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Monday, November 17, 2003
Free Music
(From a thread on the Online Trombone Journal)You know, I agree that the word "language" approaches the end of it's usefulness when we begin to talk about free playing - the type of thinking that occurs when we make such an analogy seems precisely what one would want to shut off when playing free (even though when *using* language extemporaneously that part of the mind is accessed).
But I think one eventually gets to the point where the question, "what is good free playing?" must be asked. We might all be able to sit here and agree that Archie Schepp or Cecil or Ken Werner are excellent free players and that Joe Blow 14-year-old is not the most sophisticated or developed free player in the world, but what exactly is that which separates high quality free playing from low quality free playing? (Insert the cumulative writing and thought of Robert Pirsig here...)
It seems unavoidable to conclude that what we all agree is heavy now must therefore be based on some quasi-objective agreement of what has historically comprised heaviness -- therefore, any qualitative assessment of free music as better or worse is indicative of, **shudder**, a genre and therefore a language.
However, one major distinction to free music versus jazz is that if the performance is not a conversation, it really isn't anything.
Originally posted by Jeff Albert:
To Joe's question. Good free music is music that
moves me. There are more objective judgments that jazz players make : was
it in tune, did he make the changes, did it swing. Free stuff can only be
judged subjectively. Yes we use language when playing free, but not always
the same language, and it is not codified like bebop language.
On a side note, I have found that doing lots of free playing has really
helped my straight ahead playing, because one of my main issues with my
straight ahead playing ha been my brain getting in the way of the music.
Now I am learning to remove my intellectual mind, even though i am still adhering
to preset forms and harmonic structures...for the most part. ![[Wink]](wink.gif){kind=small}
But musicians who play free music don't think it needs to be a single way to play, as opposed to codified beboppers who know that the one true way to play was handed down from Charlie Parker on high, and that the beboppers are the chosen ones. (sorry, that isn't supposed to sound as sarcastic as it does) That is actually contrary to the general aesthetic of free music.quote:
Originally posted by Dave:
quote:Bickle, that's a great question and it's a tough answer. One of the reasons this is so difficult to answer simply is that even musicians who specialize in playing "free music" can't agree on a single way to play.
I'm sorry- I'm not going to be much use to this conversation, but could somebody provide me with a working definition of "free music"?
Posted by Joe Jackson:
I thought I managed to illustrate how this statement can't possibly be true in my first post in this thread; I'll try again.quote:
Originally posted by Jeff Albert:
Free stuff can only be judged subjectively.
Quality in free music, as in all music, is neither solely subjective or objective. If anyone thinks it is entirely subjective, then why would most agree that Cecil Taylor is great? If there is no universal agreement of greatness in free music, why would people pay and travel to hear Dave Liebman play when they could listen to any high schooler do their thing for free?
I reiterate: there is a lineage to free music; there is a historical/cultural body of art built up that informs us as to the framework we are hearing, even with free music. And what comes with that is that the very fundamental essence of free music as, perhaps, sound that has integrity unto itself, is a language.
quote:I hear the bitterness and understand where it's probably coming from, but as a bop/post bop player I can attest that this just isn't true either.
as opposed to codified beboppers who know that the one true way to play was handed down from Charlie Parker on high, and that the beboppers are the chosen ones.
There are lots of schools and cliques in all kinds of music, and just because there are groups of bop players and free players that think there's one way to play does not indict entire genres.
Originally posted by Jeff Albert:
I am sure that many don't think Cecil Taylor is
great, but they have heard it from so many places, that they are afraid to
look foolish by calling his bluff. I only use cecil taylor, because that's
the example you used. I find in many genres that people are heralded by a
mob mentality, not because they are actually good. Irvin Mayfield is a
classic example here in the new orleans scene. He gets loads of press and
accolades, but strikes me as jive. I know others feel the same way, but every time
someone says it, it is just that we "dislike successful people."
I heard Peter Brotzmann, who is supposed to be the bomb, and what i heard
was pretty lame.
It is also possible that people sense honest music, and Cecil Taylor is
honest. That doesn't mean that there could be a large group of people who
each individually and subjectively reached that conclusion. Many people
won't pay to travel and hear Dave Liebman play. Poll music fans in
general, instead of fans of left leaning jazz, and many more would tell
you that Liebman sucked than would tell you he is a genius. I like Liebman
and would travel to hear him, and I imagine you feel the same way. that
doesn't mean that we can not have each reached that conclusion separately
and for different reasons or matters of taste.
On the bebop thing, i thought I tried to point out that it wasn't meant to
sound bitter or sarcastic. i was just trying to say that bebop is much
more codified, and we all listen to it with those codes in mind (at least
those of us that know them), whether we mean to or not. I think free
playing is less codified, although probably not less cliquish.
By codified, i mean there are certain sonic criteria that define bebop.
The criteria that define free music are not sonic criteria, but process
criteria. Bebop is defined by the sounds that are made, and the process
can be deduced from those sounds. Free music is defined by the process,
and pretty much any array of sounds can be produced from that process.
Posted by Joe Jackson:
Re your first two paragraphs: I feel like you're taking
the ball and heading in the opposite direction, leaving me standing here
trying to use these examples to illustrate how there is no chance that the
difference between "good" and "bad" free music is
entirely subjective.
You say that music fans in general would be split on Liebman of Cecil
Taylor; I don't really know why you headed in that direction. We're
talking about people who have an appreciation for free music, not music
fans in general. The fact is, I have never met a person who likes Art
Ensemble and Sun Ra and Dolphy and Ayler who does not think that Cecil
Taylor is absolutely killin'.
As far as listeners and musicians are concerned, free music aficianados
are as fiercely independent as they come (I mean **** , just listen to
you!). So if your response is that the reason there are universal likes
and dislikes among free music lovers is that they are victims of mob
mentality, I've just got to dismiss that right out of hand and assume
you're going to say whatever you need to in order to protect your turf.
Once again (last time!):
If what makes free music "good" or "bad" was solely
subjective, this would be a coincidence of the most mathematically
unlikely magnitude.
Therefore, if the vast majority of people decide something, by definition
that "something" has properties that are not entirely
subjective.
1,000 people might put their hand on a stove and 995 of them might decide
that the stove occurs to them as "hot". While they all figured
that out on their own, the fact that the agreement as to the
"hotness" is so overwhelming that we humans developed a word to
describe what it feels like - the word is "hot".
While the feeling of "hot" is a *subjective* one, were the fact
that the vast majority of people decided the stove should be described as
hot a coincidence it would be highly unlikely, to say the least. So the
object has an objective property that consistently leads people to agree
that it is "hot".
So without regard to your thoughts on the mainstream appeal of David
Liebman, the odds against it being a sheer coincidence that the vast, vast
majority of people would likely believe that he is a far superior free
musician than my neighbor Elmer leaves only the conclusion that there is a
real, non-subjective difference in the relative level of quality in their
craft.
Originally posted by Jeff Albert:
Ok, listening time. Here are three mp3s (roughly one
minute each) that were all recorded at the same gig. It was my trio, and I
would have considered it a free gig (even before we got paid. ![[Shuffle]](shuffle.gif){kind=small}
), but we did do "tunes" as well.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Two are excerpts from solos over tunes with preset forms and harmonic
structures, and one was freely improvised on the spot. Which is which and
why do you think so?
quote:Actually, I think that's the whole point here - I have no idea what those terms mean. And since those terms mean nothing to me, I have to conclude that what "free jazz" and "free improvisation" mean to you are just labels that are used to make it convenient to talk about some things which are not easy to talk about - as DJ says, some people can write about it and some people can do it.
Originally posted by freeimprovjeff:
also, you know as well as i do that "free jazz," "free improvisation" and all those do have meaning. i think it's just that you don't think the differences are relevant, while i do.
But we all think about it, and we make up stories in our head what things mean, or much in the case of free music (or whatever FIJ would call That Thing We Are Talking About) what things don't mean.
Jeff Albert sees a crowd of people making noises after a bunch of people on stage make a bunch of noise, and the story he makes up is that the noise on stage was bogus and therefore the noise in the audience is an inauthentic reaction. There's nothing wrong with that story, it's no more untrue than any other interpretation. I could just as easily interpret that the noise on stage is great because of the noise in the audience, or that the audience is making noise not because they liked the band but because they like making noise and they want to have a good time and give the band some love. But like Jeff, we all choose our interpretation of events and we mostly stick to them (I'm only picking on Jeff because he's a beautiful cat and I love him. Thanks for opening yourself up and posting the sound files - I really enjoyed them).
So we listen to music, and something happens inside of us that is a direct result of how we choose for the music to occur to us. It moves us, or doesn't move us, but the point is that we respond not to the music, but to how the music occurs to us. It is the epitome of the subjective.
And yet there is communication taking place between the artist and the performer - to a group of people who are open to the type of music that Frank Lowe plays, Roswell Rudd's music is undoubtably going to occur to them all, independently arrived at, all other factors equal, as far better than my neighbor Elmer's is.
So how music occurs to us is subjective, as I point out in the paragraph before last, yet if one person's music/poetry/art unanimously or almost unanimously occurs to a bunch of people, there is an objective component of the quality that occurs to us when experiencing these phenomena.
So there it is - a music that we cannot define, a music that creates it's own language as it goes - and yet it occurs to everyone as a bridge to how language occurred to them in the past; as communication which is either "honest" or not, "sophisticated" or not, "developed", etc. - any number of qualities OTJ members have used here to describe what appeals to them - and all of these terms are qualities of language.
Is it possible that there is a form of communication that has nothing to do with the past as how it occurs to use, but is all about the past of who we are, the past in our bones and organs and muscle tissue and cerebral corta? I'm not pushing something I have thought about before. This is a brand new thought that just came into my head.
Any reactions?
DJ Kennedy quote:Thanks!
good sub shoe
quote:Ironically, my reaction is that people that enjoy all of the genres you have named would probably distinguish them from "The Others" just as you have free music.
Originally posted by Jeff Albert:
When music is referred to as “free”, it is a description, not a categorization. Baroque is a style, bebop is a style, free is an adjective.
A post-bop player would likely look at the term "post-bop" as a coverall that is only useful for invoking a vast group of musicians in shorthand to have a conversation about them. When, in reality, players like Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter just do not generally have much in common in a strict analysis of their playing and compositional styles - the point is that people that are in *that world* see it as the vast homeland of the aesthetic that gives them joy, and everything else is "that Free Jazz Thing" or "that Swing Thing".
Music as The Other.
So Jeff, I cannot help but react to your confining characterizations of bebop and other forms of music as anything but precisely this, for the very fact that many of the bop musicians I know tend to have a confined or centralized view of free music as a category and many of the legit musicians I know tend to have the same thing with jazz and vice versa.
quote:Again, you could make that precise point for any "style" of music out there. Throughout the development of western music, the practitioners of music fall increasingly farther from the mainstream of whatever musical culture it is with which they choose to identify and musicians with whom they choose to play with.
Some historians have tried to use the word free to name a style, but I believe that is inaccurate. They have to cover Ornette, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor in their jazz history texts, so they name a chapter “free jazz” and talk about them there, but that does not even come close to dealing with the actualities of freely improvised music as it exists in the world.
And yet people need to talk about what it is they're passionate about. Maybe one person interprets that as bad somehow; I do not - I think talking about music is just as important as listening to it. So in order to talk about it, they make up terms to describe things: bebop, traditional jazz, free music, etc. They might call those labels genre, styles, adjectives, whatever, but the only essential fact of what they are is that they are labels that were invented by people and for people to have conversations.
quote:
Originally posted by freeimprovjeff:
alright, forget it, joe. i'm back in.
quote:is this to say that those terms have no meanings ? all you say is really that you don't know their meanings. who said anything about that? i thought we were discussing whether or not they have meanings, not whether or not you know their meanings. different things, you know.
Actually, I think that's the whole point here - I have no idea what those terms mean. And since those terms mean nothing to me, I have to conclude that what "free jazz" and "free improvisation" mean to you are just labels that are used to make it convenient to talk about some things which are not easy to talk about - as DJ says, some people can write about it and some people can do it.
I apologize - my intent is to discuss whether free music is a language/genre/style. What happened next is that the meaning of the term "free music" was called into question, and I then decided to use the equivocality of the labels "free music", "free jazz" and "free improvisation" as they apply to certain music to reinforce the point that if a music has unequivocal, agreed-upon descriptive labels it must therefore have objective properties that identify it as such, and must therefore consist of a language, or several languages, that relate it to like music which has occurred in the past. Therefore, it has all the characteristics of a genre.
So while I honestly do not know what those terms mean, I was using the conversation to make a point - I thought it was clear, I'm sorry if I mislead you.
quote:
also, i hope that last sentence isn't an ad hom.
Oh, definitely not, at least from my standpoint! I totally agree with you - it is obvious that one can play it and talk about it. I only used it to cap off my point that playing it and talking about it are so distinct - it's almost as if it is a form of music that "doesn't want to be" talked about, if that makes any sense...
No, I would never question the playing of a person whom I have never heard. In fact, I simply find it difficult to be critical of any person's music under any circumstances
©2003, Joe Jackson. All rights reserved.