Oft-heard responses start around, “Nothing, man” and end up approaching misty-eyed ramblings about picking fruit or cooking. Certainly there’s magic and mystery lurking in those improvisatory hills…
Here’s a little diagram to help explain what I think goes on in YOUR HEAD when you’re improvising: The centre-line represents time passing. The dot in the middle represents now. To the left is the past; to the right the future.
In any given moment we have an ever-decreasing awareness of the past and the future. I’m more aware of what happened three seconds ago and less aware of what happened three minutes ago. Likewise, I’m more aware of what might happen in three seconds and less aware of what might happen in three minutes. Awareness gets fuzzier the further away in time you go, in either direction, from the present moment.
You can’t be thinking of ‘nothing’ when you’re playing. If you’re unaware of what just happened, then what you played ‘now’ would have no meaning, no development, because it would always be a new thing. If you’re unaware of where you’re going, then what you just played would have no direction; you wouldn’t feel resolution points, phrase endings and so on.
Where it all goes wrong is when you get seduced by the past or the future: things like, “that was rubbish”, “that was amazing”, “I loved that feel”, “so and so is in the audience”, “I’m going to mess this up”, “somebody is filming this, what if it gets on YouTube”, etc. If you find yourself thinking thoughts along these lines then you’re not really in the present.
So ideally you want to always be in the present and just playing.
Hi There! Welcome to Nirvana!
Trouble is, it’s the stuff of magic.
Maybe what’s involved is knowing your stuff cold, or maybe being totally ignorant, or maybe it’s just not giving a flying fuck about anything, maybe it’s just loving what you do. Maybe it’s just giving up holding on to thoughts (!) and just getting on with doing whatever it is you do because it’s just more fun if you do that. Being judgmental or anxious is tiring.
Check out this video of Ronnie O’Sullivan making a maximum 147 break in an incredible 5 minutes 20 seconds.
Obviously I’ve got no idea what was going on in Ronnie O’Sullivan’s mind at the time he did this. But I’d suspect there was not a lot of mental chatter about the previous game or the last black, just a lot of doing. But who knows? it could be that while he did this there was a constant internal battle to stay present, and maybe that’s what makes a Ronnie O’Sullivan?
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has any experience in areas where you have to be ‘always on’: Air-Traffic Controller? A Surfer? A Comedian? A High-Wire Walker? A job or an activity where there’s not much room for mind-wandering or coasting. I think those people would have some interesting things to say about focus and being in the present moment. And how to get better at being there.
What do you think? Have you gotten better at this? Do you meditate? How does that affect your focus? When you’re in the moment, can you can mess about with it? Do you do an activity where you can more easily be in the present? Anyone studied Situational Awareness? Feel free to chime in with any thoughts on the matter…
Here are three Live Vault recordings from this year. As always, they are free to download, so please, help yourself; have a listen; come to a gig! The first two are from the London Horns. We recorded a studio album a couple of months ago and that’s almost finished and it is sounding splendid.
Here’s a set from the Tony Woods Project. Our next gig is on 30th Sept in Oxford at The Spin.
You have twenty books you want to read/study, but you’re overwhelmed, you don’t know where to begin, or you keep going over the same material. Here’s something I’m doing at the moment that’s working for me. Try it.
Some rules:
Go through each book from the start to the finish.
Make a start! Open a book and turn to page 1.
When you finish a page or two, don’t close the book. Leave it face-up on the page where you’re at.
When you reach an impasse or get bored with one thing, move on to another book.
Keep going. Use little snatches of time to read on, or work on a small idea until you’re ready to move on.
What works for me is seeing the pile of books as an open loop (to coin a phrase from David Allen); a tangible representation of what I’m working on. And, where I am with it. If I were to close a book and put it back on the shelf, then there’s always the possibility that I might let it drift off and forget about it. There’s something about leaving a book open that moves me forward; likewise, turning a page. There’s something about closing a book that allows me to close down to it. So I’m using this as a way of tricking myself into carrying on; keeping going; not giving in.
Well, one way to do it is to look at a clock and count the rate of the seconds – that’s obviously 60 bpm [beats per minute]. Double it if you need 120 bpm; half it if you want 30 bpm. And then, is it a little faster or slower than one of those?
Great, but you’re a nerd, and you want to go deeper into it, and you want to look like a freako weirdo who knows the exact bmp for all songs.
Hooray! I knew I could count on you ;)
Tempo Map
So, let’s make a tempo map. The idea is to pick some very memorable songs that you can easily hear in your imagination and map their tempo. You want to pick definitive recorded examples, not generic songs like ‘Happy Birthday’, so that you’ve got something concrete to point to as an example of a particular tempo.
I suggest you pick one band as that will make memorisation much easier. And pick a bands/artist with tons of great songs, e.g., The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, The Police, Billy Joel, Elvis, etc. But, whatever you’re into that fits the bill will work.
Then you want to find a way of linking the BPM to some content within the song. Or, any way of memorizing the tempo that’s quick and easy.
I found this useful site https://www.bpmdatabase.com, which is a list of thousands of songs & their metronome marks. On that site, you can look at all the songs by, say, Paul McCartney and choose the song you know best at a particular tempo, then come up with a way of memorising the tempo. For example, it’d be great if ‘When I’m 64’ was actually 64 BPM, or Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 was 95 BPM [so close!!]… But they aren’t, so forget that. But you get the idea, eh?
The Best Band In The World
So, maybe, like me, you’re a massive Queen fan?
Of course you are!
I’ll start you off. Here are some Queen tracks and their rough BPM. Be creative in linking the tempo to the song somehow.
For example, Another One Bites The Dust is 111 bpm, so you might associate the ‘1’ with “another ‘one’ bites..”, and the repetitions of 1, 1, 1, with those three strong downbeats of the bass line.
Get the idea?
Tempo Map
44 – In The Lap Of The Gods
66 – We Are the Champions (memory tip – ’66 was when England were the champions of the world of football [it actually starts out at around 64 bmp but ends up around 66 ish])
71 – Bohemian Rhapsody
73 – Somebody to Love
75 – Friends Will Be Friends
78 – Love of My Life
78 – Play the Game
80 – Is this the World We Created
81 – We Will Rock You
81 – Save Me
82 – Princes of the Universe
89 – Fat Bottomed Girls
92 – It’s Late
98 – Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
109 – I Want to Break Free
110 – Flash’s Theme
111 – Another One Bites the Dust (memory tip – another *1* bites, imagine the bass line, and say ‘1, 1, 1’)
112 – Radio Ga Ga
113 – These Are the Days of Our Lives
113 – Under Pressure
116 – Killer Queen
119 – You’re My Best Friend
120 – One Vision
125 – Seven Seas of Rhye
128 – A Kind of Magic
130 – Hammer to Fall
132 – Keep Yourself Alive
132 – Now I’m Here
133 – Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon
137 – Tie Your Mother Down
140 – Brighton Rock
156 – Crazy Little Thing Called Love – (memory tip – think ‘rock ‘n roll’ > Elvis > ’56 was the year Elvis was no.1)
170 – Bicycle Race
So those are quite specific tempi, and Queen recorded these songs without a click track so they do shift a little bit naturally at cadences and transitions (a good thing in my opinion) Anyhow, let’s round them up:
40 – In The Lap Of The Gods
60 – We Are the Champions
70 – Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody to Love
80 – Love of My Life, Play the Game, Is this the World We Created, We Will Rock You, Save Me, Princes of the Universe, Friends Will Be Friends
90 – Fat Bottomed Girls, It’s Late
100 – Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
110 – I Want to Break Free, Flash’s Theme, Another One Bites the Dust, Radio Ga Ga, These Are the Days of Our Lives, Under Pressure
120 – Killer Queen, You’re My Best Friend, One Vision
130 – A Kind of Magic, Hammer to Fall, Keep Yourself Alive, Now I’m Here, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Seven Seas of Rhye
140 – Tie Your Mother Down, Brighton Rock
150 – Crazy Little Thing Called Love
160 – Don’t Stop Me Now
170 – Bicycle Race
Listen
Test Your Tempo Memory
So if you’ve got a few song in mind for specific tempi, you can take the next step and see how accurate your recall is. Use this site to test your tempo memory powers: http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm.
Another tip is to sing the lyrics. This definitely makes my recall more accurate, so give it a try.
Can you nail 90 bpm? Try it… (‘It’s Late’ – CLASSIC track! Ridiculous on all levels!!)
I use this little iPhone app’s tap function (turn the volume off as the latency can be a drag) to test whether I can nail a certain tempo.
If you wanted to get even more nerdy, and I’m assuming you do if you’ve managed to read this far, well you could solidify the memory of your song/tempo association by adding it to something like Asana, Trello, or Anki which will periodically prod you to recall the song to the tempo and vice-versa. Anki’s algorithm will nudge you using spaced repetition to bolster your recall as your memory declines over time, but you could do the same in Asana by starting with daily prompts, then moving to every 3 days, then a week, 2 weeks, a month, etc.
Memory Palace & Mash Ups
This information can easily be stored within a memory palace. You just plot out markers along a journey in increments such as 40, 60, 80, etc. And then link the songs to the locations.
And to take it a step further, if your journey happens to be a road, you could imagine either side of the road to be a different band. For example, Queen on the right; Beatles on the left. As you make a stop at each location, you can look to either side for extra info.
Another idea: Find a few memorable songs at a particular BMP and then imagine a Mashup song. This kind of thing, or this. Mash Ups are especially memorable. Once you’ve heard Stayin’ Black you won’t forget it :)
Bask in the Adoration of Your Band-mates
Now just imagine the looks of AWE you’ll get when you adjust your spectacles, clear your throat and opine, ‘ahem, now allowing for a 3% error margin due to the epic amounts of Lambrusco I’ve taken at elevenses, I believe you’ll find that’s 156 BPM.’
My days: a cyclical, phasic lifestyle of whims and fancy, the latest of which involved removing all that I own from view in my studio. What was a wall of books, tapes, CDs, records, magazines, ephemera and so on, which, being sporadically looked at, had all the attributes of an attention vampire, is now the wide-eyed stare of a neutered goat looking for a new mountain.
All banished to the attic.
And I am free again to do my work.
While I get on with that, here’s a live set from The London Horns from a gig at the 606 Club last March. This was the first gig we did and features live versions of some of the tracks we’ve recorded on the *NEW ALBUM* which will be out later this year. I’m having a blast playing with this band; I think you’ll be able to tell from this recording :) All the chaps in the band are total monsters: Barnaby Dickinson: Trombone, Graeme Blevins: Saxophone, Graeme Flowers: Trumpet, Andy Fisenden: Drums, Dishan Abrahams: Bass. Barnaby also recorded some of these tracks on video, and you can see them here: www.youtube.com/user/BarnabyDickinson
Here’s another live recording of The Inner Noise band by Paul Pirongs from The Chapel Arts Centre in Bath on the 7th March, 2009. I think there’s probably another set as this seems pretty short for a whole gig, so maybe that’ll appear sometime…
Update: Found the lost set and uploaded. There are five extra tunes. I remember really enjoying the Hymn on this gig because the room was a really cavernous, which always makes the music different.
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In case you don’t know what the Live Vault is all about: It’s a home for live gigs of original music involving me that have been recorded. So far there are four albums and they’re all free to download. If, by any chance, you have a recording of one of my gigs then feel free to send it in and I’ll see if I can use some of it here.
There’s much more coming soon too. If you sign up to the mailing list I’ll let you know when there are new Live Vault recordings to check out.
This one features Asaf’s band the Inner Noise:
Asaf Sirkis: Drums and Compositions
Mike Outram: Guitar
Steve Lodder: Church [K]Organ
