v.

im·pro·vised, im·pro·vis·ing, im·pro·vis·es

v.tr.
1. To invent, compose, or perform with little or no preparation.
2. To play or sing (music) extemporaneously, especially by inventing variations on a melody or creating
new melodies in accordance with a set progression of chords.
3. To make or provide from available materials: improvised a dinner from what I found in the refrigerator.
v.intr.
1. To invent, compose, or perform something extemporaneously.
2. To improvise music.
3. To make do with whatever materials are at hand.

en·sem·ble ( n-s m b l)
n.
1. A unit or group of complementary parts that contribute to a single effect, especially:
a. A coordinated outfit or costume.
b. A coordinated set of furniture.
c. A group of musicians, singers, dancers, or actors who perform together: an improvisational theater
ensemble; a woodwind ensemble.
2. Music
a. A work for two or more vocalists or instrumentalists.
b. The performance of such a work.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/improvise

how important

Radical Pedagogy (2002)

ISSN: 1524-6345
Teaching Large Ensemble Music Improvisation
Susan Allen
Associate Dean
School of Music
California Institute of the Arts
susie@shoko.calarts.edu
Recently, a student handed me R.L. Wing's interpretation of the 16th hexagram (from the ancient Chinese
oracle book of the I Ching) which seemed particularly relevant to the work I do with the CalArts Improvisation
Ensemble. The meaning of the 16th hexagram is “harmonize.” Part of this interpretation of the hexagram
includes the directive to “move with the rhythm of the moment”. (1979: 64) This is very much related to the
pedagogy of large ensemble improvisation that I have devised. The description of the hexagram is that the
ruling line in the fourth position of social consciousness harmonizes the entire hexagram. This pedagogy is
also very much about social consciousness.
In his book “Musicking,” Christopher Small echoes this social consciousness theme:
When we perform, we bring into existence, for the duration of the performance, a set of relationships, between
the sounds and between the participants, that model ideal relationships as we imagine them to be and allow us
to learn about them by experiencing them. The modeling is reciprocal...: in exploring we learn, from the
sounds and from one another, the nature of the relationships; in affirming we teach one another about the
relationships; and in celebrating we bring together the teaching and the learning in an act of social solidarity.
(1998: 218)
This is the seventh year of the CalArts Improvisation Ensemble -- a group that has varied in size from twelve
to twenty-four. The current instrumentation is one violin, viola, bass, sitar, ney, saxophone, clarinet, bassoon, 3
guitars, one percussion, four pianos, four vocalists, two French horns, trumpet, harp...twenty-four musicians in
all. Because I am a member of the ensemble, my function is more that of a facilitator or coach than teacher,
director or leader.
Drawing from free jazz and experimental music traditions, I have developed a set of exercises which utilize
interactive social rules between the musicians in the ensemble. Unlike traditional jazz improvisation musical
training, where there are considerations of pitch, interval and harmony, these “rules” enable members of the
ensemble to actively listen and respond to each other with great focus through an enhanced mutual awareness.
In performances, the ensemble works without any pre-compositional rules whatsoever.
To actively listen and not just passively hear takes practice. Pauline Oliveros, on her Deep Listening website,
differentiates listening from hearing:
Hearing is an involuntary physical act that happens through our primary sense organ when sound waves
impinge upon the ear. Everyone with healthy ears can hear. Listening takes cultivation and evolves through
one's lifetime. (2001)
The CalArts Improvisation Ensemble creates a unique verticality of sounds which, although partially a chance
operation, might also be recognized as a collective composing-in-the-moment. It requires that each and every
member of the group use everything that they have ever learned, and all at breakneck speed. They must listen
intently, they must analyze what they are hearing, they must listen to the whole and to the individual, they
must be aware of dynamics, timbres, rhythms, intervals, and harmonies -- all simultaneously. Yet it is
presumed that these students already have these advanced musical capabilities, and that they are now able to
operate with these capabilities in another sphere...that of the interactive social group of the large ensemble.
It is important to understand the musical environment that surrounds and informs these players. CalArts offers
performance training in North Indian Music, Javanese and Balinese music, and Ghanaian music, as well as
traditional and experimental jazz, and traditional and experimental western musics. In such a setting, sensitive
musicians are constantly assimilating musical/aural information, and re-purposing the material in
improvisation. They have been trained formally, informally or subconsciously to perceive sound and pitch in a
global way - in a way that demands more than just playing the note. As Dane Rudhyar comments about North
Indian music in his book “Culture, Crisis and Creativity”:
The manner in which a performer approached a tone, perhaps gliding to it or in some other way preparing its
emission in which his entire organism was involved was -- and remains today -- of the greatest importance. It
was important because a living and organic relationship was felt to exist between the successive tones of a
melody: the instrumental or vocal approach to a tone was as significant in the melodic flow, as the quality of
the approach a human being makes to another person is important in the development of their relationship. A
Western musical note being in principle on a dimensionless mathematical point, it can have no vitalistic
relationship to a succeeding note. (1977: 90)
In the New York Times, Adam Shatz wrote “-musicians are drawing upon tributaries one would never have
expected to flow into jazz.” (2001) The same statement could be made about any music being created today.
These recombinant musics seem to resonate the ideas of the philosophers Deleuze and Gauttari who said
There are no individual statements, there never are. Every statement is the product of a machinic assemblage,
in other words, of collective agents of enunciation (take “collective agents” to mean not peoples or societies
but multiplicities.) The proper name (nom propre) does not designate an individual: it is on the contrary when
the individual opens up to the multiplicities pervading him or her, at the outcome of the most severe operation
of depersonalization, that he or she acquires his or her true proper name. (1987: 37)
These students are then not only drawing upon their musical knowledge, they are drawing upon their newly-
acquired knowledge of each other, of the social situation in which they find themselves, and upon the
parameters of social interaction which we use as exercises.
A Riot of Color - Developing the Personal Palette
What are the mechanics of teaching a large improvisation ensemble? First, one must encourage the
development of each individual voice within that ensemble, and subsequently proceed to facilitate the group
process.
Each student is encouraged to develop a palette of sounds, technical “licks” and extended techniques/special
effects that they might use in improvisation. This can also include tonal centers, scales, harmonies, modes, etc.
It helps very much if the student notates these multiplicities of articulations on paper - the more varied, the
merrier.
If students have difficulties with this particular exercise, I encourage them to explore contemporary extended
techniques -- for winds, the multiphonics, microtones, for strings, the extended techniques with intonation,
slides, bowing, scordatura, etc., for piano, inside the piano, and so forth.
Some guidelines I have devised for helping students develop their palette include:
• Thinking carefully about all the works you have ever learned to play, what are some of the
things you like the most about those pieces? What are some of the techniques those pieces used,
both mechanically for the performer as well as compositionally? Put these things and techniques
into your palette.
• Think of at least 15 special effects or extended techniques you can do on your instrument and/or
with your voice. Put these 15 things into your palette.
• What are 15 different virtuoso techniques that can be done with your instrument? Can you try to
alternate between all 15 of them quickly in one improvisation that lasts for 3 minutes?
• "Steal a riff” from your favorite piece of music. Play it in 10 different ways (alter tempo,
dynamics, notes, etc.)
• Try varying a gesture using ONLY dynamics, then using ONLY tempo
There are often fears to be overcome on the part of those who have never improvised and on the part of those
who have improvised, but have done so solely in a structured form. To again quote Dane Rudhyar:
To see and experience at the level where ideas are spontaneously arising formation of 'mind-stuff' requires
inner freedom; the inertia of both the realm of spirit and the world of matter has to be overcome. (1977: 194)
In his article “Keeping it Going: Terms, Practices and Processes of Improvisation in Hindustani Instrumental
Music,” Stephen Slawek states that:
A metaphysical explanation for improvisatory music making in Hindustani music would stress the removal of
encumbrances and inhibitions to the creative act so as to allow for what occurs naturally in the life process.
The variety of blockages to the natural flow of music could range from impediments provided by the technical
requirements of an instrument to nervousness created by anxiety over one's appeal to an audience. (1998: 338)
Several approaches may be used to address blockages in improvising. I ask the students to identify and then to
take their most feared technical “lick” and use it in a duet improvisation - explore it, destroy it, try to get it
right, practice it in public - reinforcing the fact that no one cares if they play it right or not. This is not the
milieu for corrective technical instruction, it is the experimental milieu. Then I ask them to identify some
gesture they could perform that would make them look like a total fool on stage and to incorporate that into an
improvisation. To quote Miles Davis, “There are no wrong notes.”
The Exercises
Throughout the teaching of this ensemble, these exercises I have devised only serve to further familiarize
members of that ensemble with one another. They serve to make the student aware of what others are playing,
what others like to play, and how their instrument might interact in varying ways with the other instruments
and persons in the ensemble. And they serve to help the students listen more carefully to the sounds that are
being produced around them - to “socialize” their music making.
To this end the group is assembled in close proximity in a circle. What the musicians have in common is that
they are all performers. The group is separate from other ensembles, has it's own meeting time and it's own
name. Group management literature recommends this procedure. In his book “Making Groups Effective”
Alvin Zander writes:
Making one of many includes:
• situate persons in easy reach of one another
• assemble persons who are already alike
• physically separate the set from other units so that the group is a distinct entity
• give the group unique characteristics (1982: 9-10)
The first time we meet, I ask the students introduce themselves and tell a bit about whatever they wish to the
ensemble - this is their first improvisation.
The first playing exercise is “duets” where we sit in a circle facing each other and start with two adjacently
placed players. They perform an improvised duet for about 2-3 minutes, then the first person drops out and the
next person in the circle plays with the remaining partner for 2-3 minutes and so on. There are absolutely no
parameters to this exercise. They are just to “play duets.”
Another exercise is “trios” which is done in exactly the same fashion, with the first dropping out as we move
around the circle.
“Dominoes” is an exercise in listening to one other person in the ensemble. In the circle, each player plays one
gesture in sequence after the person before - going clockwise or counterclockwise around the circle. The idea
is to iterate a sound as close on the heels of the person before you as possible. So players then have to focus
solely on the person who plays directly before them.
We work with the Stockhausen collection of prosaic instructions for improvisations “From the Seven Days”
which include:
Set Sail for the Sun
play a tone for so long
until you hear its individual vibrations
hold the tone
and listen to the tones of the others
-to all of them together, not to individual ones-
and slowly move your tone
until you arrive at complete harmony
and the whole sound turns to gold
to pure, gently shimmering fire (1968: 10)
We work on “endings only” where the ensemble is given an approximate duration, say, one minute, to make a
“loud” ending, a “soft” ending, a “sudden” ending and so on.
In one of the few exercises which has compositional parameters drawn from musical traditions, we experiment
with “concerto” form. A soloist is chosen. The ensemble is instructed to “introduce” the piece, and the soloist
“enters.” They play together until a natural climax is created leading up to the “cadenza.” The soloist plays a
“cadenza” and indicates in that cadenza where the ensemble is supposed to start playing again (non-verbal
indications, of course.) The orchestra reenters and ends the piece with the soloist. A variation of this exercise
which has been particularly effective was to assign two students as “soloists,” then three, then four, then five,
until finally the group was divided in half and the function of “soloist” had become the function of all the
players.
Members have “conducted” the ensemble in an improvisation, but may not verbally reveal what their gestures
mean prior to conducting. This particular exercise helps the musicians play better without a conductor, and
helps the “conductor” learn about structuring an improvisation.
The ensemble has worked with a clock, switching attitudes from fast to slow every ten seconds, with a
predetermined total duration, and switching attitudes from silence to sound every so many seconds.
As an exercise designed to focus exclusively on aural skills, we play in a completely dark room where visual
connections are not possible; perceptions of the physical attitudes of others are not possible. All that is left is
listening.
Since students in the ensemble speak many different languages (Japanese, Greek, Armenian, French, German,
Swahili, Spanish, Bulgarian), we have done exercises involving speaking. The first is for two persons speaking
different languages (neither of which the other understands) to attempt to verbally communicate with each
other. This necessitates the use of body language, gesture, and the creative use of dynamics, timbre, duration,
inflection -- every attribute of sound but content. (A parallelism might be drawn here between pitch, interval
and chord and that of word definition -- where both are defined as “content.”)
After this exercise, a group of 4-5 instrumentalists is assigned to “follow” each speaker. When the speaker
speaks, the instrumental group sympathetically accompanies that speaker. Then we revisit the communication
between two or more speakers, this time with the accompanying instrumental ensembles. This creates a kind of
antiphonal situation which involves spoken word and music.
Another exercise utilizes interruptions. The ensemble is divided in two, and one group begins and is
interrupted by the other, and so on, back and forth. This can be either call and response work or unrelated
materials in dialogue between the two groups. At the beginning these groups tend to play for about the same
duration before being interrupted, but when made aware of this propensity, they vary the length of time each
group plays...often arriving at a point where there is a very fast exchange of interruptions back and forth
between the two.
After about 6 meetings of the ensemble, we go around the circle and play “solos.” This moves the interaction
to a whole new level of awareness on the part of the members of the ensemble. They now can get an idea and
feeling of the individual voices that are informing the whole.
Finally, we try to “play a piece” with no pre-composition, no rules, no parameters. This is astonishingly
successful. The group ends together; they create a piece of music that sounds like no other and one that will
never be heard again. Everyone realizes that it worked. The moment was palpable. Players were listening to
each other, they were interacting, they were laying out, they were accompanying, they were taking solos, they
were harmonizing and they were doing it in a leaderless group. In his book “Free Play” Stephen
Nachmanovitch cites the point in time when it works
There comes a moment when the whole thing slides into shape -- you can almost hear the click --when the
feeling and the form come into a state of harmony. The impact of this seemingly abstract process is immediate
and physiological. For me, tears flow... (1990: 111)
For the remainder of the semester, the ensemble will work on creating pieces of different durations, say a five-
minute piece, a ten-minute piece. Some of the exercises will be combined with these durational prescriptions,
such as a five-minute piece with a loud and sudden ending, and so forth. Finally, in performance, the ensemble
will just play.
The group has worked in collaboration with other artists and art; we have interpreted paintings of students in
the School of Art; we have worked with dancers in live concert improvisation; we have improvised to film as it
is being projected in concert. These activities necessitate the visual interaction that we had removed when we
practiced playing in the dark. They make us use our eyes and ears -- and in some instances are more difficult.
Students who have participated in the ensemble find that the experience enhances and informs everything they
do -- in the other music they play, in relationship, in life.
A new project is underway for the Spring of 2002 which is an collaborative, interdisciplinary staged
improvisation, based on the concept of Le Flâneur, which developed in early 19th century Paris. The flâneur is
the wanderer who walks the streets without purpose or destination, discovering a multiplicity of scenes,
landmarks, and people along the way. With the working title of “Le Flâneur: A Stagery (not an opera),” the
group will collaborate with faculty and students from throughout the Institute including visual artists, writers,
dancers, actors, set designers, and puppeteers to develop this interactive piece. It will be set in a number of
different historical periods and locations, with more specific parameters to be developed by the students
involved during their current year of study. To prepare, we have started this semester to work with the idea of
improvising to a place and in a time, both parameters which will be changed upon us by cue during the
performance.
We have worked with the idea of playing music heard, for example, outside a jazz club, with a duration of 30
seconds to one minute as we “walk by.” We have improvised with the imaginings of the taped music in a
grocery store, the sound of a carousel, the music of a high school marching band in practice, a community
orchestra, a new age shop, and many more.
In addition, the group members themselves have been “flâneurs/flâneuses,” by taking turns walking among the
other players on impulse, either conducting with their bodies or with their instruments, or simply acting as solo
leaders for short periods of time, interchangeably.
Results
Historically, compositional and analytical principles have been retrospectively established following the
establishment of a kind of music. It would follow that new forms would be generated prior to the creation of
methods used to describe them. The improvisation ensemble generates new forms - ones not simply defined by
traditional means. In 1914, Kandinsky predicted a new type of artistic form in “Concerning the Spiritual in
Art”:
The harmony of the new art demands a more subtle construction than this, something that appeals less to the
eye and more to the soul. This “concealed construction” may arise from an apparently fortuitous selection of
forms on the canvas. Their external lack of cohesion is their internal harmony. This haphazard arrangement of
forms may be the future of artistic harmony. Their fundamental relationship will finally be able to be expressed
in mathematical form, but in terms irregular rather than regular. (1977: 52)
Joseph Kerman speaks of the multiplicity of elements that should contribute to what we call “form,” yet which
do not in the analysis of Western music:
Music's autonomous structure is only one of the many elements that contribute to its import. Along with the
preoccupation with structure goes the neglect of other vital matters -- not only the whole historical complex
[informed by complex economic, social, intellectual, and psychological forces, and cross-hatched by inter-
textuality]...but also everything that makes music affective, moving, emotional, expressive. (1985: 72)
The absence of a composer, author or conductor is what makes this ensemble unique. Yes, this music demands
that the audience participate as active listeners. This music is as much about the empowerment of the
performing musician as it is about the empowerment of the audience. The audience experiences the same type
of discovery as the improvising musician. This music presupposes that instrumentalists and singers are capable
of creating music and not simply recreating music. This music presupposes that instrumentalists and singers
are capable of playing together and creating a collective work of music that has value. It presupposes that there
is no elite audience; there is no “high art” music...and that all is accessible to every listener, no matter what
their level of musical knowledge. The musical improvisation cannot be marketed as product because each
creation exists only within that moment, hence there is no recordable “definitive version.” It may be the
beginning of Christos Hatzis' “music of tomorrow's society”:
The glorification of the individual as a struggling demigod associated with the old paradigm is no longer a
viable psychological and/or sociopolitical necessity. I believe, therefore, that its musical analogue, virtuosic
performance, on stage or electronically captured, will have little functionality in tomorrow's culture.
Conversely, the concept of musical ritual in its pure sense, where there is no division between priesthood and
laity, performers and audience, but rather a communion of participants with the music functioning as a catalyst
for that communion, will be most likely the music of tomorrow's society. It will be an egoless music whose
center of gravity will lie outside the composer; it will lie in fact outside the composition altogether. (1998: 89)
This pedagogy of free improvisation is not solely about the music -- it's about the ritual of communion between
the participants in the group, with the audience as co-listener (and ultimately then, in their co-discovery, co-
creator) and their collective expression, un-concealment and discovery of musical informants in-the-moment.
It is about the liberation of the individual musician from traditional hierarchical composer-performer and
conductor-performer relationships -- a liberation which empowers performers to create a unique, un-repeatable
work of music.
References
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1987). A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Translated
with forward by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hatzis, Christopher (1998). “Ritual Versus Performance: The future of concert music.” Harmony, forum of
the Symphony Orchestra Institute, no. 7:80-90.
Kandinsky, Wassily (1977). (original 1914) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Translated by M.T.H. Sadler.
New York: Dover Publications.
Kerman, Joseph (1985). Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Nachmanovitch, Stephen (1990). Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. New York: Jeremy P.
Tarcher/Putnam.
Oliveros, Pauline (20 March 2001). “Deep Listening.” A Program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation.
<http://www.deeplistening.org>.
Rudhyar, Dane (1977). Culture, Crisis and Creativity. Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House.
Shatz, Adam (2001). “Organized Sound from Chicago's Jazz Underground.” New York Times. 18 March:32.
Slawek, Stephen (1998). “Keeping it Going: Terms, Practices, and Processes of Improvisation in Hindustani
Instrumental Music.” In In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Music Improvisation,
edited by Bruno Nettl with Melinda Russell, 335-368. Chicago & London: University of Chicago
Press.
Small, Christopher (1998). Musicking. Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, University
Press of New England.
Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1968). Aus den sieben tagen (from the seven days) 15 text compositions for intuitive
music. Vienna: Universal Edition.
Wing, R.L. (1979). The I Ching Workbook. New York: Doubleday.