Trapping the celebratory, buzzing insect of improvisation in amber can be rewarding. It's just important not to mistake that maplet for the territory it attempts to cover (hey, i wonder how many random metaphors can I throw at you in one graf?).
One of my primary teachers in the art of improv was the percussionist Mike Mahaffay, a.k.a. Robert Mike Mahaffay, may he rest in infinitely groovy peace. The incredible openness yet demand for art that be brought to each session were amazing. Over the years, I played with him numerous times in our weird little Portland experimental world: Black Orchid, Tres Gone, The Gone Orchestra, with members of Smegma, Soriah, Three Leg Torso, etc..... often at fun or off-the-wall venues like Voodoo Doughnuts or improvising a live soundtrack to Man Ray films for TV and KBOO radio. Very fun stuff.
Annnnyway: Mikey liked to record most sessions in some form (the options were limited early on). As recording and playing-back became easier with technology, he always wanted to listen to a jam right after we'd finished. I found this awful and refused. For me, it's good to do some things utterly sans documentation; it can also be good to take the documentation but not fuck with it for a while. Just leave the thing alone so you can savor the magic of whatever experience it was, a magic untainted by your post-performance anxieties or critical faculties.
That said, Mike was a cannabis-fueled musical genius, whereas I was more of a tobacco-chainsmoking interdisciplinary tourist, so hey, maybe his approach was just plain better.
A few links Mike's wonderful spirit are below. Guess I should upload more of our music together, bands like Black Orchid and Kings on Straw Mats, because they don't appear to be on the interwebz at present!
Wow a great slice of the almighty groove. Mike was clearly "the nazz." Some of my highest highs have been in collective improv jams with freaks, for purposes (films, etc) or not. I have learned a lot about the spiritual world from the capacity of stoned, sloppy, untrained improvisers to occasionally produce music of magic, sensitivity, and extraordinary (momentary) integrity. I rarely have listened to them afterwards. Its nice when there is someone around to do the do.
I should add that Mike was a true professional, so I don't mean to make him sound sloppy in any way. He was in the original Broadway touring band of Jesus Christ Superstar. He played at CBGBs, opened for the Ramones, lived in a loft. Later he was a percussionist for the Oregon Symphony. You get the idea...
There's nothing quite like having an epic jam (either sober or otherwise) then getting appropriately elevated and listening to it from a "naïve" perspective - I can relate to Mike (without possessing the genius). I can also relate to having friends who don't appreciate that insatiable need to get reflexive! Having said that, I agree with the notion that it can be good to either not record at all, or to give something some space and check it out after a break....then again, that's part of the point of altering your state of consciousness between listening and playing - you can sometimes acquire that distance psychology, without having to wait (and maybe experiential delay discounting just isn't in the wheel house of the cannabis-fuelled psychonaut?).
This is great “ Kinda sad-sack elven-hippie raga-blues stuff, sometimes lovely and sometimes tedious. Once in a while I turn on the electronic shruti box for full sandalwood misterioso.” Sounds a lot like my guitar practice these past few years, on the other end of decades of music school, rock bands, noise combos (I got to play with Rhys Chatham once, immortalized on one of his Guitar Trio albums). It’d be fun to exchange licks some time...I’ve been dreaming of an online sharing community of musical meditators but alas, I’m all Zoomed out.
ha, i came over here specifically to quote that line and cackle with appreciation.... i too am a writer-critic-musician-artist.
when we write stuff like "Kinda sad-sack elven-hippie raga-blues stuff, sometimes lovely and sometimes tedious" about others, sometimes folks ask huffily, " Would you ever say that about your own work?" or "I'd like to see you try [insert art form here]!"
and it's just a hoot to honestly respond, you bet your sweet arse i'd write that about my own work. very nicely done, erik. i'm having a rough spring, and it's nice to giggle about something.
Sorry to hear about the rough spring, I usually go into the black muck come May June so I am getting prepped. A weird time to get the seasonal blues but not actually that uncommon. And wow do we need to be able to laugh at our own "creativity," our own "process," our own "healing," our own "spirituality" most of all. Especially at a time when everyone seems more prickly, more quick to take offense, to get, I don't wanna sat snowflaky, but....it's a weird time for "critique" -- everyone is doing it, its more no holds barred than usual, and yet everyone seems more sensitive, or fake sensitive. So we need to laugh at ourselves to break the spell!
Loved this, Erik. Didn't know you were a guitarist, but had an inkling you might be based on your taste in music. I can totally relate to losing your mojo as soon as you hit record - "don't fear the little red light" - is a mantra I've repeated often but which has never quite stuck in the way I might have hoped...
I've recorded a couple of hundred little improvs since our first lockdown here in Melbourne, the vast majority on my iPhone. Half-baked and lo-fi as they are, they're worth more to me than they ever will be to anyone else, but that's enough to make them worthwhile. After reading your post I listened to the first track on Avatars... "Harakiri, Kali Style" - then recorded this little improvised loop. Totally cheating to use a looper of course, but I'm no Robbie Basho:
Thanks for the link Timothy, that was a groovy little jam. I have only played around with loopers a tiny bit--I am almost afraid of the seduction. I am very curious to hear what happens when I start listening closely to more of my own recordings. So far I am mostly pleasantly surprised, not necessarily with how "good" they are, but with how much I can enjoy noticing or appreciating elements that I have either worked on intentionally or that I don't notice.
It also reminds me how situational everything is, especially with "practice" (spiritual or otherwise. Somewhere on this thread Brian James writes about how freeing improvisation is when you don't record or carve it into a composition, like a pure gift. I think that is true but by sticking to that pattern for years, at least in my case, it stopped having that effect and in essence became a way to put my head in the musical sand. No form without context!
Well, I certainly agree with Brian - there is an absolute freedom born from just being present in the moment, no matter what one is doing. Certainly music, perhaps improvised music above all, is one of the most potent teachers we have for revealing the ephemerality of the moment.
On the other hand, recording yourself offers many other lessons. It’s a great augment to your practice of course, because you can hear what “works”, and perhaps even detect the lapses in listening that may have occurred while you were playing (perhaps when playing becomes more mechanical). Recording yourself is one of the best ways to improve your playing. But even more, the ability to reflect on the musical moment from another perspective augments music’s power as a teacher about the effect of perspective on perception - the interdependence of doing and perceiving. A photo can teach you that you are an object as well as a subject. Listening to yourself play, especially listening to yourself improvise, provides a related flavour of insight, partly because improvising is inherently a combination of doing and listening (i.e. forms a tight loop between subject and object). When you get to shift all the way over into listening, you instantly receive information on the way in which perspective moulds perception. I actually find this effect even more pronounced when I record myself improvising with other musicians - it’s a great way to expose your ego to itself, for better or worse.
So, to your original point - both/and. Not recording is marvellous. Recording is too. Hitting record on a portable recording device during an improv session can be very productive (or it can kill the vibe!). Constructing a multi-tracked piece in a DAW can also be a very worthwhile practice. All of these things are just different ways of engaging with music as a practice (anthropotechnics, yo!) and it’s pretty cool to live in the 21st century, when it’s so easy to move from one mode of engagement to another. Of course that flexibility confers responsibility - don’t kill your joy in improvising by trying to Instagram everything you do, etc. - but “with great freedom comes great responsibility”.....
Oh, and loopers are totally a blessing and a curse, too! Great practice tool. Great creative tool. Easy to get trapped. I mean, loops of all kinds are easy to get stuck in, right!?
Oh I agree...there’s a distinction between music as practice and music as art-making. I’ve done plenty of both recording and “letting it be”. After a particularly cosmic jam I’ve often been reminded of that Tenacious D episode where Jack Black admonishes KG “ALWAYS record. ALWAYS record!”
An approach I’ve taken is to just set the digital recorder up and jam...at some point losing self-consciousness and letting the spontaneous magic come through. This was more costly when we used tape but nowadays data capture is cheap. :-)
No that's clearly the path: just keep putting the thing on until it disappears. Of course, then you have to pick through it if you want to select the jewels, which is a whole other level of feedbackin that I have next to no experience with. How do you approach listening to this stuff if you have it on record all the time?
One thing I have been learning to do/experimenting with is to make precisely "non musical" sounds in practice, not just to do repetitions of scales but make moves that are purely exploratory, or chromatic, etc. In a spirit of "non music."
I've never been very comfortable with the kind of passive/background listening I think Brian is referring to, so I tend to try and listen to everything in focussed listening sessions with headphones. I'm not sure this approach is always ideal though either as it can (or at least has in me) fuel a kind of neurosis about the quality of attention itself.
Re: "non musical" sounds, do you get into some of the New York "downtown" guys at all? Marc Ribot has long been one of my favourite players, seeing him in a small club on a solo acoustic tour remains one of the most powerful musical experiences of my life:
Yeah, I am just going to have to experiment with what works best, striving to not get too neurotic and judgmental! I have been building up a folder the last couple of weeks, want to get a few more good sessions on it, and then I am gonna download it all and experiment with listening and even splicing up some bits (I have some electronica friends who have asked me for bits).
I have listened to a fair amount of downtown and noise players, though have never seen Ribot with an acoustic, I think he is a great player. So far it is much easier for me to play out with an electric, my acoustic playing tends to be pretty melodic/tonal. Thanks for the link!
I’ll listen back in an unfocused way, while I’m doing something else. The good stuff tends to jump out.
I’ve tried the non musical approach but it never feels authentic to me. I admire guys who do it so naturally. I probably still have lots of deconditioning to do though, so maybe when I’m 60 I’ll be able to play like Adrian Belew :-)
Absolutely! I usually use that latter approach when jamming with others - stick my little Sony field recorder in the corner and - after gaining consent! - record the whole session. I often forget to do a soundcheck though, and depending on the combination of instruments that can be an issue - recording, even in its most basic forms, does introduce a new layer of considerations! Regardless, I have captured a lot of lightning in a bottle that way.
Love the Tenacious D reference - very appropriate :)
Wondering if you’ve ever listened to Daniel Higgs? Ed Hardy apprenticed tattooer, turned post-rock frontman (Lungfish) turned full-on Christian Mystic? He’s one of my favourites. Saw him live a few years ago opening for OM (another fav bunch of musical mystics).
Yes we are definitely on similar wavelengths here. I saw Higgs once, on that same tour I think (seen OM many times, as you have). I love wild Christian mysticism more than about anything, and Higgs has great intuition. That's one thing I am working on now, more disciplined spontaneity, and also greater simplicity.
@Erik thanks for pointing me to the doc on Basho. It was quite beautiful and well done. I really didn’t know anything about him, and I’m glad he’s still a bit of a mysterious figure.
Sounds good, simplicity and spontaneity! I went from being “little Steve Vai” at Berklee to playing only fixed bridge guitars (no more masturbatory wiggle stick) and now playing celtic-Saharan blues-ragas on a little nylon string with a foot-pumped shruti box. I’m embracing simplicity more and more and these little pentatonic icaro-hymns have been coming through. It’s a fun journey if we make it, like you said, a practice. Even recording seems counter-intuitive to me these days...the pressure to capture music...I’m much more into the specialness of a one-time-only creation that gets carried away by the wind or seeps into someone’s ear holes.
Trapping the celebratory, buzzing insect of improvisation in amber can be rewarding. It's just important not to mistake that maplet for the territory it attempts to cover (hey, i wonder how many random metaphors can I throw at you in one graf?).
One of my primary teachers in the art of improv was the percussionist Mike Mahaffay, a.k.a. Robert Mike Mahaffay, may he rest in infinitely groovy peace. The incredible openness yet demand for art that be brought to each session were amazing. Over the years, I played with him numerous times in our weird little Portland experimental world: Black Orchid, Tres Gone, The Gone Orchestra, with members of Smegma, Soriah, Three Leg Torso, etc..... often at fun or off-the-wall venues like Voodoo Doughnuts or improvising a live soundtrack to Man Ray films for TV and KBOO radio. Very fun stuff.
Annnnyway: Mikey liked to record most sessions in some form (the options were limited early on). As recording and playing-back became easier with technology, he always wanted to listen to a jam right after we'd finished. I found this awful and refused. For me, it's good to do some things utterly sans documentation; it can also be good to take the documentation but not fuck with it for a while. Just leave the thing alone so you can savor the magic of whatever experience it was, a magic untainted by your post-performance anxieties or critical faculties.
That said, Mike was a cannabis-fueled musical genius, whereas I was more of a tobacco-chainsmoking interdisciplinary tourist, so hey, maybe his approach was just plain better.
A few links Mike's wonderful spirit are below. Guess I should upload more of our music together, bands like Black Orchid and Kings on Straw Mats, because they don't appear to be on the interwebz at present!
* https://www.amazon.com/CDs-Vinyl-Robert-Mike-Mahaffay/s?rh=n%3A5174%2Cp_32%3ARobert+Mike+Mahaffay
* https://soundcloud.com/mahaffays-musical-archiv
* https://jaxsta.com/release/99365061-6bbd-444b-8b91-9886355a5cde/52358f5d-0932-491f-9027-6572b9e0f82f/overview
* https://www.tiktok.com/music/Night-Fishing-6858860430136199169
Wow a great slice of the almighty groove. Mike was clearly "the nazz." Some of my highest highs have been in collective improv jams with freaks, for purposes (films, etc) or not. I have learned a lot about the spiritual world from the capacity of stoned, sloppy, untrained improvisers to occasionally produce music of magic, sensitivity, and extraordinary (momentary) integrity. I rarely have listened to them afterwards. Its nice when there is someone around to do the do.
I should add that Mike was a true professional, so I don't mean to make him sound sloppy in any way. He was in the original Broadway touring band of Jesus Christ Superstar. He played at CBGBs, opened for the Ramones, lived in a loft. Later he was a percussionist for the Oregon Symphony. You get the idea...
There's nothing quite like having an epic jam (either sober or otherwise) then getting appropriately elevated and listening to it from a "naïve" perspective - I can relate to Mike (without possessing the genius). I can also relate to having friends who don't appreciate that insatiable need to get reflexive! Having said that, I agree with the notion that it can be good to either not record at all, or to give something some space and check it out after a break....then again, that's part of the point of altering your state of consciousness between listening and playing - you can sometimes acquire that distance psychology, without having to wait (and maybe experiential delay discounting just isn't in the wheel house of the cannabis-fuelled psychonaut?).
This is great “ Kinda sad-sack elven-hippie raga-blues stuff, sometimes lovely and sometimes tedious. Once in a while I turn on the electronic shruti box for full sandalwood misterioso.” Sounds a lot like my guitar practice these past few years, on the other end of decades of music school, rock bands, noise combos (I got to play with Rhys Chatham once, immortalized on one of his Guitar Trio albums). It’d be fun to exchange licks some time...I’ve been dreaming of an online sharing community of musical meditators but alas, I’m all Zoomed out.
ha, i came over here specifically to quote that line and cackle with appreciation.... i too am a writer-critic-musician-artist.
when we write stuff like "Kinda sad-sack elven-hippie raga-blues stuff, sometimes lovely and sometimes tedious" about others, sometimes folks ask huffily, " Would you ever say that about your own work?" or "I'd like to see you try [insert art form here]!"
and it's just a hoot to honestly respond, you bet your sweet arse i'd write that about my own work. very nicely done, erik. i'm having a rough spring, and it's nice to giggle about something.
Sorry to hear about the rough spring, I usually go into the black muck come May June so I am getting prepped. A weird time to get the seasonal blues but not actually that uncommon. And wow do we need to be able to laugh at our own "creativity," our own "process," our own "healing," our own "spirituality" most of all. Especially at a time when everyone seems more prickly, more quick to take offense, to get, I don't wanna sat snowflaky, but....it's a weird time for "critique" -- everyone is doing it, its more no holds barred than usual, and yet everyone seems more sensitive, or fake sensitive. So we need to laugh at ourselves to break the spell!
no, no laughter in your healing, Young Erik. it simply won't do. this is all very serious. ask any Instagram witch.
Loved this, Erik. Didn't know you were a guitarist, but had an inkling you might be based on your taste in music. I can totally relate to losing your mojo as soon as you hit record - "don't fear the little red light" - is a mantra I've repeated often but which has never quite stuck in the way I might have hoped...
I've recorded a couple of hundred little improvs since our first lockdown here in Melbourne, the vast majority on my iPhone. Half-baked and lo-fi as they are, they're worth more to me than they ever will be to anyone else, but that's enough to make them worthwhile. After reading your post I listened to the first track on Avatars... "Harakiri, Kali Style" - then recorded this little improvised loop. Totally cheating to use a looper of course, but I'm no Robbie Basho:
https://soundcloud.com/timothy-jackson-3/basho-inspo
Love what you do mate - only "discovered" you recently but I've been delving......
Thanks for the link Timothy, that was a groovy little jam. I have only played around with loopers a tiny bit--I am almost afraid of the seduction. I am very curious to hear what happens when I start listening closely to more of my own recordings. So far I am mostly pleasantly surprised, not necessarily with how "good" they are, but with how much I can enjoy noticing or appreciating elements that I have either worked on intentionally or that I don't notice.
It also reminds me how situational everything is, especially with "practice" (spiritual or otherwise. Somewhere on this thread Brian James writes about how freeing improvisation is when you don't record or carve it into a composition, like a pure gift. I think that is true but by sticking to that pattern for years, at least in my case, it stopped having that effect and in essence became a way to put my head in the musical sand. No form without context!
Well, I certainly agree with Brian - there is an absolute freedom born from just being present in the moment, no matter what one is doing. Certainly music, perhaps improvised music above all, is one of the most potent teachers we have for revealing the ephemerality of the moment.
On the other hand, recording yourself offers many other lessons. It’s a great augment to your practice of course, because you can hear what “works”, and perhaps even detect the lapses in listening that may have occurred while you were playing (perhaps when playing becomes more mechanical). Recording yourself is one of the best ways to improve your playing. But even more, the ability to reflect on the musical moment from another perspective augments music’s power as a teacher about the effect of perspective on perception - the interdependence of doing and perceiving. A photo can teach you that you are an object as well as a subject. Listening to yourself play, especially listening to yourself improvise, provides a related flavour of insight, partly because improvising is inherently a combination of doing and listening (i.e. forms a tight loop between subject and object). When you get to shift all the way over into listening, you instantly receive information on the way in which perspective moulds perception. I actually find this effect even more pronounced when I record myself improvising with other musicians - it’s a great way to expose your ego to itself, for better or worse.
So, to your original point - both/and. Not recording is marvellous. Recording is too. Hitting record on a portable recording device during an improv session can be very productive (or it can kill the vibe!). Constructing a multi-tracked piece in a DAW can also be a very worthwhile practice. All of these things are just different ways of engaging with music as a practice (anthropotechnics, yo!) and it’s pretty cool to live in the 21st century, when it’s so easy to move from one mode of engagement to another. Of course that flexibility confers responsibility - don’t kill your joy in improvising by trying to Instagram everything you do, etc. - but “with great freedom comes great responsibility”.....
Oh, and loopers are totally a blessing and a curse, too! Great practice tool. Great creative tool. Easy to get trapped. I mean, loops of all kinds are easy to get stuck in, right!?
Oh I agree...there’s a distinction between music as practice and music as art-making. I’ve done plenty of both recording and “letting it be”. After a particularly cosmic jam I’ve often been reminded of that Tenacious D episode where Jack Black admonishes KG “ALWAYS record. ALWAYS record!”
An approach I’ve taken is to just set the digital recorder up and jam...at some point losing self-consciousness and letting the spontaneous magic come through. This was more costly when we used tape but nowadays data capture is cheap. :-)
No that's clearly the path: just keep putting the thing on until it disappears. Of course, then you have to pick through it if you want to select the jewels, which is a whole other level of feedbackin that I have next to no experience with. How do you approach listening to this stuff if you have it on record all the time?
One thing I have been learning to do/experimenting with is to make precisely "non musical" sounds in practice, not just to do repetitions of scales but make moves that are purely exploratory, or chromatic, etc. In a spirit of "non music."
I've never been very comfortable with the kind of passive/background listening I think Brian is referring to, so I tend to try and listen to everything in focussed listening sessions with headphones. I'm not sure this approach is always ideal though either as it can (or at least has in me) fuel a kind of neurosis about the quality of attention itself.
Re: "non musical" sounds, do you get into some of the New York "downtown" guys at all? Marc Ribot has long been one of my favourite players, seeing him in a small club on a solo acoustic tour remains one of the most powerful musical experiences of my life:
https://youtu.be/aYM-xRBEgSU
Yeah, I am just going to have to experiment with what works best, striving to not get too neurotic and judgmental! I have been building up a folder the last couple of weeks, want to get a few more good sessions on it, and then I am gonna download it all and experiment with listening and even splicing up some bits (I have some electronica friends who have asked me for bits).
I have listened to a fair amount of downtown and noise players, though have never seen Ribot with an acoustic, I think he is a great player. So far it is much easier for me to play out with an electric, my acoustic playing tends to be pretty melodic/tonal. Thanks for the link!
I’ll listen back in an unfocused way, while I’m doing something else. The good stuff tends to jump out.
I’ve tried the non musical approach but it never feels authentic to me. I admire guys who do it so naturally. I probably still have lots of deconditioning to do though, so maybe when I’m 60 I’ll be able to play like Adrian Belew :-)
Absolutely! I usually use that latter approach when jamming with others - stick my little Sony field recorder in the corner and - after gaining consent! - record the whole session. I often forget to do a soundcheck though, and depending on the combination of instruments that can be an issue - recording, even in its most basic forms, does introduce a new layer of considerations! Regardless, I have captured a lot of lightning in a bottle that way.
Love the Tenacious D reference - very appropriate :)
Wondering if you’ve ever listened to Daniel Higgs? Ed Hardy apprenticed tattooer, turned post-rock frontman (Lungfish) turned full-on Christian Mystic? He’s one of my favourites. Saw him live a few years ago opening for OM (another fav bunch of musical mystics).
Here’s a taste: https://open.spotify.com/track/20F4ZKCTo8whqY62WfvnMF?si=T-K1snd3QAifymb6JFRNIg
Yes we are definitely on similar wavelengths here. I saw Higgs once, on that same tour I think (seen OM many times, as you have). I love wild Christian mysticism more than about anything, and Higgs has great intuition. That's one thing I am working on now, more disciplined spontaneity, and also greater simplicity.
@Erik thanks for pointing me to the doc on Basho. It was quite beautiful and well done. I really didn’t know anything about him, and I’m glad he’s still a bit of a mysterious figure.
Sounds good, simplicity and spontaneity! I went from being “little Steve Vai” at Berklee to playing only fixed bridge guitars (no more masturbatory wiggle stick) and now playing celtic-Saharan blues-ragas on a little nylon string with a foot-pumped shruti box. I’m embracing simplicity more and more and these little pentatonic icaro-hymns have been coming through. It’s a fun journey if we make it, like you said, a practice. Even recording seems counter-intuitive to me these days...the pressure to capture music...I’m much more into the specialness of a one-time-only creation that gets carried away by the wind or seeps into someone’s ear holes.
I'd not heard of Daniel Higgs before, but checked him out yesterday after seeing this - very cool, thanks for the recommendation!