Thoughts In Closing

A final thought as I close out the blog entries that I feel is relevant to the reading and to my thoughts as of late involves the shape of music through time. If we can imagine space as static in each moment in time, and time as an extra kind of space in which normal space resides, then perhaps there are shapes and patterns within spacetime itself that are analogous to what we can visualize in normal 3-dimensional space. The easiest is to imagine time as linear, and so if we could see all of time at once (which in itself carries all kinds of paradoxes), our lives would appear as long, undulating snakes (for those that have read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, think Tralfamadorians). What would a shape or regularity in a 4-dimensional world look like? My thought is that things that are static within time itself must create a pattern since the same is true for that which is static in 3-space. As an example, human habits and routines would trace out magnificent patterns through time since there would be an element of repetition in those patterns. Most people wake in the morning and head to the bathroom to shower, and so that would be a recurrence in this 4-dimensional world.

It seems to me that the human mind is geared toward symmetry, regularity, and patterns. Music is rich in such traits. When you listen to a song with a steady beat, that beat is somewhat constant in time. It is recursive and so it has a strong sense of regularity which we tend to latch on to. Recorded music, then, no matter how random it was at the time of recording, will also trace out a pattern since it will have the same structure each time it is played. So where does improv fit into all of this? Improvised music, when not recorded but played only once, seems to break the mold. It becomes a one-of-a-kind artifact in spacetime, an oddity if you will, to be treasured in the present and to never recur again in the same form. Perhaps this is why we are so interested in it and some people abhor it. On the one hand, we can appreciate the fact that it is not recursive and so is something new and fresh from the regularity that we enjoy. However, for those that prefer regularity too much, those that will play a score note for note as it is written without any deviation from the sheet music, we can see why improvisation can be terrifying since it is reaching out into new territory that will only be seen once and then never seen again. From my experience in this class, from playing and reading, I feel as though I can embrace the abnormality of improvisation in the music world for it offers plenty of new ground to be covered and explored.

Maximal Chaos and Complexity Measures

I was glad to see that my analogy between musical "spaces" and abstract mathematical spaces made it into the discussion in Chapter 4 which I just finished reading. Apparently I was one step ahead of the game.

An interesting notion in the reading that paralleled my current research in my Complex Analysis class involved the "complexity measure." In trying to quantify the amount of complexity in an improvised piece one may choose to analyze many different features or even the piece as a whole to see what elements change the song as a whole. In much the same way, I am currently working with a couple fellow students to identify what causes maximal chaos in a complex system.

Borgo makes the point that throughout the course of an improvised piece, if the performers choose to branch into unfamiliar playing styles or note sequences, the listeners may become uncomfortable or feel distant to the music being played. With increasing amounts of chaos in the music, this could spell trouble for the performer-audience relationship. Likewise, when creating music with The John Fox Company, one of the things we have explicitly tried to avoid while performing music is an extreme amount of chaos. The nature of the music is already unconventional as it is, with the conglomeration of odd sounds being layered on top of each other in a sea of electronic chaos. Too many strange sounds on top of each other may begin to sound like a drone or may become unintelligible, and the surprises we are able to create in the music become drowned out and thus the musical experience is less effective.

In the mathematical research in complex analysis, we take a similar approach to the problem of achieving maximal chaos. Without going into too much detail, we have essentially picked specific families of functions that are generalized and we can easily study the behavior of under iteration, and we play with different methods of iteration in order to produce the most "picture" which translates into maximal chaos. The more stuff going on in our graph, the more chaos is present. By restricting ourselves to such familiar functions, we are doing what many improvisers do in their music; that is, the improviser of music will choose phrases wisely or stick to a particular chord progression in order to maintain the element of surprise as well as the audience's attention. The element of familiarity avoids alienating the audience, in much the same way that well-understood functions give us a starting point in research and allow us to draw sensible conclusions rather than give us information that could be interpreted many ways if we are not familiar with the dynamics of the functions.

Uh oh.

Thus far in the class I have felt fairly comfortable with my performances in front of everyone else when improvising. Whether it was on trumpet or guitar I feel as though I've been able to explore different sounds and techniques comfortably and I never really felt threatened by the audience as everyone was equally understanding and in the same boat as I was. However, the tables were certainly turned during the performance the day before Symposium. I went into the performance just as though it were only my classmates before me in the audience so that some of the pressure was off. The activity with the class as a whole, both in the opening song and the end, I felt went very well and I played through that just as though I was not being judged by people who had not heard our work before. The part that became shaky and really tested my ability to improvise was when the John Fox Company had to perform.

We decided the week before to just go into it without any plan other than the theme of the song was "the crazy bus" which is a theme we had used in class before. Other than that, we were free to do what we wanted and we wished to rely on the moment itself rather than have more plans and structure. We were all definitely on board with the idea, and so we hooked our instruments up and got ready to play. After we had played, we noticed one of the cables for the guitar was loose, and so I was unable to contribute anything on the guitar to the song which made me really nervous at the time because I was only prepared to do guitar work since that's what I had done all along. Nate was familiar with the Kaoss pad and keyboard, and Ben had a good handle on the microphone and loop pedal. It was when I was unable to make any noise with the guitar that I knew the true test was there. This was perhaps the most nerve-wracking and yet educational experience in terms of improvisation. I had always relied on my equipment working and so never gave a thought as to what I would do should it fail. The true improvisation came out when I realized my safety plan was gone; I was in front of an audience of people eager to hear what we were about to do and I had no back up plans. I think we made a good recovery though, as Nate manned the Kaoss pad, Ben on the loop pedal and vocals, and I played around with the keyboard. I have no idea how to work a piano other than play the James Bond theme and Funky Town, so I felt like I had to finally step up to the plate and let loose on it. While the song didn't progress as I had expected based on our past performances for the class, I feel as though we truly improvised, more so than before given the circumstances of the situation, and I think that outcome is even better than going in with a plan and following it. That's when I truly felt the urgency, if I can call it that, of the improvisation in the moment. I'm glad it worked out that way.