Reflective Practice: Exploring Structure and Sound Creation in Extended Improvisation
Introduction
Within the wide landscape of contemporary music, extended improvisation is a practice that prioritises spontaneity, sonic exploration, and collective listening. Britannica defines musical improvisation as “the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage” (Britannica, n.d.). As a drummer with a funk and indie-rock experience, the backbeat of a song is centralised in my playing, expressionism and freedom within extended improvisation initially felt disorientating and unfamiliar. Within this essay, I will explore how my engagement with the discovery of the structure of a free musical landscape and the exploration of sound creation propelled my confidence and accuracy as a drummer. Through the challenges I encountered, the practice of extended improvisation allowed me to investigate elements that constructed my fluidity and improved my sonic awareness. Within this essay, I will refer to my video documentary at certain time stamps, using these videos as a demonstration of my exploration of extended improvisation.
- From Groove-Based Drumming to Improvisational Disorientation
Within my eight-year experience of being a drummer, I have explored multiple genres predominantly centric to mainstream music such as rock, funk, and country. Performing in multiple live bands, I have adapted my playing to become centralised around creating and keeping a groove to create a strong rhythmic foundation. Steve Gadd, Nate Smith, and Bernard Purdie are among the many drummers who have explored the concept of “creating a pocket”. Smith (2018) describes the pocket as the agreement on timing, the spacing between notes, and the energy between musicians sonically. This inspired my playing into focusing on the backbeat groove in intricate detail, being cautious to avoid overplaying. However, I believe that my hyperfocus on this element within my playing limited me without my awareness as I stopped focusing on being free and emotive around the kit. The introduction of extended improvisation allowed me to explore a new area of practice within my playing, which juxtaposed from the backbeat groove, whilst ultimately improving my playing and confidence as a drummer.
The introduction of extended improvisation felt uncomfortable and disorienting to begin with. In my first lesson, I was encouraged to perform a solo improvisation without any predetermined structure. This felt unfamiliar as I was overly conscious of whether the musical decisions I was making adhered to the genre. Within the video, I have included an audio recording of my first ensemble improvisation at 0.00. In this recording, I play a shuffle rhythm using the rims of the toms to support the free playing saxophone. Whilst this is effective, it is evident that I struggled to perform with rhythmic freedom. This was because I was hesitant to completely divert from playing a groove and creating a rhythmic foundation. Upon reflection, I believe this was due to the lack of known structure and knowledge within the genre; I was unsure of what exactly to play. Subsequently my lecturer, James Mainwaring, encouraged me to play without a backbeat by focusing on certain parts of the drum kit at a time. This task gave me a small sense of structure and regularity, allowing me to focus on a singular element. Furthermore, the encouragement to alter my approach encouraged me to explore varied rhythmic densities, tempos, and feels. This challenged my habitual reliance on familiar patterns and introduced a more fluid understanding of musical structure within my playing.
2. Structure, Sections and the Development of Active Listening
After my introduction to extended improvisation, it was evident that I felt disoriented within a performance setting without a sense of structure. Although extended improvisation often appears unstructured, it was clear that in the subsequent lesson, form can emerge organically through collective interaction. As an ensemble, we explored exercises that were centralised around structure, regarding close listening and communication between ensemble members. We investigated the relationship between legato and pizzicato sounds, using the contrast to change focus to a different section. For instance, the ensemble began with playing sustained notes, once a player introduced a staccato rhythm, the ensemble would change their performance into imitating this motif, creating a new section. These exercises encouraged active listening and communication whilst displaying an effective way to change sections.
Within the extended improv landscape, John Stevens (1985) states, “The most important thing in improvisation is listening.” This highlights the vital importance of listening intensely to other musicians to change and construct momentum, texture, and rhythm. The video at 0.33 is an example of how I employed Stevens’ approach to imitate the saxophone rhythmically. This was effective as I created textural and sonic differences by choking and scraping the cymbal when expanding the motif around the drum kit. Upon reflection, I could have utilised more rhythmic freedom around the saxophone’s part and played with dynamics more to create tension. An example of how I communicated with an ensemble with leveraged dynamics is the video at 1.35. This was where, in a performance with piano and bass, we reached a dynamic crescendo and stopped the excerpt at the same time. This was extremely effective and was a result of the ensemble listening to each other at our limit of dynamic.
There were moments of difficulty during this process. This included instances where I failed to estimate momentum or direction of the ensemble, where continuous playing was less effective than changing sections or stopping. This process allowed me to explore the idea of restraint, transforming it into an active musical decision, rather than an absence of contribution. As Stevens (1985) further explains, “if you’re not listening, you’re not improvising,” emphasising listening as the foundational act within collective improvisation. The existence of structure within free improvisation created familiarity for me as a drummer, allowing me to become increasingly confident around the kit and within my role in an ensemble.
3. Sound Creation Through External Objects and Hybrid Setups
After the exploration of structure within free improvisation, I felt comfortable and confident due to my knowledge and prior experience from the previous lesson. In subsequent lessons, we explored the depth of sound creation within and outside our instruments.
We explored multiple different sounds and sound executions away from our prospective instruments. This was achieved by using external objects such as wooden blocks, metal bowls, and arbitrary instruments such as a small goblet within free improvisation. The sonic potential of these objects was tested by using alternative implements other than drumsticks, such as mallets, brushes, and violin bows. Due to the presence of another drummer, the drum kit was split into two. I had a ride cymbal, a floor tom, and several arbitrary instruments to experiment with. Whilst this first felt disorientating due to an unfamiliar setup, it prompted me to investigate the sonic relationship between objects and how sound can be manipulated through interaction. For instance, placing a metal bowl on the floor tom and applying pressure to the drumhead after striking the bowl created a sustained tone with a slight vibrato.
The sonic exploration of instruments external to the drum kit encouraged me to explore percussion-based improvisers to further expand this perspective. Robyn Schulkowsky performs using a hybrid setup of percussion and found objects, demonstrating how sounds incoherent to a drum kit can function within a musical setting. Examining her solo live at Audiovisionen (2017), Schulkowsky creates a continuously evolving sonic environment utilising external objects, manipulating acoustic sounds digitally through a soundboard. The sonic integration of sounds such as a wooden block, chimes, and gongs that are digitally manipulated in real time demonstrates how sonic exploration can be prioritised over rhythmic detail. Examining the approach of Schulkowsky encouraged me to investigate the sonic potential of objects, and how manipulation can create a diverse range of sonic explorations.
4. Extended Techniques and Intentional Sound Manipulation
Extended techniques refers to the playing of an instrument in unconventional ways (Hill, 2018). An example of this can be examined in the video of the making of the Halo Infinite videogame soundtrack (Halo,2021). Whilst this video does not contain extended improvisation, it displays how varying the manner of contact and alternative implements can manipulate the sonic textual environment. Within this sound exploration, a piano is smashed with a hammer and cement blocks to create sudden, aggressive sounds. This is contrasted with dark screaming sounds that are constructed through the placement of nitrous oxide blocks onto the piano strings. The use of alternative implements to strike parts of the piano that are external to the standard setup conveys the broad horizon of sound exploration. The creation of these sound effects demonstrated how extended techniques can be used to create abnormal sounds and textures.
After exploring the sonic properties of external objects, I wanted to explore how I could create contrasting tones using the standard drum kit setup, manipulating the sound through my own execution. I spoke to my drum teacher about extended techniques, in which he showed me how to create sustained tones on cymbals by scraping the tip of my stick along the ridges of the cymbal. The video at 1.48 displays how we discussed the importance of consistency in the pressure and the friction of the stick and how this effected the pitching and sustainability of the tone. I was also shown how to create a sustained tone on a drumhead by creating friction between my finger and the skin. However, I struggled with this technique as it created friction burn on my finger and I could not get the consistency of the pressure correct to create a sustained tone. The exploration of extended techniques displayed the need for intention when executing, as there is a high level of accuracy to create a certain tone and sound.
To further propel this argument, Derek Bailey states that free improvisation has “no stylistic or idomatic commitment”, suggesting that “the characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity.” Bailey displays the importance of the material interactions of performers and instruments in the moment rather than predefined conventions. He also conveys how sonic identity within improvisational music becomes a priority over the rhythmic and predefined notions of a piece of music. An improvisational solo at 2.52 displays how I used alternative ways of playing the drums to create tension within a gradual crescendo. I began the solo with tapping my fingers upon the head and slowly introduced the sound of scraping the drumhead with my sticks. This is then interrupted by the presence of a bass drum pattern and strong hits on the toms. The piece finishes with one final hit. In this improvisation, I utilised dynamics and the limitation of playing within a certain part of the drum kit successfully, creating gradual tension. Purposefully limiting myself to certain parts of the kit allowed me to discover more sonic possibilities. In this solo, I focused on the floor tom, ride and bass drum, in which I explored using the tom rim as well as the sounds of tapping and scraping the drumhead. Whilst this was effective as I explored sonic possibilities, it could be effective to employ more extended techniques, such as scraping the cymbal to create more tonal texture.
5. Integrating Sound Awareness into Personal Practice
The exploration of how I could create abnormal sounds from my own execution led me to investigate my own way of performance. Improvisors such as Paul Motian, Robyn Schulkowsky and Joey Baron play with such conviction and intent that the way they strike and sustain a note is calculated and prepared before it is executed.
In the roulette drum solo performed by Joey Baron (2014), Baron plays a thirteen-minute-long solo. He explores the sonic capabilities of the toms, snare, and cymbals with physical fluidity and accuracy in how he strikes with different parts of the stick, in multiple tempos and rhythms. After examining this video, I focused on how striking the drum differently would create a more responsive sound. For example, the molar effect creates a strong tone of the drum as well as allowing me to create fluidity within the movement of my wrist. Baron inspired me to create this fluidity around the kit within live improvisation. In this video at 3.33. I play a short solo based around the toms. This solo was played in my most recent lesson, after my exploration of sound creation, manipulation and structure of extended improvisation. It is evident that I am more comfortable behind the kit within this setting, physically and mentally. Analysing my performance, it would be effective to add more dynamic variety within my solo, to create texture and development.
In conclusion, the exploration of extended improvisation has allowed me to reshape not only how I interact with sound in an ensemble, but how I understand music as a lived practice. Ornette Coleman observed, “improvisation is the only artform in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time,” highlighting the central role of intuition, presence and personal expression in real-time creation (Coleman, cited in Musical U, 2017). This encapsulates how the exposure of detail within execution, structure and performance has adapted my playing to become more comfortable and confident. I have thoroughly enjoyed evolving myself as a drummer through the exploration of extended improvisation and will continue exploring this ever-changing practice.
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