I’ve been thinking a lot about recordings and recording methods in music improvisation lately, mostly because OK Music is about to ramp up its rehearsal schedule for the fall, which will lead to a lot more recorded materials for our group’s media page. After I start my doctoral program next week at USC it’s likely that I’ll have the opportunity to make some changes on how we might handle our recording sessions from now on, since I’ll have access to a lot of the university’s resources and services. What, if any, kinds of changes can and should be made, though?
As stated in our business plan, one of the core strengths of OK Music is the group’s ability to produce high-quality musics in very short amounts of time. So short, in fact, that the time it takes to play it is often how long it takes to make it, since the vast majority of our music is made spontaneously and in real-time. With the right combination of performers and talent, creativity doesn’t have to take an eternity to execute — it can be done right there and then, without the need for any preconceived ideas from external sources.
In essence, this is what improvisation is all about: Being “there” in the moment of things, showcasing one’s ideas and expressions in an unmediated fashion. A declaration of independence by presenting yourself and your ideas as-is, raw and uncut. It’s direct, honest, intimate with its audience and always authentic. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there is definitely an audience base and a market for people who are in search for such an aesthetic. How do you “capture” this into recorded form, though?
After doing some research, it turns out that there are no definite answers to this question — the issue is fairly controversial, especially within the improvisation (and classical) community where they have been relatively slow to adopt the use of the recorded format as part of their performance-practice customs. There are no rules for recording improvised musics, so it seems that we’re in the position to make this one up as we go along as well.
From a historical perspective, it helps to keep in mind that music “purists” are often against recordings in any form, claiming that it “cheapens” the experience of the concert when the performers subjugate themselves to this type of commodification. This sentiment is particularly strong within the improvisation community where there seems to be a fear of losing audience/performer intimacy when external devices become introduced. There is, of course, also the fear of “being watched” — when you know you’re being recorded for future ears to hear, how can you really be expected to “just be yourself”?
This will not play back on your iPhone, unfortunately.
To some extent these opinions voice very valid concerns, but the harsh reality is that styles that had embraced recordings from the very beginning (pop, jazz) are currently faring much better than styles that resisted (classical, improv), and this is made clear in the public’s understanding and consumption of each respective medium. Recordings allow for greater proliferation, which in turn attracts a larger audience base. There is also the counter-argument to the “authentic” concert experience, which is that recordings allow for people outside of the event itself to enjoy the music that was produced there. Taken to an extreme, the idea of improvisation as a form of community-building may ironically end up becoming an exercise in exclusivity — personal intimacy at the expense of the rest of the world.
Fortunately these hard-line stances seemed to have softened in recent years, and you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who’s vehemently opposed to the usage of recording technologies at this point in time. In the case of OK Music, a decision was made that the group is going to focus its performance and pedagogical efforts toward the general public, so the recordings will no doubt become an invaluable tool to supplement our live performances. But again, the group is confronted with the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a precursor to model ourselves after, at least for our type of aesthetic. (Improvised practices that utilize classical forms, techniques, and ideas about harmony and rhythm but with a contemporary bent.)
A number of people have mentioned that the tracks we have so far sound very “natural” in comparison to many of the recordings that are out on the market right now. There is a tendency for recorded musics to sound highly polished, usually as a result of long hours spent at its post-production stages cutting, editing, and fixing every little detail. So far we have managed to fill up our media page listings with no cuts, edits, or processing (other than some minor EQ and compression when necessary), and I think the difference in sound is pretty obvious.
If emotion could be captured as a .jpg, it would probably look something like this.
A lot of this comes as a result of having recorded our performances in a fairly casual manner with minimal technical preparation. The recording perspective more or less sounds like if you were there with us in the room/garage that we happened to be recording in at the time. What keeps the interest of the music going is the level of musicianship that the performers bring to the table — in this respect, I’m very lucky to have been able to work with such an extraordinary group of people and none of this would have been possible without them.
In the end I think that retaining this “casual” sound will be a good thing for the ensemble. It serves what the group aims for (authenticity, directness) while allowing us to distinguish ourselves from the sea of recordings that are out there right now. If the listener can feel as if “they were there”, then the medium has served its purpose and we have targeted the kind of audience that we want to appeal to — someone looking for something different from the schizophrenia, disjunction, and surface polish of a piece or song that had 300 hours put into it during post- or pre- production.
Luckily, current trends seem to be in our favor — the “documentary” feel (real or not) is becoming more popular, and people seemed to have gained a higher tolerance for “unpolished” sounds, largely thanks to an increased proliferation and appreciation of recordings made by mobile devices. People seem to have, at least to a certain extent, become more interested in the content of an object over its package. Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, “The Medium is the Message” may no longer prove to be relevant in today’s society, especially as advances in technology continues to push it towards a different direction.
These are the conclusions that I came to, at least in my experiences working with musicians of the improvising variety. There’s a place for music with a high amount of polish (a more positive term would be “refinement”) but for improvised musics where authenticity is its main selling point, I think that leaving it relatively untouched would better serve its intent. What do you think?
Related posts: