Improv is bad

woops

is not like other people
While I'm at this I may as well mention that Free Jazz is great, but where's the interest in listening to a form of music that makes a point of rejecting your interest.
Free jazz is completely different.
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
I tend to like non-idiomatic improv most in solo performance - the solo work of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, in particular, is great. In a group context, the desire to avoid cliche often seems to result in people playing at cross purposes or just plain not listening to each other.

Also, it's incredible how cliche-ridden and conformist improv can actually be. The last improv show I went to featured a lot of people blowing into their wind instruments with the mouth-pieces removed, resulting in a uniform puffing noise. It was totally ridiculous but they were all doing it because I guess that's what the cool thing was in improv at that moment.
 

woops

is not like other people
It was totally ridiculous but they were all doing it because I guess that's what the cool thing was in improv at that moment.

+n large up Mr. Tea in a different context.

If it's all about freedom to do what thou wilt why the massively documented reluctance to play in time? or to harmonise?

somebody please defend
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
There's no need for those blasting convention to play in time or harmonise because musicians are obviously free to do that already. The whole point is to try things that aren't usually done and see whether it brings bad luck or not. And they have to run each experiment at least twice just to check.

These pioneers are not free in that they are obliged to transgress. But in transgressing they give they then give every one of us more room in which to express ourselves - they give each of us more freedom. And for this reason, above all others, you too are subject to an obligation: to listen to what they do and pretend to enjoy it.
 

woops

is not like other people
you're always wrong when you rely on safety in numbers.
or well
a pioneer in the day was the guy who put pions in for future guys to navigate by
 

Leo

Well-known member
every once in a while i read some reviews in the wire and feel compelled to pick up a few improv cds, and i don't dislike them but can't say i get it and really enjoy it. just recently got burkhard stangl/kai fagaschinski "musik: ein portrat in sehnsucht" on erstwhile and Polwechsel "Archives of the North" on hatOLOGY and been making an effort to play them at least once a day to see if they sink in, but not really happening yet.

i do think some of this might be more interesting live than on cd (except for the examples mentioned above...)
 

woops

is not like other people
i get it and really enjoy it

this is what's missing

that's why pictures can be a great record and n can't
 
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Leo

Well-known member
i get it and really enjoy it

this is what's missing

that's why pictures can be a great record and n can't

i must have missed something, don't understand what you mean. do you think improv is bad, or do you get it/really enjoy it?
 

vimothy

yurp
Get this:

Four_Gentlemen_of_the_Guitar_Cloud.jpg


It's the shizz.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
shb;r

--- - o . pE .


f )e ^sk FTFTFt

;~~~~~~~~~¦~~~~ `0

+

this is an undisciplined derivation of 70s post-concrete while adding nothing worthwhile. flowery and decorative frivolity in place of formal rigor. you just made Derek Bailey cry. i hope you are proud.
 

STN

sou'wester
I love it, though I'd be hard-pressed to explain why. Definitely better live than on record. Sounds much more similar within itself than almost any other style of music. I read Ben Watson's book on Derek Bailey and all the manifesto-writing and posturing was unimaginably boring and depressing and it was about 6 months before I could be arsed to listen to any improv after that.
 

martin

----
I checked improv out years ago (in the academic sense of the word) and I ended up walking away. Two things I couldn't stand from experts on the subject: 1) The insistence that you always have to take it 'seriously'. Why? I thought the story about AMM having a hissy fit when an audience member couldn't stop coughing was hilarious 2) The insistence that, if you don't like it or find it boring, it's somehow 'your' fault, making you a closed-minded audio nazi, unable to cast off your 4/4 chains.

I like some of the Scratch Orchestra stuff, they didn't seem so defensive about what they were doing.
 

STN

sou'wester
I checked improv out years ago (in the academic sense of the word) and I ended up walking away. Two things I couldn't stand from experts on the subject: 1) The insistence that you always have to take it 'seriously'. Why? I thought the story about AMM having a hissy fit when an audience member couldn't stop coughing was hilarious 2) The insistence that, if you don't like it or find it boring, it's somehow 'your' fault, making you a closed-minded audio nazi, unable to cast off your 4/4 chains.

I like some of the Scratch Orchestra stuff, they didn't seem so defensive about what they were doing.

I like it, but I do find it fucking hilarious as well: watching these old alcoholic socialists banging stuff together. Brilliant. I think you would like Machine Gun, by the Peter Brotzmann tentet actually.
 
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