broken families

“Did you know how loud you were?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“I thought you did.”

[Read the rest…]

currency of the arts

Is ‘exposure’ (the official currency of the arts) inherently inflationary?

cosmic boredom

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.

empty but stage

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.

when composers refuse to die young: or how to avoid making aging a liablity amongst the artistically inclined

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?

update 11-08-14:

I came across a piece from March 2004 re the Young Composers’ Collective. Full of moments of irony given the evolution of the AIC:

“I contacted a number of people to pitch the idea of starting a new organisation for young Irish composers…. Most of them agreed that more needed to be done for young composers in Ireland. I also contacted former members of the Association of Young Irish Composers which ceased activity in the 1970s. They all spoke positively of this organisation and lamented its demise….
“There is currently no support network for young Irish composers. The Association of Irish Composers (AIC) describes itself as Ireland’s representative body for composers…. It does little for young composers.”

The Jazz Police

“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…]

Kind of Weird

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:

1. When does musical criticism cross into personal attacks? Is the personal and the musical ever separable, in particular, in the context of improvisative practices?
2. At what point does musical proficiency sanction an entry into the hallowed domain of reinvention? (or is that question just wrong? what is at stake?)
3. If the piece is a conceptual prank (of sorts), then is not the kerfuffle a demonstration of its success?
4. If the piece is a conceptual prank, who or what was the target?
5. When are we comfortable discussing the intersections of class, economics (and race) and music? (and if we can’t do this in the context of a kind of appropriation, when can we do it?)

I’ll admit straight off the bat that I’ve never been particularly drawn to MOPDTK’s work (no fault of theirs, just never got around to it), but this did at least get me to listen. fwiw, some thoughts (my ¢2):

2. There’s a self-consistent argument from those critical of this project that goes like this: by all means do your own music—be creative!—but if you were to copy an existing work, your chops should be up to the task. I’m not 100% convinced by this argument, though it’s hard not to agree that there are people with more aptitude for meticulous recreations. I think notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘respect’ (to/for yourself, the tradition, cultural ancestors, etc.) play in both pro/con arguments, but that are largely left unexamined.
3. Given the continuing struggle with notions of history, continuity and tradition that is so much a part of this music’s DNA, it occurs to me that it would be naïve of anyone to think that the album would not generate, at the very least, heated discussions.
4. It seems to me that that the target could not have realistically been the Lincoln Center neoclassicists and their audience since, given the nature of the band and the label, this piece of cultural noise would just not be audible there. So, it seems to be reasonable that the target of the prank was those of us already on the left-field (those of us already defending or critiquing this work), but that raises a whole bunch of additional questions about purpose, and questions about how to assess the success of the prank.

Final thought: I find it near impossible to hear Kind of Blue with something other than naïve teenage ears (which is how I first encountered that record). So I feel unqualified to do a critical, microscopic assessment of MOPDTK’s work-as-copy. From hearing a short excerpt from MOPDTK’s album, however, all I can add was that I was surprised how well Jon Irabagon could reembody Adderley, and fascinated how Peter Evans apparently could not mimic Davis to the same degree.

all that music journalism isn’t all that great

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.

Eine kleine Nekromusik

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.

unmasking tig

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…

…this is me.

I still blog occasionally on (relatively) specialist matters, but, if you’re looking for my “unplanned collection of thoughts about the technical, social, pedagogical and practical dimensions of loosely idiomatic, sometime experimental, mostly open, always traditional improvisation”, your best bet, currently, is at a certain micro bogging platform.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope I can (again) make your acquaintance.

tig
Brooklyn, December 2012

P.S. a shout out to Kris Tiner, afaik, the only person who guessed the identity of tig.

practice based research: policing the borders of knowledge

Practice based research is not only a methodology, but is also tied to a metric, and, for you to be successful according to a metric, you need to play the game.
When I first encountered the term ‘practice based research,’ it promised to forge an academe that was more inclusive, border crossing. With creeping corporatism, however, practice based research instead became a way to solidify borders.
We all play the game. A (successful) practitioner outside academia knows to discriminate in their networking; to remember to, say, ask the Important Person at a concert about their family, to compliment the right people at a gallery, to have the right guest performer on their record, etc. And academia—with its bureaucratic pressures, need for peer esteem, to demonstrate ‘value’—is perhaps no different. As universities become knowledge/degree factories, as they are constantly asked to justify every penny, the metric, and the game, exists to reenforce the value of inside over that outside. This leads to some of problematic work and behavior written about elsewhere, and Bob Ostertag makes a similar point in regards Computer Music:

A phenomenon seen time and time again in academia: the more an area of knowledge becomes diffused in the public, the louder become the claims of those within the tower to exclusive expertise in the field, and the narrower become the criteria become for determining who the ‘experts’ actually are. [Read the rest…]

I’ve been to enough academic conferences/performances to encounter glazed eyes and interrupted conversations when someone discovers that I’m unaffiliated or semi-affiliated. No coincidence that this happens most often with junior academics as—with hostile job markets and promotion systems—they feel the greatest pressure to play the game.
I know academically affiliated researcher-practitioners who try their best to cross borders, but face an uphill struggle because the game rewards exclusivity. Academia should be a privileged space in which researchers, like arts practitioners outside academic borders, imagine and explore alternative modes of thought, interaction and sociality. However, for many unaffiliated practitioners who value what is offered by a conversation—an exchange of ideas and methodology—with academic practitioners, practice based research has not helped that conversation happen.

seven things about TIG

Another meme (this time lobbed from Mixed Meters). Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. If you don't have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

Okay…

1. I am a lapsed composer.
2. …a club-runner by necessity.
3. …writing five articles this year (for reasons that I don’t quite understand (since my income (hahaha) does not dependon it)).
4. I have been blogging occasionally under my (non-pseudonymous) name for several months.
5. I am thus almost tempted to ‘come out of the closet’ on this blog.
   
6. …learning how to teach improvisation by learning how to be a student.
7. …discovering that I can be, especially with people whose help I need but have no respect for, diplomatic (and Machiavellian (and devious)).

Tag: DJA’s Secret Society, Force of Circumstance, HurdAudio, Scratch My Brain, soundslope, SpiderMonkey Stories, Stochasticactus…

Methinied Morricone

I’m not averse to Morricone here at IG (I do, after all, suggest Cinema Paradiso as a melodic atom for practicing guitar…), but here’s something out of my normal orbit:

I would, however, never recommend Metheny’s technique as a starting point to any of my students.

Video via The Jazz Guitarist.

an sms conversation between two teachers of improvised music

SOH: Any tips for dealing with the hopelessly terrified?

TIG: Ritual humiliation? ;-)
     Seriously, i recommend getting everyone to make
     the "least musical sound". Invariably what they do
     is still quite musical (and/or boring and loud),
     so you can push them to do better.

SOH: That sounds like a good idea.

TIG: Honestly, students - they think they should
     preempt the music.... :-)

SOH: These guys seem to think that they could be silent
     when they're asked to perform & somehow the
     improvisation fairy will visit in the night.

TIG: Improv fairy? Mwhahahahaha.

SOH: Haven't you heard of her? She brings freedom & fun
     & exemption from effort & lots of good shit like
     that.

TIG: Substitute the improvisation sandman who comes at
     night to take away your muse if you haven't played.

SOH: Yes, I will rule with fear! Maybe I should get a
     scary costume.

classical dynamics

Okay, Devin Hurd manages to lob me a meme. I’ll bite—anything to inject a little actitity into this (temporarily) neglected blog.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Wish I had a more (overtly) musical book at hand, but here goes:

Jerry B. Marion and Stephen T. Thornton (1995), Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems 4th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt).

As it happens, the would be fifth sentence occurs at the very end of page 123. Thus, taking the first three sentences of page 124:

Example 3.2
Consider a pendulum of length l and a bob of mass m at its end (Figure 3–12) moving through oil with θ decreasing. The massice bob undergoes small oscillations, but the oil retarts the bob’s motion with a resistive force proportional to the speed with Fres=2m√(g/l)(lθ̇). The bob is initially pulled back at t=0 with θ=α and θ̇=0.

Hmm… If this has a link to Devin’s book, it’s in that it reminds me of flipping through Braxton’s Catalog of Compositions.

Okay, I’ll tag a couple of musicians—Dominic Lash and Taylor Ho Bynum—who always seem to be looking for a good read (and might have a more interesting book at hand then a physics text book), and, just for a measure of insanity, I’ll tag sjz. I’m also going to lob this over to roboflutist even if, between taxes and recitals, I suspect she won’t have the time to respond.
Finally, to atone for the choice of a science text book (of the positivist, empirical variety), I’ll tag Zuska.

the grant application algorithm rev. 1.0.0

For FS.

A very simple algorithm:

1. Choose ‘edgy,’ trendy words and phrases that the arts organizations currently love (e.g. ‘collaborative’, ‘sustainability’, ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘defamiliarize’, ‘hybrids’).

2. Lay those words down as if on a scrabble table.

2.5. Optional: get intoxicated / stoned.

3. Try linking those words to make sentences (actual resemblance to grammar is purely coincidental).

4. Make sure targets and goals are not measurable (how exactly can you compute ‘artistic practice’?).

5. Voila! A completed grant application for the arts.

…Yeah, I was talking to a theater stage manager who hit the nail on the head: “arts funding is turning artists into liars.” Too true.

opportunities

There’s no such thing as a wrong note, just (missed) opportunities.

well, this is depressing (addendum)

Dan asked for some background on the London Musicians’ Collective vs. Arts Council of England dispute. Most of what I know, I’d heard on the grapevine. While others have also blogged about it, possibly the most reliable info I have is from the LMC website itself. Look at the two articles ‘LMC Funding Crisis: January 2008’ and ‘LMC Funding Crisis: UPDATE 5 February 2008’. An except from the former article:

The LMC currently finds itself among nearly two hundred arts organisations who are having their Arts Council funding severely cut back. In December we received notice that Arts Council funding, which has always been fundamental to the LMC’s survival, will be cut off from 1 April 2008.

And the update:

Sadly the LMC has not been reprieved by the Arts Council of England, and our funding will stop from 31 March 2008.
We wrote to the Arts Council answering their points of criticism, but clearly failed to dent their intentions…. The fact is that events like the LMC Festival cost a lot of money, eg just one visa for a visiting musician runs into hundreds of pounds.

You may also want to have a look at some of the letters of support for the LMC.

BTW, apologies for not responding to all those who have left comments recently, I’ve been a little overwhelmed (if you can be a little overwhelmed) with stuff (including an upcoming performance with a former teacher of mine… time to practice).

well, this is depressing

From l-m-c.org.uk:

We [the London Musicians’ Collective] sense that no one in the ACE [Arts Council of England] Music Department actually supports the kind of work the LMC does, and that this, rather than the war of statistics, may be the true reason why we are being cut off. This is further evidenced by the fact that no one from the ACE Music Department has attended an LMC event for the past five years, in spite of repeated invitations.

how dumb are guitarists

How dumb are guitarists (at least according to marketing)? Apparently very, very, very (perhaps up to 11+ on the dumb-o-meter).

“Re-issue”, “classic”, “special re-creation”, “original… formula”, “celebrates a return”, “vintage tones”. (Not bad for a 130 word press release).
But seriously, ladies and gentlemen: strings that are “hand-wound slowly”? “vibrate completely”? with “maximum sustain”? and “warm”?

Give me a break.