Gooey's P-log Blog

Personal accountability to make sure I'm not doing absolutely nothing.

log 5: Lesson Notes and Practice Routine Revisited

March 09, 2022 — ~gooey

Sound (30 minutes)

  1. Low Db-Bb (tongue attack)
  2. Low Db-Bb (air attack)
  3. Low Db-Bb semitone lip down and back; whole step lip down and back
  4. Palm Key F - High C minor 3rd lip down and back
  5. Middle F - low F 30 second sound inception
  6. OVERTOOOONES Fundamental to overtone and back; Start on overtone and slur down; overtone scales (!)

Technique (2 hours)

  1. Rigby Technique Sheets! (Keep weighted fingers. Minimal, yet purposeful, swift movements.)
  2. Interval studies from JO'G book (print by chapter!) and Malaby Lesson 2 notes
  3. Reading Practice (Ducret, Bach, Mitchell, etc.)

Current Transcriptions

  1. Sonny Rollins - 3 Little Words - Live in Copenhagen (1968)
  2. Lee Konitz - What's New - Together Again (Bill Evans)
  3. Dewey Redman - Interconnection - Ear of the Behearer
  4. John O' Gallagher - Prime - Live in Brooklyn
  5. Matt Maneri - Gravitational Systems - Duos (Matthew Shipp)

Notes from Tony Malaby

  1. Practice ways to assimilate and replicate the sounds of other woodwinds/string instruments on classical recordings
  2. Practice in nature. Try to replicate sounds nontypical to woodwinds (percussive, metalic, etc.)
  3. Write out and learn how to improvise using limited intervals (b9,^7,b2 all from 2 notes!) thinking of such cells as building blocks that can build on, stray away from, or subvert harmonic context
  4. Exploding Triads exercise
  5. Closing and Opening symmetrical chromatic intervals in all octaves
  6. (WHILE IMPROVISING) Leave plenty of space, sometimes an uncomfortable amount, to take in sensory information and let your environment unfold around you. Let go of musical superego. While playing (and leaving space!!!) Listen and develop your own streams of sound to tap into. Keep these streams going in your mind, even when not playing your horn, while also taking in all information around you. This will help to maintain FOREWARD MOTION . KEEP IDEAS GOING FOR LONGER!!!!!!!!!!
  7. Next Steps: pick specific spots on recordings with interesting timbral concepts and articulation styles.
  8. Braxton live @ HAT HUT, Jimmy Lyons w/ Cecil Taylor, Marion Brown

tags: Improvisation, Practice, 2022

log 3: On Dedication to Craft / States of Practice

February 28, 2022 — ~gooey

I have been thinking quite heavily about dedication to craft (or (my) lack thereof) recently: what it means to be an actually competent improviser; what it means to be healthily obsessed with your work, in hopes that it isn't so; whether its possible to have any inkling of original thought in a music where everything has been done a thousand times over, or whether its better to shamelessly steal conceptual material, and expand upon it.

Speaking of stealing concepts, I recently heard a great bassist talking about different interdependent, overlapping states of practice that we have to tap into, to make sure that all parts of our complex machine (being a musician who doesn't suck) are well-oiled and working as intended. From what I gathered, everything could be boiled down to 3 states: Training, Research, and Performance (just fucking playing).

Training is the state of practice that focuses on conditioning the body toward consistent and relable execution of technical material. Think scales and arpeggios, etudes, sound exercises and timbre exploration, etc.

Research is the state of practice where we solve our personal musical problems, as well as deepen our knowledge and understanding of music through intellectual means: analysis and theory, active listening and transcribing, journaling and mind maps, etc. THIS is where most of the stealing can occur, and comes as an endless refresh of boundless potential. It can occur at any time, on or away from an instrument, and usually has lots of stopping and starting. Yeah baby!

Performance is the state where we engage in music-making in real time, with whatever skills and knowledge are available to us at the point of departure (see: Andrew Hill, 1965). This one is hard to pin down, but it can be thought of as making oneself available to accessing generative, reponsive, and subvertive qualities within ourselves. This helps to eliminate the disconnect that occurs in ability once one leaves the practice room and gets on the bandstand.

tags: Practice, 2022