Hence the retuning at the start of ‘you have to answer them’, and the mental wincing whenever I hit a overtly melodic phrase. Another thing that threw me off was that I found Han’s playing on the night to be quite unexpected. I don’t know, you think you know a guy, and then he starts playing melodies on you… But surely expecting anything in advance can only lessen the action of immediate response and improvisation? For the last few Stet Labs, I’ve been playing with widely varying types of acoustic instruments, all played in disparately bizarre ways. There was no way I could anticipate what was coming next, and responding to those quiet unamplified sounds with my completely electric instrument and my large-but-still-appropriately-sized amp posed its own difficulties. After a while I just accepted the limitations of the situation and, I think, some acceptable music happened. Sometimes.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the insurmountable difficulties of the situation forced my mind to give up and get on with it. Because, when playing with Han, a lot of these difficulties disappeared, and that’s when my brain got noisy again. I didn’t have to watch my volume too carefully when playing alongside an electric guitar, and while Han was making use of chords, string noise, tapping etc, my mind kept perking up and going, “Ah! I know this”. The problem, I think, is that this type of improvisation should be an immediate response, and every time a thought gets in the way, it puts a filter between the event and the response. There are times in the first piece where this barrier brakes down, like the strange antiphony section, but mostly I was just quietly panicking along to my own internal monologue. “An E major? What are you THINKING!? Oh great, some more string noise, yeah, that’ll win them over… Muppet.”

Things got better during the second piece. I tried to accept my jittery state of mind, instead of trying to blot it out or calm it down. That, the addition of a pianist playing several kilometres outside “the box”, and an intriguing title for the piece, made ‘let me have the funny hat’ much more dynamic and interesting, I think. It’s now probably one of my favourite Stet Lab recordings.

After hearing him practice a few exercises before the gig, I had an idea that Mike Hurley’s performance would involve some fairly complex and dense playing, but I was still impressed by the clarity of each note he used, especially in ‘heard in my foot’. A good reminder that mad experimental music can be made without the use of strange sounds, and while still articulating every well-tempered note.

And finally, I just wanted to mentioned that I found the last piece, ‘they’re going to demolish the music department’ in general, and Eoin and Marian’s playing in particular, to be hypnotically captivating. Something about the sparse, floating piano notes and scratchy to-and-fro violin bowing. It sounded like the dark, tangled woods from a fairytale, or something.

Also, the idea of being obligated to answer your phone if it goes off is stolen (with gusto) from a Futurama audio commentary.

Okay, let me walk you though my misguided attempts at putting that square piece into that triangular hole on July 10th.

you have to answer them

Go to the recordings from July and have a listen to Tony O’Connor and my duet (entitled ‘you have to answer them’) that opened the Lab.

Duets are hard, and listening back now, I think Tony did some very fine playing on that.

On the other hand, I’m not at all impressed by the guitarist’s playing. Like I said, I still can’t shake that post-Campbell pseudo-bluegrass. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, so I figure I take that bluegrass line for a walk. Unlike June, however, this time the results sounded a little too forced (triangular block into circular hole). I’m still trying to figure out how much milage I have on this collection of disparate techniques (held together by their idiomatic associations), and, from my point of view, my playing never quite took-off in the July Lab.

At the time of performance, in fact, it was Tony’s contribution that was more interesting to listen to. At points, it felt like I was only providing filler material.

One thought that flashed through my mind during that duet:

This might be a good time to pause; have a change in texture / density / orchestration / social make-up; let Tony have a solo….

Good idea, huh? Except doublethink kicks in:

Uh-oh, wonder if Tony’d feel like he’s stuck out there by himself… Seconds thoughts, better not drop out right now.

I’ve talked to some of the Stet Lab (ir)regulars about this off-line, but sometimes I seem to be the one holding the group back in performance. Listening back to, for example ‘evening echo’, it’s the guitarist holding the group back. Marian Murray, Neil O’Loghlen and Veronica Tadman do not need me to make concessions. They know how to swim, and I don’t need to provide the floatation device.

And that’s my problem during my duet with Tony: an unjustified lack of trust in Tony’s abilities. I think I’m still stuck thinking that I’m performing in a classroom context, and not in the big bad world.

I really gotta unlearn that!

Now, when Eoin Callery joined in (on ‘let me have the funny hat’), that was a different story. Not exactly musically successful perhaps (but let’s not dwell on that), but at least I didn’t feel like there was a lack of trust. Wonder why…

exactly like next time

Mike Hurley’s solo (‘heard in my foot’) was fantastic. One of thing I caught in his solo was a kind of physicality—a corporeal logic—in its construction. However accurate this observation was, I (right or wrong) felt an affinity towards this mode of musical construction; an affinity that maybe bordered on familiarity.

So far, so good, but here’s where I make a mistake: I think

Hey, I could do that!

When, before you go up on stage, you imagine how compatible you might be with what is on-stage, you’ve doomed the possibilities. It’s like being a little too enthusiastic on your first date by, say, jumping straight to talk of marriage; the multitude of possibilities of what that relationship could be collapses.

It didn’t work out too badly (on the appropriately enough entitled ‘exactly like next time’), but my playing misses something. It misses, for example, the interplay between Eoin Callery’s and Mike’s pianos. It misses Tony and Neil’s busy bass frequency sounds that threaten to (but never quite) blow every other sound out of the room. Again, I was preempting the music.

The best thing I did was to bow out, and let the quartet finish the performance.

some random observations

The closest thus far that Stet Lab has got to a free jazz gig: ‘it’s gotta be worth something’ and ‘bass player have a light?’

Curating Stet Lab is an art, not a science…. No, better yet, curating Stet Lab is like organizing a faith exercise; like running a klugy, ill-thought-out cult meeting: now we breathe, er, now we go over here, um, light some candles, not we chant, and, er… oh, now we go back and sit in this little box…and, er, chant some more…. I’m still figuring out the ropes, folks, and this change to a more formal space of the Ó Riada Hall didn’t help none. I’m never quite sure how much hand-holding and stage direction we need or want (especially as I want to only put enough topdown direction as to make it run without hitch, but little enough so that the performers can initiate direction).

Marian starts-off both ‘it’s gotta be worth something’ and ‘they’re going to demolish the music department’, yet the two performances go very, very different directions. (Certainly Kevin Terry was not about to go into the free jazz realm.) Wonder how she felt about that? Her playing on ‘they’re going to demolish the music department’ was very different from her usual nonstop bursts of scratches and noise. A lovely, relaxed, chill’d (almost lounge-like) end to an exciting evening of music with Mr. Hurley.

Even taking into account Marian’s very valuable contributions, jeez, was this the most male Stet Lab (at least since January’s)? The last minute change of venue and earlier start time seems to have also played havoc with our testosterone levels.

one question

Was this too much music to absorb as an audience member? Melanie L. Marshall remarked that improvised music requires a lot of concentrated engagement from the audience, and that, as wonderful as the music was, without the bar breaks, it was perhaps a little information for the ears. What do you think?

A very warm thanks to Mike Hurley who not only demonstrated his abilities as, to quote Eoin Callery, a “sh*t-hot pianist”, but also demonstrated his generosity as a performer.

Thanks to Neil O’Loghlen for keeping Mike company on stage. And thanks, as always, to all who came to listen and play, including the evening’s Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of… Tony O’Connor and Han-earl Park, and Eoin Callery, Marian Murray and Kevin Terry for jumping into the (improvisative) deep-end.

Finally, Stet Lab gratefully acknowledges the support of the UCC Department of Music for coming through with this month’s venue.

[Mike Hurley:] “I have improvised in quite a free and gestural way since I was too young to know what free improvisation and free jazz were. …Like anything there was a fair bit of ‘trial and error’ when I was learning. …One prepares for an improvised show in a similar way to which one prepares for a surprise—it’s best not to worry about it.”

…Understanding personal differences is key, he says, to a successful collaborative improvisation, particularly as the process requires collective decision making and a trust in one another’s abilities.

Read the whole thing…

Catch Mike and the Stet Lab (ir)regulars tonight (Thursday, July 10th)! [Details…]

The evening’s second ‘rhythm section’ will be The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of… Tony O’Connor (bass guitar) and Han-earl Park (guitar).

Please note (yet again) the new venue!

It’ll be a unique and exciting event. We hope to see you there, participating as audience, performer or helper, and thank you for your continued support.

Now I know what goes through a newbie improviser’s head, or at least through this newbie’s head: sheer terror.

I didn’t know what to do.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have let everyone else start first, but I was too scared—too inexperienced, too—to be left alone doing a solo (thank goodness that didn’t happen). But eventually after what seemed like hours of my silence I realised that I was going to have to do something. Everyone in the audience was expecting me to do something.

I have no recollection, really, of what was happening around me, but I knew that no-one else seemed to be making smooth sounds, and no-one else was making siren noises, so that’s what I did. A bold sound to try to scare off my nerves—a bit like when our dog used to charge out of the house at night-time barking to frighten all the scary things there.

Stet Lab

featuring Mike Hurley
plus The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of…

Thursday, July 10th 2008

7:30pm [earlier start time!]

Ó Riada Hall [new venue!]
UCC Department of Music
Sundays Well
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

Following the success of June’s convention, Cork’s monthly improvised music event—Stet Lab—continues its Summer 2008 season of on-stage mutations and hybrids on Thursday, 10th July, at the Ó Riada Hall, UCC Department of Music, Sundays Well. This regular, yet unique meeting between novice and veteran improvisers alike welcomes the co-founder of the Birmingham Improvisers Orchestra, Mike Hurley to the rostrum.

Stemming from the bright lights of Birmingham, Hurley is an exciting and innovative young pianist, capable of both furious extemporizations and the “angelic piano” (Downtown Music Gallery, NY), who has quickly established himself as an original voice in the free improvisation scene. A mover and shaker within the English improvised music community, according to the Birmingham Post, Hurley is “making quite a mark in the British free jazz arena, and has already played with such stalwarts of the scene as Lol Coxhill and the Pauls, Rutherford and Dunmall.” This is Hurley’s first performance at Stet Lab and will see him performing both as a soloist and with the local musicians. However, he is no stranger to the Lab’s style having founded his own fortnightly free improvisation event FiZZLE, and curates, in association with Birmingham Jazz, the quarterly Invention Convention.

Also performing at the event will be Stet Lab’s house band; a group of Cork-based improvisers appearing as The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of…. Audience members are welcome to participate in association with the programmed artists; please introduce yourself to the Stet Lab curator on the night.

Stet Lab gratefully acknowledges the support of the UCC Department of Music in providing a venue for this month’s event.

There’s also a lot to be said for putting two ‘alikes’ together; be it the same instrumentation, or people who share a name. Okay, AFAIK, tactically, as an improviser, that latter factor doesn’t make an iota of difference, but I can vouch for the former.

Murray Campbell and Marian (that’s Marian Murray) fit that bill, and, as the odd-one-out, I get to play lazy. (And as one of my teachers pointed out recently, improvisers are, to some extent, lazy; we’re often attracted to methods, strategies and practices that get immediate results.)

Here’s one thing that was premeditated on June 12th: the line-up. I figured that by doubling the fiddlers, that they’d be pushing each other to interesting places, or at least out of each other’s way. And all I’d have to do is ride the wave.

So let me talk you through the tactical hits-and-misses of two ditties from the POV of the odd-one-out. Open up the listen page, look-up the recordings entitled ‘nine fifty-nine is divisible by seven’ and ‘toilette bourgeoise’…

nine fifty-nine is divisible by seven

Here’s another premeditation (with the usual improviser’s caveat that given the right circumstances I might change my mind): I decided to walk off stage and let the fiddlers sort themselves out; find their own vibe. Once that vibe was established, I anticipated that it’d be a fairly straightforward task to re-enter the fray, with the added luxury of having plenty of time to think about my (re-)entrance.

Incidentally, Marian, Neil O’Loghlen and I tried something like this in the May Lab with, I think it’s fair to say, mixed results. I thought, however, we might be in a better position to pull it off this time.

I was pushing for an opening with some strong, broad gestures.

Aside: the opening guitar ‘licks’ were a followup to Tony O’Connor’s entrance earlier in the evening (listen to ‘ruined train of thought’). …and, in my case, it’s also a straight Frith rip-off if you’re wondering.

Of course (and I don’t really need to tell you this) it didn’t turn out as expected. The high-energy opening wasn’t, instead becoming a set of semi-autonomous statements.

And this is where things get interesting…

…and all the best laid plans…

As soon as I walk off stage, the vibe changes. Heads to some in-bred sibling of some radiation-poisoned cousin of some Second-Viennese-School-by-numbers. Odd (as in delicately odd), beautiful (beautifully tasteless) and, I think at the time, where the f*ck did this come from? If I was expecting Murray and Marian to push each other to interesting places, I certainly got that.

Secondary problem with this strategy: although “having plenty of time to think about my re-entrance” is indeed a luxury, like a lot of ‘prepared means’, they come with Improviser’s Hazard No. 697: exactly when would be a good time to act?

I’d anticipated that the aforementioned vibe that the fiddlers had setup would remain in place for my re-entrance, but, as it happened, Webern-for-Dummies™ instantaneously evaporated when I sat back in. (Berg-for-Dummies™ would later pop up during ‘what is the avant-garde? (discuss)’.)

Another aside: I thought that the physical orientation of the trio (left-to-right: violin, violin, guitar) would make it hard for me to pick out the individual fiddle players. Murray was playing right into my ear while I couldn’t even see Marian. Turned out, however, not to be a problem, although I found myself interacting with Murray and Marian very differently. All interactions between Murray and myself could be a little more elliptical—the relationship was implicit, almost taken for granted. With Marian, on the other hand, I found myself almost telegraphing a call-and-response; all the gestures were slightly broader, a little more explicit, delivered with almost no overlap. (But I wonder if the audience could catch any of that…)

toilette bourgeoise

You can almost hear the guitarist’s thought processes on this one. Goes something like this:

Given that it’s pointless to compete with violins on timbre, sustain, or (micro-)intervalic stakes, what’s the poor guitarist to do? Since there’s no way that the poor guitarist can keep up with a fiddle player who decides to go the extreme scratchy, droney, slidey route, the poor guitarist should stick with the percussive and the polyphonic.

So the guitar goes tappity - tap - tap - t’thump
and the fiddles go krrr’shhhhhhh - scrrrrreeeeechhhh - scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
(starts at around 0′20″).

Or guitar: t’tap - tap - p’pop - pop’p’p’p
and fiddles: weeeeeeeee - eeeeeeeeeeeeeee - eeeeeeeeeeeee
(at around 1′23″).

I tried for the Oxley-esque meters gear-shifts, but the body-mind-instrument complex was not cooperating (I think I had a better shot at this last month).

…or I may have consumed one drink too many (there’s a cautionary tale here somewhere).

Then the question: now what?

I tried a half-hearted juxtaposition of gesture-types, but that really didn’t go anywhere (interesting). Having said all that, listening to the recording right now, I don’t think that particular failure made any difference to the overall performance.

I think we owe the faux-bluegrass moments that starts and sputters across this ditty (beginning somewhere around the 4′20″ mark, and coming to the foreground at about 6′50″) largely to Eoin Callery’s and Barry Twomey’s playing / instrumentation earlier in the evening.

In retrospect, the most interesting thing about these ditties was how easily / clumsily, fluidly / abruptly, imperceptibly / overtly the trio configures and re-configures itself. One moment it’s two fiddles + guitar, another it’s one solo fiddle supported by the guitar-violin duo. One moment the guitar-percussion it met by violin scratches and subtones; a single violin in scratch’n’subtone mode is met by guitar-percussion plus violin-percussion; or the guitar-percussion morphs into pseudo-country-finger-pickin’ which recontextualizes the scratches and subtones.

some random observations

Susan Geaney may have done some of her best (most interesting and oblique) playing at this Lab. Rumor has it that she was hung-over. Whatever the case, her usual reserve seems to have gone out the window. (Hope this state is achievable without constant recourse to alcohol.)

The potential volume discrepancy between Eoin’s and Tony’s instruments (unplugged dulcimer vs. amplified bass guitar) offers some challenges. As it happens, Tony spent the bulk of the evening at very low volume levels, and Eoin was whacking the dulcimer senseless, but given how sensitive a player Tony was being, I wonder if Eoin was ever tempted to play quieter?—bringing the whole ensemble down with him—or was Susan’s new-found boldness going to prevent that from happening?

Although it’s by no stretch of the imagination ‘good music’ (whatever that means), the quartet of Murray, Marian, Tony and Veronica Tadman (filed under ‘kentucky fried music’) may be my favorite for its shear technicolor, psychotic strangeness. No, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Anyway, it began with several short burst to get things started, from the house band of the evening. This comprised Eoin Callery (mountain dulcimer), Susan Geaney (flute), Tony O’Connor (bass guitar) and Barry Twomey (guitar). A very well behaved bass player who could have crush the puny acoustic forces, swelled and tinkered over the guitar and dulcimer duel. There were funny capo positions creating slidable bridges, randomly inserted beer mats, all manner of slides, and more picking devices than you can pick a string with. At one point there may possibly have been a few chords, but it all just happened so fast; a mass of plucked strings creating an infectious groove infecting any possibility of an healthy infectious groove developing. In the meantime the flute just wouldn’t stop, which is a good thing—moving from key clicks to blown vowel sounds and the occasional jet whistle………… that folks, was what it was all about. Marian Murray (violin) and Kevin Terry (guitar) joined for a round, altering the timbre nicely, with some semi-suggested riffs from Kevin, and “101 things to do with a violin” from Marian.

After a short break for cigarettes and bar trips, the main performer of the evening took the floor. Murray Campbell (violin), was joined by Marian Murray (violin) and Han-earl Park (guitar); Murray proposing, “101 other things to be done with a violin”, in dialogue with Marian—the combination of the two violins was sometimes like a “Pinky and the Brain” string ensemble plot to take over the world—was assisted by some short contribution from Han, for two 10 minuet trios. The contrast in bowing still, and slightly detuned long sustained tones duets passages just captivated the listeners, before abruptly stopping allowing the listener to be mugged by the ensuing hectic and dense finger work of both players. This was Murray’s second appearance at Stet Lab, but in my opinion this new venue allowed many of the subtleties of his playing to be heard much more clearly. His movement from long-sustained tone, multiple examples of melodic phrasing, and rapid combinations of whistle-tones, harmonics, bow scrapings, plucking and rhythmic taps—especially during the second trio—left nobody in doubt of his abilities and obvious comfort in many violin/fiddle styles. For the rest of the evening—with Murray at the helm—the other musicians present took turns supporting him through this investigation and presentation of techniques for a further 30 minuets of surreal barn-dancing…………….. if only you could get this in Redz seven nights a week.

A special mention must be made of the vocal talents of two heavily intoxicated eastern european (they never quite managed to explain exactly where they were from!) who entered the fray at various points. People may say that you could never perform something like Zappa’s “Lumpy Gravy” live—well given the right balance of whatever they were on, they may decide to stage it yet….. if you don’t believe me (and that’s probably the best stance to take) listen—puny earthling—to the evidence……………………………………..

Please not that, due to circumstances beyond our control, there is unfortunately likely to be a last minute change of venue. Please sign-up to the list or subscribe to the news feed to stay up-to-date. [More info…]