Creating open form scores for improvising musicians

Cynthie van Eijden

Abstract This research aims to explore and develop an updated approach to "open form" in music. "Open form" is traditionally referred to as "aleatoric music": a score is provided but the composer has left some choices open. The term "aleatoric" music implies that chance determines how to fill the open spaces. The renewed approach in this research however aims to provide a score in which a performer as an improviser or co-composer is invited to shape the music according to his own opinion. The score provides a plan and context for improvised content and, in doing so, invites the performer to co-create the piece. The research developed in three phases. In the first phase, improvisation was used as a learning tool in music theory classes. Different approaches to improvisation were studied and practiced. In the second phase, one group of musicians evolved from an improvisation course and went on a tour of five concerts. For them an open form score was created in order to provide context to the improvisations of the musicians. This composition is called View from a high mountain, a composition in six parts that allows improvisation at several moments. In the third phase, findings from the outcome and performance of View from a high mountain caused a renewal of the approach in the classroom. Through this renewal the boundary between education and musical production became a thinner line that allowed several cross-overs. Instead of a handbook containing a method or exercises or a new open form score The Improvisation Tree was created. The Improvisation Tree is a model that can be used as a help for creating, analyzing, categorizing and comparing open form scores.

Conclusions

First

Musical materials like melodies, chords or rhythms are very easily created by most musicians. To create these in advance gives them a certain earnestness that does not suit the aim of improvisation. It therefore often works out better when such concrete musical materials are created on the spot. They are in that case not necessarily better than materials written in advance, but they suit the moment. What should be shared by the musicians is the way of understanding the material. There should be consensus about the quality and suitability of it.

Material that was created in advance should have very objective characteristics in order to be understood by all participants. Something that has an associative meaning will probably not be understood by the group, and will therefore not evoke the best results. Also, the participants will get on the wrong track by performing existing material, which will endanger the spontaneous flow of ideas.

So how to prepare an improvisation session with a group of musicians regarding musical material? The best way is to organize materials and ways of handling it without actually shaping it into a melody or a defined rhythm. A pre-organization like groupings of notes or a task on how to produce a material is probably far more successful. The result is something that can be improvised on right away. This way of working is described in The Improvisation Tree as a stepwise process: first, the group agrees on how to produce a melody, chord or rhythm, second, this material is produced and agreed on, third, this material serves as fixed material in an improvisation.

If under the choice “Approach” the first option is taken, there will be some fixed material in advance. A necessary condition is that all group members agree on the choice of this material. It should have something in it that all participating musicians are able to relate to in some way. Practice has shown, however, that this is not often the case. Creating material on the spot makes more fun – then it is as if the musicians speak to each other while creating it. Considered this way, it does not have to have absolute qualities of genius or eternity. It is just that, what is being said in this moment, which is fine and okay, and in which sometimes unexpected attractiveness is discovered.

Second

An improvisation session for a group is often an ad hoc situation. Even when it is a scheduled lesson, students can be absent or late, which changes the setting immediately. Therefore improvisation instructions are most useful when completely open to instrumentation, amount of instruments, and level of the players. Even the level of one and the same player is not the same when performing different tasks. In a way, not defining instrumentation is contradictory to musical practice, because if a high quality of result is needed, tone color and density of the texture are important tools. It is therefore necessary that all participants gather as much knowledge on instrumentation as they can. Some issues can be studied in general, like: how to combine different registers, or how to alternate between instruments. Gathering experience is much more valuable than fixing solutions, since most fixed solutions will only accidentally fit in future situations.

Third

Freedom in performance is especially experienced by musicians when they are free in their timing. Having a restriction on anything other than timing influences the experience of freedom much less. As soon as rhythm or meter are involved, much more practice and conscious thinking are needed. Especially playing melodies to a fixed chord scheme can be experienced as much more difficult than playing melodies without taking into account that the harmony will change in fixed moments. Two reactions are possible: practice till it works, or go the other way. Going the other way would mean, material should be organized in ways that don’t need regular harmony changes. Examples of these are: playing the melodies solo, free the melody from counterpoint obligations, restrict melodic material to material that fits with more than one harmony, accept clashes, play on a pedal.

Fourth

How, and for what purpose, do we evaluate results? In other words: what is good? It can be said, good is what is experienced as good. Or for a group: good is what can be shared. The question remains: shared as being what? Here, a distinction could be made between “music for production” and “music for discovery”. “Music for production” is something you would like to present to an audience. Doing this, however, we are in danger of repeating ourselves in order to feel secure. Sometimes it is refreshing to try approaches of which the outcome is not known or otherwise risky. We can call the result “music for discovery”, or leaving your safe set of habits. However, if we exaggerate this and lose sense of “music for production”, we will lose our sense of criticism as well and therefore discover less. In group sessions there should be a balance between the two: on the one hand music that sounds good (as experienced by people who are present) and on the other hand, music that pushes the limits and questions our current way of thinking. Here, The Improvisation Tree helps by showing the other leaves that are not discovered yet.

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