An interesting point was made in the reading that I thought was worth discussing here. Borgo mentions the habit that people have of using sensory verbs out of context; for example, "I see what you mean," or "can you shed some light on this subject for me." Such uses of the words or phrases are not coincidental to me. My understanding of consciousness and its ties with physical reality (whatever that means) is that though the two cannot be separated, it seems to me that there are things outside of a conscious mind (physical objects, for example) that are observed by the senses of a sentient being and there are symbols in the mind (not letters, or even real objects, but merely something that happens in the brain when a word is said, or an action is perceived) that are slowly built up and interconnected in such a way that rational thought is then possible by the "communication" between such symbols.
It is sensible then that we should describe ways of understanding things with verbs associated with the senses, since our senses are our source of input, our way of connecting with external stimuli. What we typically refer to is our actions within space and time. However, when we start using sensory terminology within music, we are not particularly using our senses in the same manner as with physical space. Rather, we are giving this "musical space" properties of its own. The sound we perceive begins to take on texture, volume has its highs and lows, and note duration is discrete or continuous.
Though this is not a physical space in terms of space and time, it is nonetheless visible in our minds and we should thus be unafraid to explore it in its entirety. Perhaps it is infinite, or perhaps there are boundaries, but surely we have a long way to go before we find them, for music is continuously evolving and taking on new sounds everyday. I think writing a piece of music can be likened to charting a map, and each detailed note implies a more specific route in our musical space. Improvisation, then, is a highly exploratory method of traversing this space. It's as though you're flown to this magical land, dropped off, and told to have fun. Of course, the route is not fixed, and every spot is accessible in one way or another by any given location.
While this space seems abstract, it is not unlike an abstract mathematical space such as a Hilbert space. We can operate on it in numerous ways and we can chart particular shapes or patterns by well-defined rules. We can even create abstract objects that accurately describe physical phenomena, all by using abstractions that originate in the mind. In a similar fashion, we can create musical objects and patterns in our musical space that correspond to triggered thoughts of physical reality or even emotions which elicit physical reactions in our bodies. In this sense the musical space and physical reality are interconnected by means of the mind, in the same way mathematical spaces are attached to physical realities.
This analogy is important, in my opinion, because much in the same way we can predict physical phenomena through mathematical reasoning, we should be able to chart new territory in a musical space that is capable of manipulating thoughts and emotions in new ways. I also think that perhaps the collective consciousness of a group of improvising performers is due to exploring the same local regions of musical space and perhaps even traveling together through the space, which establishes a connection between two or more different conscious minds.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
I Am Certain That I Am Uncertain
Can we be certain there is uncertainty in music? We sure can. When you hear a song on the radio, typically it is of the teleological variety; that is, you can identify the hook of the song, and maybe even predict some of the tried-and-true chord changes. The moments where a feeling of suspense is building in the music only to be followed by a release is all too familiar to anyone that has experienced music. But what happens when you lose that sense of direction in the music, that orientation that is so easily achieved in teleological music?
Improvisation is a credible answer in this particular case, and it seems to fly in the face of the world we know of music. Prior to experiencing improvised music in depth, music to me has always seemed to fit into that teleological category, though I never identified it as such. It was just something I inherently knew. I knew that although a storm was brewing on the horizon of a musical composition, there would be a hint of sunshine just beyond, a place where I would be safe among the sound so to speak. After exposure to truly improvised music, all bets were off. No longer did I "know" that there was a safe haven; now I have to be prepared for anything, to become an active listener and participant in the music around me.
In a way I feel as though this uncertainty is not unlike that which came packaged up with new physical laws introduced by quantum mechanics (which, coincidentally, features its own "Uncertainty Principle"). The world prior to Einstein and Heisenberg was merely a world of Laplacian determinism, a place where if you knew one state of the universe at a particular time, you could in theory predict what would happen some arbitrary time later. There was a logical progression from physical frame to physical frame, and time flowed on in the process. But what experimentation has shown (and the mathematical formalism to back it up) is that we cannot possibly know with exactitude all properties of a system simultaneously. There is a degree of uncertainty based on how precise we wish to focus on one part.
Music, too, has this inbuilt uncertainty when a performer (or performers) picks up their instrument and begins to improvise a piece of music. No longer can the audience say "here is where I am, so this is where we must be going," but instead, they must be satisfied with "here I am, but what does that mean for the rest of the piece?" There is just no saying where a piece could go, how the dynamics will change, what the volume might do a few seconds from now. It is this inherent uncertainty that allows everyone to engage in the music at the moment and forget about the orientation in time. The music doesn't have a definite shape at a later time, for it can only progress through the "now." This spontaneity I think is what gives improvisation its alluring properties, and in my opinion, the same can be said about the dynamics of our own universe.
Improvisation is a credible answer in this particular case, and it seems to fly in the face of the world we know of music. Prior to experiencing improvised music in depth, music to me has always seemed to fit into that teleological category, though I never identified it as such. It was just something I inherently knew. I knew that although a storm was brewing on the horizon of a musical composition, there would be a hint of sunshine just beyond, a place where I would be safe among the sound so to speak. After exposure to truly improvised music, all bets were off. No longer did I "know" that there was a safe haven; now I have to be prepared for anything, to become an active listener and participant in the music around me.
In a way I feel as though this uncertainty is not unlike that which came packaged up with new physical laws introduced by quantum mechanics (which, coincidentally, features its own "Uncertainty Principle"). The world prior to Einstein and Heisenberg was merely a world of Laplacian determinism, a place where if you knew one state of the universe at a particular time, you could in theory predict what would happen some arbitrary time later. There was a logical progression from physical frame to physical frame, and time flowed on in the process. But what experimentation has shown (and the mathematical formalism to back it up) is that we cannot possibly know with exactitude all properties of a system simultaneously. There is a degree of uncertainty based on how precise we wish to focus on one part.
Music, too, has this inbuilt uncertainty when a performer (or performers) picks up their instrument and begins to improvise a piece of music. No longer can the audience say "here is where I am, so this is where we must be going," but instead, they must be satisfied with "here I am, but what does that mean for the rest of the piece?" There is just no saying where a piece could go, how the dynamics will change, what the volume might do a few seconds from now. It is this inherent uncertainty that allows everyone to engage in the music at the moment and forget about the orientation in time. The music doesn't have a definite shape at a later time, for it can only progress through the "now." This spontaneity I think is what gives improvisation its alluring properties, and in my opinion, the same can be said about the dynamics of our own universe.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The John Fox Company
Although I particularly enjoyed the music that arose from the various experimentations in my previous group, I decided to try something a little different by teaming up with Nate and Ben to produce some more experimental music via The John Fox Company (a rather peculiar nomenclature). As we demonstrated for the class, our music is reliant on electronic devices to aid us in the texturing of the soundscape. Of paramount importance is the looping system we are continually updating each week, where we shift around the roles of instrumentation and electronics operator, but the goal is the same - to dynamically generate themes out of layered sounds.
The looping capability allows us to begin with an idea, set it "in stone," and then explore new ideas that relate to previous ideas. In a sense, we are going on a random walk but we have a concrete memory of where we've been. Each new idea, each sequence of sounds, is imprinted in the music, and the sound as a whole begins to grow. Again, order from chaos is created. Each random tidbit of sound is superimposed on all previous random sounds to create a super-structure that exhibits order. Each individual thought, when separated from this continuous stream of music into discrete bits, seems to have no apparent meaning when isolated.
Another thing that is worth noting is that we have also been testing the boundaries of improvisation in a subtle way. When we sit down and perform a song outside of class, we typically generate a theme from that particular session. Once we have a theme, we consider it another song that we have, as though we could simply write it down and have it forever. Instead, after randomly creating a song by pure improvisation, a theme surfaces, which we then extract and say "That's a new song. Let's call it ____." However, when we perform that song again, we are merely picking the theme as a starting point, and not playing the song exactly as it was first performed. We still improvise, but we stick to the theme that initially emerged. So far we have produced some interesting and fun pieces, and we continue to shuffle around the equipment that we employ, so I think we are headed in a good direction as a group.
The looping capability allows us to begin with an idea, set it "in stone," and then explore new ideas that relate to previous ideas. In a sense, we are going on a random walk but we have a concrete memory of where we've been. Each new idea, each sequence of sounds, is imprinted in the music, and the sound as a whole begins to grow. Again, order from chaos is created. Each random tidbit of sound is superimposed on all previous random sounds to create a super-structure that exhibits order. Each individual thought, when separated from this continuous stream of music into discrete bits, seems to have no apparent meaning when isolated.
Another thing that is worth noting is that we have also been testing the boundaries of improvisation in a subtle way. When we sit down and perform a song outside of class, we typically generate a theme from that particular session. Once we have a theme, we consider it another song that we have, as though we could simply write it down and have it forever. Instead, after randomly creating a song by pure improvisation, a theme surfaces, which we then extract and say "That's a new song. Let's call it ____." However, when we perform that song again, we are merely picking the theme as a starting point, and not playing the song exactly as it was first performed. We still improvise, but we stick to the theme that initially emerged. So far we have produced some interesting and fun pieces, and we continue to shuffle around the equipment that we employ, so I think we are headed in a good direction as a group.
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