My improvisation practice has been ongoing & developing increasingly, it is something I have always had interest and enjoyment in, and has been part of my method of musical creation through a number of my musical projects.
My first straight improvised performance was a few months ago with a cello player I often collaborate with called Abi Asisa, where she played cello and I played guitar (as well as triggering some sounds on the SP404), and we improvised for around half an hour. Asisa & I often improvise at mine and we enjoy it a lot and have made some music that I really like through doing this, however putting it in a live situation was a lot more challenging as we had certain sound issues with the pickup on her cello and the sound system, as well as just the pressure of performing improvisation live together for the first time. The pressure of feeling like we needed to come up with something good straight away made it more difficult for us to feel comfortable and for the good parts to come naturally, and I found that we didn’t play as good as we do when its just us with nobody watching, however I still really enjoyed the performance and learned from it. Another challenge was that at this point neither of us had any pedals, and we were wishing that we did, particularly we were wishing we had loop pedals so that we could build on our ideas, this meant that I ended up mostly playing repeating chord progressions while Abi solo’d on top with her cello, whereas ideally I would be able to loop the chord progression and play over it, and Abi would be able to loop cello parts and layer harmonies over her cello layers and build more of a piece. It would also have been nice (and sounded better) if we had some nice effect pedals to run our instruments through, however there was also some positives in the stripped back organic nature of the performance which gave it a more human feel in my opinion.
Another recent opportunity for improvised performance was when I was asked to play with a friend of mine (an artist that goes by the name ‘nwakke’) at the ICA (opening for Slauson Malone 1, a performance project by Jasper Marsalis). This was one of my favourite shows that I’ve done, and definitely my favourite person I’ve had the pleasure of opening for as Jasper Marsalis is one of my favourite & most inspirational artists. For this performance nwakke performed their songs while I improvised on guitar through my Line6 DL4 pedal (as well as triggering sfx on my SP404), along with my friend jaso who played guitar and contributed vocals. We also performed one of jaso’s songs (that I had contributed guitar to, and nwakke had contributed vocals to), as well as collectively improvising over a few songs that I had made that I triggered on the SP404. This method of a performance being structured yet still incorporating large elements of improvisation is a nice balance for me, as the loose structure provides a bit of comfort & takes off a bit of pressure.
I then had another opportunity for improvised performance on the 5th of January at jaso’s ‘Orbkestra’ show for his latest album ‘The Red Orb’. This included a headline set by the Orbkestra (jaso, along with nwakke on vocals, Abi Asisa on cello & myself on guitar, stylophone & SP404), as well as opening sets by Abi Asisa & myself (again a slightly structured yet largely improvised set) and a solo set by nwakke. This set by Asisa & myself was a nice improvement from the first set we did, as this time we had been playing together for longer, and we had also acquired pedals by this point, meaning that Abi could build layers with her cello parts, as well as having delay and reverb, and I could create a wider range of sounds with the various effects on my pedals (Line6 DL4 & Electro-Harmonix Pitch-fork Octave pedal). Unfortunately the loop setting on my DL4 was not working which meant I couldn’t loop, but this was still fine as I had some parts on my SP404 prepared for us to play over, as well as leaving room for more stripped back sections of just Abi & I’s live playing. For the ‘Orbkestra’ set it was a 45 minute one piece track playing that jaso put together with songs from ‘The Red Orb’ as well as some other unreleased songs, that Abi, Nwakke & myself improvised over throughout, whilst jaso sang, and the set finished with a short collective improvisation based on some ideas from a voice note of us improvising in rehearsals for the show. This set went well and we had a good reception, and it even brought some close friends to tears in moments, which was a good sign that the emotion expressed in the music translated to the audience.
The most recent improvisation performance I have done was yesterday (the 7th January 2023) at a show I put on called Splayworld. This was the 7th rendition of this series of shows, where we curate varied line ups of experimental music, underground/ left-field hiphop & other left-field music. I did a set at this show in which I prepared a recording of sounds to go over, and some sounds to trigger on my SP404, and I played a combination of electric violin (going through my two pedals that I mentioned earlier, and then through my amplifier for additional effects such as chorus, delay & reverb, and then through my SP404 so that the sound all went into the main speakers) and stylophone (also going through SP404 so that I could use the SP’s tape delay.
We had some technical issues during the set with the speakers turning off, which we couldn’t work out the cause of. We think it was possibly overheating, which may have been caused from all the power coming from one wall socket with multiple extension leads. However we kept it moving and tuning on and off the speakers temporarily helped to keep them coming back. To help with this for the following sets we had some sound directly out the guitar amp and only some sounds from the main speakers, which meant less power needed, and this seemed to help. My set went well though and I thoroughly enjoyed it, I felt it was a kind of statement of intent of my artistic direction I’m heading I by my choice of improvisation, and my use of electric violin through pedals.
My decision to purchase a violin and start trying to teach myself was largely influenced by Ornette Coleman (who taught himself violin), as well as the Sun Ra album strange strings (in which the Arkestra played a variety of string instruments that they didn’t actually know how to play, in a way of expressing that musicality is universal and it presents a statement about music and sound itself that challenges conventional ideas about structure and methodology in music. The ideas presented in this work and the act of challenging a convention so directly, is in itself expanding to the listeners conscious idea about music, especially given that Sun Ra and his Arkestra had already developed a strong reputation of the level of their playing through their Hard Bop & blues-based playing of previous works.
This ongoing experimentation in improvisation is vital in my ongoing exploration of the sonic landscape of my taste that I am exploring in my portfolio work, as I am expanding this area as the practice (both creating & listening) continues and develops, and it is continually opening my mind and perception of music, as well as translating to broaden my perspective on other aspects of life, which is essentially the goal of my work, and the desired effect of my work on the listener. As Alex De Little spoke of setting up situations of transformation, I aim for my work to also set up a situation for transformation of the listener in my positioning of them through my choice of sounds the ideas expressed in my music.