When I was a teenager learning about music from my bass teacher, who was an ardent fan of Charlie Parker and Lennie Tristano, the notion of improvisation intimidated me immensely. After listening intently to these guys on vinyl, and observing my teacher's raptured looks, I thought to myself, "how does one choose?"Being far away from technical mastery of my instrument didn't help. Licks were not yet embedded in my consciousness, even as my teacher urged me to "play what you hear." I didn't as yet hear much of anything.
Yet, if that genius was intimidating, what would a brilliant improvisational genius look like today, or even years from now, given all the tools that are available to us thanks to the likes of the late Les Paul (multitrack recording and editing) and Robert Moog (synthesis)?
Our ability to alter the parameters of sound extend to timbre, waveforms and more. Things the great Parker and Tristano did not have to calculate in their amazing minds.
What will the next great musical "genius" show us? (There are so many geniuses running around, perhaps there will not be a "one" or "two" greats.)
DJ's and remixers stir my imagination. (See the Pandora Musicology Series Episode below for a description of but the smallest of sampling thinking.) Because they are fluent in thinking about the alteration of musical parameters, quite often in live settings. Granted some electronic dance music is highly repetitve. Granted also, the audience is not always paying attention to the nuances, because they are dancing instead.
But some live performances with sound remixing are truly amazing. How do these artists' minds work? What exactly is their "instrument?" How do they "play what they hear" when what they can hear is literally the entire panopoly of what they have heard before in not just music (vinyl, CDs and MP3s) but what they have found in life (movie clips, sounds of nature, the human voice and more.)
How far could a contemporary Charlie Parker go in improvising sound?
And why stop with sound?
More on that in the next post.
From Pandora:
The three members of hip hop group V.E.R.A. Clique, one producer/beatmaker (Dan Craig) and two MCs (Anderson Ray and Macsen Apollo) join producer/beatmaker Johnny Igaz to talk about sampling. We look at hardware vs. software sampling, hear how different drum tones are layered to make for fuller hits, and dissect a sampled production. Craig and Igaz both work here at Pandora as well. (11 mins.)
That link above is to V.E.R.A. Clique's site, but this one is to their Pandora artist profile.
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