soul: ba(red) (2018)
soul ba(red), solo recording with Corey Mwamba (vibraphone)
soul: ba(red) is a solo vibraphone piece which examines narratological emergence in improvising practice. Over the course of the piece there are two melodic themes that emerge, which I repeat (they are chanted). These are summarised below in standard Western notation.
The two emerging themes in soul: ba(red).
The recording process has picked up my footsteps as I step away from and approach the vibraphone. Below is the accompanying “sound text” for the piece. The poem reflects both the experience felt by me as a performer, and the meanings that I find inherent in the sounds made while improvising. I have also included timings for where the line corresponds to the music.
soft mallets, aiming for the centre
each time
I am chanting (0 – 20″)
but there is no forest now
I have reached an edge I did not know was here (23″)
was this a blankness before?
or could I not perceive the space?
air
I step back, to approach again (27″)
and chant
I expose the frame with a stroke (41″)
I call across a distance (45″)
the material thuds
the note is louder though
again
the wind increases
as I chant again (1′)
there are valleys in the distance; but they do not matter now
I am now at an edge (1′03″)
the line exposes my life
the strike exposes the surface, the form
all the notes, the frame, the pedal: in one note
my mouth opens (1′33″)
we hiss
the bells quiver in the wind (1′35″)
sotto (1′51″)
I raise to sing
I stamp my feet in the ground (2′11″)
the roar surprises me
there is so much energy
I move away yet extend (2′52″)
to invoke the shortest of wor(l)ds
the lowest note is a hum (4′21″)
my left hand is supine
and there is more land
I speak across another distance, softly
my hand touches the surfaces (4′35″)
(fl-)
I chant again (4′40″)
there is a lightness
automatic text description of the audio
The text is intentionally not fully descriptive; it is not a pure description of my playing in an analytical sense. The scope of the text is to create another layer of association in the person that experiences the work, to aid with narrativity and meaning making. The text also functions to mark the changes in my conception of playing: in this text I refer to the loss of a “forest”. This "forest" is a visualisation of sounds which I previously felt I could mentally “wander” through. Some of the "trees" in this forest represented sounds of people; this is similar to Wynton Marsalis' formulation of oak trees of men, although the trees in my forest are not exclusively male. Other trees represented the sounds available to me from the vibraphone. During the course of this research, this imagery stopped for me, and has been replaced by a spatialisation that is blank but has contours: it is "felt" rather than "seen", seemingly empty, yet full of the sounds of others ("voice... over there"), such as Ella Fitzgerald, or Luther Vandross. My interaction with these voices is constant, fluid, and ongoing – it is inherently social.