phenomenon?
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 1:01 AM 0 comments
Labels/Keywords: composition, group, identity, social, tradition
“Spain’s Civil Guard (a.k.a. the Jazz Police) say Banksy’s real name is Lee Ritenour, a 62-year old male born in Los Angeles, California. AAJ has confirmed this information with Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen of GRP, along with Captain Fingers, a shady entity that acts as a cover for the so-called ‘octave jazz guitarist.’” [Read the rest…]
Before people get too worked up over this, they need to realize that our album is a copy, not a clone—an object designed to reaffirm what people already love about ‘Kind of Blue’ and to highlight what we could and couldn’t pull off…. That’s where the art is—getting people to think about the original by listening harder to the differences. [more…]Been following the MOPDTK/Blue threads here and there on fb with some interest. Some random questions:
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 12:26 PM 1 comments
Labels/Keywords: audience, composition, group, identity, pedagogy, social, technique, tradition
Music journalism is lazy.
Music journalism is vacuous.
Music journalism is soft headed.
Music journalism is dead, lost its way, and is no longer culturally or politically relevant. It has, to use present-day management parlance, no impact. Contemporary music journalists are shabby echos of their profession in times past; whose idea of research is YouTube; whose ‘intellectual engagement’ is based entirely on Wikipedia and some half-forgotten undergraduate reader; and who don’t even think to check out music outside their own little hipster enclave.
I would write more, but there’s only so much necrophilia I’d like to touch.
btw, if you need something else to read, try this brilliant and funny parody piece.
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 12:51 PM 1 comments
Labels/Keywords: identity, social, terminology, tradition
When the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us, as the final ragtag few that is what is left of humanity gather to hear the last musician on the planet at the last piano with the last copy of Mozart’s piano sonatas, we will wait for the text to speak to us. As the undead hammer down the doors, the futility (always already) of fidelity to a long lost (fictional) past will become crushingly obvious.
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 8:43 PM 0 comments
Labels/Keywords: audience, composition, identity, interaction, listening, social, terminology, tradition
Although the most recent post is dated October 2012, improvising guitar hasn’t been active in any meaningful sense since January 2008. I started this blog in order to explore ideas of improvisation and technique, and as an outlet to vent issues emerging from my teaching [more…]. It was primarily for the latter reason that I adopted a pseudonym—the improvising guitarist, or tig. This was all in the relatively early days of weblogs, and, subsequently having written here and there under my non-pseudonymous name, I now feel more confident about expressing issues online without getting myself (or anyone else) into trouble.
As I said, I am “tempted to ‘come out of the closet’ on this blog,” so…
Posted by the improvising guitarist at 11:37 PM 0 comments