Monday 21 April 2008

Improvisation is Plural

Miles Davis illustrated the collective coherence of improvisation by having the so-called 'backing' players punctuate the soloist lines with ad-hoc phrases, jarring the 'leader' back into the real-time, a push-pull give-take phrase by phrase inter-PLAY described by Ornette as "what if 10 people all 'solo' at once?"; ex-Allman Bros guitarist Warren Haynes says much the same in this clip, he talks about being "one second behind your brain" and being "in the moment" as he's trading musical words in a southern blues dialect with Phish lead Trey Anastasio; there's also a brief guitar lesson over at gibson.com where Warren talks about Miles, about the spaces between notes and giving others room to be part of the now of the sound.


Amazon: Warren Haynes