Field of Path

Teaching Telescopy ◬ Points of Entry

Improvisation  is the means by which we explore and experiment with the full range of  our expressive influences and perception. Seeking freedom and  contribution, there is an aim to reveal something new and unexpected—a  different take on inventive reality, connection, and intention.

Practice is a life of research where we continually rediscover ourselves as  improvisers, as experiencers. Anything can become music, and we are free  to source whatever it is that speaks to us. Improviser = Composer =  Improviser = Composer... We are each a "world record," a unique language, piercing through history with our hearts and energy. We do what we love, called to evolve and connect upon this great opportunity of communicative existence, spurring each other on.

The following are short summaries of various entry points I target in my teaching. As we will discuss, reflect and explore such, the  main objective is to discover where the inspiration naturally gravitates and how it advances the instrumental and artistic expression and visions.  What are you encountering today that awakens you, changes you? How is  this evolving your language?

We are what we eat; we are what we listen to.

◽Tools for the practitioner. Recording, experimentation, documentation, equipment.

◽Intention and energy. Daily ritual. Practice trajectory.

◽Practice and projective space. Taking it OUTDOORS. Finding your spot. Earth studio.

◽Strengthening and physical introspection. Athletics, methods, practices, meditations, resources, influences.

◽Expansion of breath. Practices, relationships, and influences.

◽Reflections and activations on technique, warmup, and its meanings. How, what, and why.

◽Feeding the body new musical movement. Physical material, digestion, and vehicles of action. Supplying new self-physiology, rehearsal, and orchestration.

◽Questions of "style". Habits, awareness, language, cultures, roots, relationships, implications.

◽Investigations of melodic meaning. Roots and relationships, sources, examples, feelings, questions.

◽Questions of "stylelessness". Simplification, associations, affiliations, space, nature. What, how, and why.

◽Questions, reasons and musical revelations on space, silence, pacing, and flow.

◽Changes of instrumental tuning, and holding. Technical deconstruction and instrumental disassemblage. Relocations of motion and movement material.

◽The importance of multi-instrumental experimentation. Osmosis, influence, and exploration. Examples, strategies, practices.

◽Explorations of world music. Regions, reasons, geography, recordings, sources, archives.

◽Explorations of nature sound and field recordings. Sources, geography, archives, musical implications, compositional perspectives, experimentation.

◽Explorations of classical & contemporary music. Composers, performers, recordings, histories, footage, resources.

◽Expanding further notions of abstraction in music and art. Texture, space, and time. Reasons, implications, sources, practices, histories.

◽Searching for "secret" or "hidden" music from both musical and non-musical sources. Practicing hearing music in everything. How. Examples. Experiments.

◽Audio-visual perception stretching. Experiments, insights, discoveries, methods, tools.

◽Considering new "translations"/assimilation. What can become. Music, or sound.

◽Reflections and immersions on art and artists. Books, resources.

◽Wisdom and wavelengths of the ancients on meditation and consciousness. Source readings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary, p. 130, the essay "Meteorites", by Mâkhi Xenakis. The Drawing Center Papers 88, 2010. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Xenakis... 

 

 

Constant Consciousness

The experience blurs between what we perceive and create.
The internal experience is itself the creation.
And how we perceive it as music or motions that dance their harmony, form and language in our consciousness, is it.
It then just boils down to what we do about it -- how we convert it, reside in it, express it.
What, if anything, can be done about it, received from it.
How do we want to hold it, what's our standing in it, our standpoint, our depth of perception.
We zoom in, we zoom out…
Everything is everything, can be everything… Painting, film, image,  abstraction, hallucination, music, poetry, story, orchestration…
Over time, how we have this internal orchestra of receptors and antennae which learn their art.
How far can we see, how far can we hear, how close can we see, or…
What's in front of us that we appreciate.

The collective packets of cliff sparrows
flying through the ocean of air
born together from what mother...
A coordinated expression of love
Unreachable, un-really-knowable
Coursing through the sky like seals with wings and feathers
Never-beginning, never-ending...

Sometimes we just need to wait, and it comes.
We arrive.
Where we are to tune in to what's really there,
what we make of it, how we create through it, experience it.

Constant consciousness.