Improvisation One Hundred Years Later

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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A Simple Philosophy to Help Mankind

I am a recovering political junkie. I don't like the controversy of politics, or how crazy it makes people. I prefer not to wade into political controversy when there is very little chance of winning. I have learned a lot of hard lessons about this activity over the years and I try to stay on the wagon.

But now, when wild charges are being lobbed around about why people don't want so much government spending and debt and intervention into various sectors of the economy, we see some people, our leaders in government, engaged in the most outrageous ad hominem attacks and demonization against anyone who disagrees with them and their wild, self-serving activities.

I don't like being called a member of some conspiracy or a hateful person simply because I don't have faith in government's (read: mediocre, headline-chasing politicians) ability to save us from ourselves.

Embedded below is a very simple, powerful statement of facts about our current government programs. And a clear articulation of why markets work to improve the general well being of humanity and government does not.

There is no hate in this. There is no "code" or conspiracy. There is nothing here that well-intentioned progressives can take umbrage at. (Although, they will never give me the same credit of good intentions if I say that I truly believe the market, not government, is the best way to make life better for my fellow man.)

For the self-righteous progressive, people who articulate the cause of freedom can never be taken at face value. Why? Because to do so would require the hard work and risk to one's own righteous self-image of having to address real arguments and real facts like those articulated by Judge Napolitano below.

This Week with the Band: Takeaways

We played a great gig the other night at Kappler's Bar and Hotel in Patchogue. A quaint and clean place as bars go, literally just south of the railroad tracks.

Takeaways from this week's performance with the band:

• I am much more comfortable playing and singing out in clubs than before. People were three feet away from me and it didn't bother me a bit.
• My amp can sound fine, and so can everybody else's. But we have to have a dedicated sound person out there covering our mix. Can't rely on just the goodwill of our musician friends.The mix was good, but some anomalies arose.
  
• The crowd loved our uptempo numbers. In a short set like that, don't drop down that energy with something more obscure and slower, like we did right in the middle of the set this time.
• There are so many wonderful, talented folks out there, doing just what we did. Getting together under the auspices of our promoter/host to perform because we love it. Some of the attendees blew me away with their singing and playing ability, and inspired me to work harder at both.

Our next gig is Saturday, August 8th, at Bartini in Babylon. (bartinibar.com). Another short warm up set. More lessons to be learned. More nice people to meet.

Another Fun Musical Discovery: Bonobo

Pandora.com just keeps making my musical life better. Another great sonic revelation for me is DJ and remixer Bonobo. (The flute can be so cool.)

Here's a wonderful sample from YouTube.

A Meditation on Life's Absurdity is No Place for Politics

I'm a sucker for meditation on life's mysteries and meaning. In fact, I think of myself lately as a "logos-holic."

So why wouldn't I like the new, much-talked-about production of Exit the King, starring Geoffrey Rush? Particularly given my turn toward existentialism of late, and its cutting meditations on life's absurdities, as well as Rush's acclaimed performance?

Heather MacDonald notes the power of the play, but bemoans the politically didactic production.

I think a fair-minded person would agree that if I approach of work a literature deeply concerned about my own mortality, the fleeting nature of my desire and the falling away of all that is within me, the last thing I care about is George W. Bush, as cast member Susan Sarandon and the show's producer do; attempting to shoehorn it into this great work.

Why are they not denounced as philistines then by the theater community? I don't know.

But perhaps I'll search Amazon for another production of this masterpiece.

Thanks anyway, Broadway.

Out of Suffering Comes Beauty: Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Tonight, due to the sadness of a long-suffering friend, I find myself reflecting very much on the troubles of this life.

To console myself somewhat, I turn to one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard, inspired by great human suffering.

This classical music video is taken from the second movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3. The vocals are sung with incredible passion by Dawn Upshaw.

Górecki has maintained that the overall work is about the ties between mother and child. (One might add to that the qualifier "broken by war.")

However, the second movement particularly was inspired by a prayer to the Virgin Mary scribbled by an 18-year old girl, Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, on a Gestapo cell wall in the Polish town of Zakopane. She would later die there.

This particular piece of the symphony is often associated with Holocaust memorials, and was even performed at Auschwitz for a documentary film.

It is still one of my favorite pieces of music.

As I listen to it, I wonder what is it about suffering that draws beauty, even sometimes incredible, ethereal beauty such as this, into this world. And, why does it have to be that way?

I love teaching. It teaches me things. No matter if the material is old or new, I always learn something about a thinker, an idea, or myself.

This semester has been no different. I've had the new opportunity to teach Western Philosophy II, covering everyone from Descartes to Nietzsche. And learning so much in the process.

I find myself thinking a lot about the views of Soren Kierkegaard lately. I have not studied him much in my career. Yet, my thinking was like his during important times in my life.

Independently of Kierkegaard, but now with additional support in reading him, I find myself thinking about life in what I would call "existentialist" terms. As opposed to "sentimentalist" terms. Whether anyone will recognize this distinction the way I do I don't know. But what it means for me is that life is not uncomplicated by desire (sentimentality.) Life is defined by the frustration of desire more so, I think, than it's fulfillment.

But, start with Kierkegaard's views about the man who says confidently that he will come to a friend's dinner, only to be struck and killed by a falling tile that very same day. Kierkegaard's story to illustrate the fragility of life, our inability to speak with any confidence about the future, and our need to recognize the mystery of our existence, strikes me deeply. My own "tile" falling was the Falling Man at the World Trade Center. I meditated for months after the events of 9-11 on how those people that day went to work that morning thinking all about the future.

Those meditations reawakened in me and caused me to interpret anew my own mother's death at 48. She wanted a certain kind of future for herself, after many years of sacrificing for her children and husband. Yet, none of that came true for her.

What is desire then, which is future oriented? What is its function in God's world, which is fragile and contingent?

When desire is part of love, we say it comes from God. At least the first time, when you get married. After that, it's on its own.

What about desire for health, growth, self-development and success? Does that come from God? Even as it resides in the mind of the dying? At what point is it no longer "from God?"

What if we lose desire that "comes from God?" Is that possible?

Kierkegaard was puzzled by human desire. Yet, he tried ultimately to validate all of it through faith in God. Even faith in "impossible" things. He illustrates this in the story in Fear and Trembling of the common man who falls in love with a princess he can never possess. Yet, he will hold on to this impossibility through faith in God, in whom nothing is impossible. Of course, that faith no longer requires even the presence of the object of desire. The princess can go her way.

I interpret that story to say that the point is that the desire is held in faith as legitimate, despite its worldly impossibility and absurdity. Is Kierkegaard then validating desire in a Platonic fashion? The world can never fulfill the desire, but what we long for will find fulfillment nevertheless? Somehow?

Shades of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, which I read repeatedly in high school. Lewis puzzles over the death of his beloved wife, in the face of a all loving God. He draws the conclusion that he will not simply get back what he once had. He will get back something much more deeply satisfying than what he previously had.

Shades of Thomas Aquinas as well, who holds that in the afterlife, the beatific vision provides first the intimate knowledge of God as first cause (an intellectual satisfaction) but all things thereafter that we "desire" are fulfilled as a secondary effect. See my previous post on that here.

Why is desire secondary, here and in the hereafter?