The Music Sings Itself (8/27)

“When I improvise, I try to get deep into myself. In other words, it’s sub-conscious, not conscious. I’m trying to… let the music play, let the music play by itself…that’s my whole effort when I improvise. I learn my songs and I learn my material and when I go on the stage and I’m improvising I forget it. I just let my inner consciousness play…”

                                                     – Sonny Rollins

I’m so pleased to report that this is exactly what happened yesterday in the 3^rd day of my Hangzhou Orff Course. But perhaps even more impressive because it was a small group spontaneously creating music. Once the first impulse was released, each responded in a way that made a coherent whole and once in motion, it felt like the music itself was dictating the next note, the next step, until it gathered itself to a final statement that all—players and listeners alike—could feel as the precise moment when the ending announced itself. 

 

The activity involved a game in which those who got “out” got to choose a percussion instrument and at the end, with some 60 people in a circle, we explored some further sound explorations (many of these ideas can be found in my book Sound Ideas). Simple, but musically effective things like passing the beat around the circle, each with their own instrument and a resulting orchestration blending sounds made from wood, metal, seeds and skin. Or creating a wave around the circle with overlapping sounds. 

 

Then we grouped according to instrument type—hand drums, shakers, triangles, woodblocks, boomwhackers. Each in turn came into the center with their task to improvise a piece of music together as a group. The guidelines were simple:

 

1)   Someone begins. Throws out the first impulse that the others will respond to. 

2)   Listening intently to all the ideas thrown into the mix, each contributes to the development of that original impulse. 

3)   All listen for the moment when the pieces seems to announce its imminent ending. Then end.

 

And that’s exactly what happened. Masterfully so. Each piece without exception and some (the boomwhackers!) with a stunning quality of musical connection and coherence. 

 

Truth be told, I’m more moved by moments like these than the most dazzling virtuoso. There is a spiritual presence, a vulnerability, a trust in forces beyond our intention and the presence of those unseen forces now given a voice and heard. And all this from a random group of music teachers. Few with previous training in improvisation and most the product of the strict, “Do this! And it better be correct!” approach. 

 

Those moments, alongside the 10-year-old boy whose mother said she’d never seen him so involved and relaxed in a class, and the boy himself taking the trouble to come up to me and say, “I really like your class,” is more than enough affirmation— I must be doing something right. And get to keep doing it with these marvelous, marvelous people for two more days!