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.