I walked into the first class on Wednesday night and knew that I was about to enter a world completely foreign to me. On one side was a kid with a 12-string guitar and a bow that he was using to play it. Next to him was someone with a digital turntable and beside him was a guy plucking the strings inside a mini-grand piano. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated.
After everyone was set up, Kevin Patton, the graduate student in charge of the electroacoustic improv ensemble, began a discussion about form. With a background in classical music, I was expecting there to be a strict outline of modulations and cadences but then again, I was in a completely different world. The first form that we discussed was called "addition." One person would start with a simple rhythmic pattern, often times using only one note and the rest would follow, one at a time, until each person was playing his own part that was based on the original phrase. The ensemble then demonstrated this form, with the bassist starting off and then controlling the volume and tempo for the entirety of the exercise.
The next form that was reviewed was imitation. When this term was brought up, I didn't feel like a fish out of water anymore. Much like a theme and variation or a sequence, this musical method revolved around one central theme. As before, one person began the exercise with a simple line. After it had been repeated several times, the rest of the ensemble joined in as a rhythm section. Without any sort of verbal communication, the person playing the theme would fade out into the rhythm section and someone else would step up and imitate the melody. This original line rotated through every band member until it was back to the creator. As if on cue, everyone faded out together.
Finally, to close out the session we did an exercise in counting rhythms. This surprised me as I hadn’t picked up on any blatant counted rhythms and I decided to participate. I thought that during both exercises, the musical lines that had been used were completely out of time and didn’t fall into any sort of meter. Nonetheless, we began to experiment with counting 5/8 meter. First stressing the first and fourth beats being that each measure was divided into a group of three and then a group of two. Then we reversed the groups so the two came first and the three last. Finally, we each were responsible for accenting a different beat. We used different syllables for each pulse and the result was interesting. Instead of sounding like an exercise in rhythm, we sounded as if we were creating a new piece of music.
By the end of the session, I felt much more in tune with what was going on. Instead of listening for harmonic chords and transposed melodies, I was learning to recognize more subdued sounds. The breathing through the saxophone, the soft scraping of the scissors on the bass strings, the bow on the guitar and the plucking of the piano strings took on a meaning other than just a mistake. Knowing full well that these methods were all practiced and performed forced me to open up to another type of music.
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3 comments:
I've read a few posts, and every one has been in paragraph form. My own post was an exact transcription of my bullet-list notes and scribbles. Did you take notes while actually observing? If so, what did they look like?
The order of activities at this class (rehearsal?) struck me. It seems odd to me that they did a rhythm exercise last, since rhythm is usually a foundation (the taiko practice I observed began with a timing/counting exercise). Hmm...what would Hanslick have to say about this comment?
I liked that your first line introduced your own experience (or lack of experience) with the music. Starting that way allows the reader to understand where you are coming from, and what lense you are looking through, which you make even clearer when you state that you were initially looking for harmonies and transpositions as you would in music that you are more familiar with.
I think it would be helpful in the future to include more of your interactive experiences with others. I assumed that there was some sort of interaction, as you discussed your participation in the group. Even if some acknowledgment of your acceptance and and allowance of participation was the only interaction, it may be useful to include something like that in your ethnography.
These notes have some of the hallmarks of an "ethnographic moment," especially in terms of having a clear narrative arc that demonstrates a shift in the ethnographer's own thinking. This is a useful rhetorical technique when you are trying to get readers to go through that same shift with you. Indeed, many listeners probably first experience this kind of musical performance as intimidating, chaotic, and filled with "mistake" sounds. I'll be interested to hear more about how your perceptions change over the course of your research.
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