Stet Lab is, and has been for some time, on indefinite hiatus. [More info…]
…a celebration of the practice of improvisation in all its diversity, complexity and, perhaps, contradictions
The audio recordings on this site have been made available courtesy of the performers. The current handshake agreement, however, is a little haphazard, and (potentially) prone to misunderstandings. I am therefore proposing to move these recordings onto the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Not exactly coasting, but I’ve been fairly comfortable with the tactics, strategies and lexicons I’ve deployed at Stet Lab. Minor criticisms here and there of course, but nothing that seemed to warrant a wholesale rethinking of what to play or how to improvise. But those […]
Audio recordings of the October 9th Stet Lab are now online.
Normally, nothing runs through my head when improvising. Occasionally, a thought will suggest, in an unobtrusive way, “Oh, that’s quite cool, you should copy that”. Or, as when I was first messing around with extended techniques on my bass, “My luthier’s gonna kill me…” But, at this Stet Lab, for the first time, a thought […]
It’s good, I think, to think tactically about improvisation, and group improvisation in particular. You know, however, that you’ve lost the game in improvisation when you’re preempting the music. You don’t want to be thinking this is how it should be, goddamnit, and I will fit that square piece into that triangular hole. Much more […]
Audio recordings of the July 10th Stet Lab are now online.
I’ve often wondered what goes through an improviser’s head during group improvisation. The improvised public performances I’ve participated in before have been more like improvised compositions in a sense—one person takes charge, or there’s a kind of plan vaguely sketched out (usually with the proviso that things might happen differently). This was my first time […]