The complex plane is your audience.

After reading the first couple chapters of Sync or Swarm, I'm beginning to view improvisation a little differently. The first couple times we played music in class I was nervous about playing out and expressing myself through the music. I'm beginning to become more comfortable with playing and throwing ideas out there even if they're not what I envisioned at that moment. Either I am becoming comfortable with the styles of the people I'm playing with, or I am coming to accept that music doesn't have to be as rigid as a composed piece, that I can take it where I want and it is still music. Though it is probably a mixture of both, I feel that I am gaining a stronger sense of a group dynamic when playing because though my individual contributions at first seem spontaneous and unplanned, I am becoming more aware that I am constantly listening to what everyone else is doing in the moment and continually creating phrases in my head that seem to match the current dynamic.

This is where I feel the connection to the complex analysis course I am taking is strongest and is why I think it's a truly valid connection because it seems so coincidental. Here are these individuals, these points in the complex plane, creating music with their instruments, applying these functions over and over, taking feedback from the initial function and reentering it to create at first seemingly random behavior on the point level, the level of each individual playing. But when viewed from above at the planar level, the level of the audience, there is a boundary created, within which beautiful patterns can arise, much in the same way a song, and with it emotions elicited from the audience, can spring up from seemingly random contributions from each individual member.

It really makes me wonder what sorts of order will arise from apparent disorder. More to come on that later.

It's May, and I am so glad I learned...

It is May, the end of the semester is here, and I am really excited about learning about the dynamics of improvisation. The only way to really learn improvisation is through exposure, and I have been privileged enough to experience a vast array of artists that have improvised in one way or another. Though their styles of music may differ, or even the manner in which they improvise is different (be it free improvisation, or a certain note is worked around as a theme), they are all taking part in a dynamic experience that transcends scripted performances. Each artist, for their own reasons, are participating in music that has no predefined shape. The system (musicians and their instruments) feeds on itself and in turn creates musical output that is dependent on what is put in - emotion, sound, and any structure that is thrown in (if at all). Having experienced the many ways in which improvisation can take place has opened my mind to a new way of experience music - not as some static recording but as an amorphous blob that is created in the heat of the moment with true passion for the music taking place.

Perhaps my favorite example of this is in Miles Davis' album "Kind of Blue." I've said it before and I'm sure I will say it again, but he is my favorite jazz artist. Maybe it is because I've been exposed to him the most, but his style of playing just feels so right. He meanders his way through songs as though he is taking my hand and showing me what he was thinking as he played. His dynamic is so easily associated with jazz in general and yet it remains special in a way. He doesn't always fill the silence with noise...as a music teacher once said to me, "it's not the notes you play...it's the notes you don't play." I feel this is definitely a rule, if you will, that Miles Davis lived by in his playing, and it really turned his improvisation into a freely moving entity that couldn't be replicated by rigorous recording sessions and stacks of sheet music. I aspire to be able to play like him, though I hope that my exposure to other improvisers of music in this class will allow me to branch out and create my own style, perhaps almost parallel to Miles Davis', but nonetheless a creation of my own experience and emotion.