ABOUT THIS BOOK
Most studies of musical improvisation focus on individual musicians. But that is not the whole story. From jazz to flamenco, Shona mbira to Javanese gamelan, improvised practices thrive on group creativity, relying on the close interaction of multiple simultaneously improvising performers. In Making It Up Together, Leslie A. Tilley explores the practice of collective musical improvisation cross-culturally, making a case for placing collectivity at the center of improvisation discourse and advocating ethnographically informed music analysis as a powerful tool for investigating improvisational processes.
Through two contrasting Balinese case studies—of the reyong gong chime’s melodic norot practice and the interlocking drumming tradition kendang arja—Tilley proposes and tests analytical frameworks for examining collectively improvised performance. At the micro-level, Tilley’s analyses offer insight into the note-by-note decisions of improvising performers; at the macro-level, they illuminate larger musical, discursive, structural, and cultural factors shaping those decisions. This multi-tiered inquiry reveals that unpacking how performers play and imagine as a collective is crucial to understanding improvisation and demonstrates how music analysis can elucidate these complex musical and interactional relationships.
Highlighting connections with diverse genres from various music cultures, Tilley’s examinations of collective improvisation also suggest rich potential for cross-genre exploration. The surrounding discussions point to larger theories of communication and interaction, creativity and cognition that will be of interest to a range of readers—from ethnomusicologists and music theorists to cognitive psychologists, jazz studies scholars, and improvising performers. Setting new parameters for the study of improvisation, Making It Up Together opens up fresh possibilities for understanding the creative process, in music and beyond.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prelude
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0000
[collective improvisation;group genius;distributed invention;collaborative creativity;New Orleans jazz;Balinese gamelan;kendang arja;analytical ethnomusicology;musical analysis;ethnographically-informed musical analysis]
As an introduction to the book Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond, this chapter proposes “collective improvisation” as a concept with usefulness far beyond New Orleans jazz, free jazz, and experimental rock. An examination of the related concepts of group genius, distributed invention, and collaborative creativity across diverse fields shows the centrality of collective work to most creative processes. The chapter then advocates placing collectivity at the center of musical improvisation discourse across genres, extending and nuancing the definition of collective improvisation to create a more cross-culturally salient concept, and thus encouraging a unified terminology that enables intertextual reference among researchers of diverse improvised practices. In preparation for the book’s longer music-analytic case studies (Ch. 2-3, 5-6), the chapter introduces two collectively improvised practices from traditional Balinese gamelan music, which was long thought of as essentially non-improvisatory: kendang arja and reyong norot. Finally, by showing how ethnographically-informed musical analysis can deepen and nuance our understandings of improvisatory processes and collective creativity in culturally resonant ways, a case is made for the value of analytical ethnomusicology in this and other studies.
The Complicated Story of Improvisation: Models and Methods, Creativity and Conceptual Space
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0001
[improvisation;improvisatory processes;cognitive processes;variation;musical analysis;model;knowledge base;conceptual space;Hindustani alap;kendang arja]
This chapter examines the concept of musical improvisation, unraveling the myriad of terms used to describe it and proposing language and frameworks for analyzing diverse improvisatory processes in unified ways. “Improvisation” is characterized as a continuum of creative options, from relatively strict formulaic variation to relatively free improvisation, each drawing in its own way from a pre-existing musical model and informed by a culturally-accepted knowledge base, which together make up the so-called conceptual space of the practice. An examination of creative cognitive processes, such as combinatorial creativity and exploratory creativity, and a musical analysis of two contrasting improvised excerpts (of Hindustani alap and Balinese kendang arja)together elucidate the unique characteristics and functions of diverse models for improvisation and reveal four complementary processes of improvisation: interpretation, embellishment, recombination, and expansion. These processes are then surveyed across varied practices. Finally, the concept of the improvisational “knowledge base” is explored, examining how varying degrees of conscious knowledge about a practice’s underlying guidelines affect their acquisition by both practitioners and analysts, and exploring how such a knowledge base informs both performance and analysis. The aim of the chapter is to provide widely-applicable terminology and concepts for analyzing improvisation across genres and cultures.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Finding an Unspoken Model: The Boundaries of Reyong Norot
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0002
[reyong norot;reyong;norot;gangsa;gamelan gong kebyar;collective improvisation;research methodology;models for improvisation;model;musical analysis]
The first of two chapters in a music-analytic case study on collective improvisation, this chapter introduces reyong norot, a collectively improvised practice for the Balinese gamelan gong kebyar’s four-person melodic gong chime reyong. The chapter’s goals are two-fold. On the smaller scale, it investigates the consciously-known but unspoken model guiding reyong norot performance: a model derived from the fixed norot playing of the ensemble’s gangsa metallophones then further informed by a knowledge base unique to reyong. Analyses reveal how the gangsa’s complementary polos and sangsih melodic strands, which are played using either specific interlocking figuration (kotekan) or parallel harmonizing notes (kempyung), are differently conceived on the reyong because of its construction and performance practice. More broadly, the chapter outlines a research methodology for uncovering unspoken models for improvisation and analyzing their manifestations in improvised practice. Proposing five basic steps – listening, learning to play, immersion, transcription, and one-on-one interactions – it delineates processes of discovery, ethnographic field methods, and musical analysis techniques from the author’s research on reyong norot as suggested research methods for analytical ethnomusicologists. Discussions throughout the chapter assume an outward bearing, applying concepts to diverse practices worldwide and suggesting rich potential for comparative and cross-cultural research.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Analyzing Improvisations on a Known Model: The Freedom of Reyong Norot
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0003
[reyong norot;reyong;norot;improvisation;collective improvisation;musical analysis;interpretation;embellishment;recombination;expansion]
The second of two chapters in a case study on the musical analysis of collective improvisation, this chapter examines reyong norot, a collectively improvised practice for the Balinese gamelan gong kebyar’s four-person melodic gong chime reyong. Building on the model and knowledge base proposed in the previous chapter (Ch. 2), this chapter considers the many ways that reyong musicians diverge from their models in improvised performance. Short improvised patterns as well as longer group passages are closely analyzed in the context of the four improvisational processes theorized in Chapter 1: interpretation, embellishment, recombination, and expansion. The analyses borrow concepts from related Balinese techniques, draw upon idioms and idiosyncrasies of individual pieces and performers, and are framed in local oral music theories on stasis and motion (ngubeng and majalan), feeling (rasa), “greatness” (wayah), and other concepts gleaned through field research. Each new analysis suggests ways that the four broad conceptual categories of improvisatory process can be nuanced and expanded to suit the specific conceptual space of reyong norot, revealing the flexibility of the concepts while not shying away from their limits. Throughout, comparisons to diverse practices across the globe point to the widespread applicability of the proposed analytical framework.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Analyzing Collectivity: Models and Interactions in Practice
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0004
[collective improvisation;analytical framework;musical analysis;interaction;degrees of influence;model;cognitive processes;communication codes;collaborative emergence;group flow]
This chapter examines the collective aspects of improvisation, proposing an analytical framework for the examination of widely divergent forms of collectively improvised music. It assesses collectivity from two broad vantage points, musical and interactional, exploring each from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The concept of the “model” for improvisation, introduced in Chapter 1, is nuanced through discussions of model specificity and flexibility, the varying degrees to which models are consciously known, and the musical make-up of the model itself: whether it contains one or multiple strands of music and which musical textures are idiomatic to its realizations. Discussion of these factors for musical analysis is enhanced by consideration of cognitive processes and concepts of group flow, shared histories, and dynamic, shared knowledge bases. Interactional factors of collective improvisation are then considered through an examination of communication codes and modes of interaction as well as diverse interactional roles. The concepts of collaborative emergence and intersubjectivity, central to many discussions of group creativity, are tempered here by considering the varying degrees of influence and interaction at play in different moments of a collective improvisation. The end result is a comprehensive analytical model for examining the multifaceted aspects of collective improvisation across cultures.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Unraveling Unconscious Models: The Boundaries of Kendang Arja
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0005
[kendang arja;arja drumming;collective improvisation;musical analysis;oral music theory;models for improvisation;unconscious models;performative roles;musical roles;ethnographic methods]
The first of two chapters in a music-analytic case study of collective improvisation, this chapter introduces kendang arja, a collectively improvised practice for two interlocking Balinese drum (kendang) players whose models for improvisation are unconscious. The chapter opens by exploring how diverse methods of learning and teaching can generate different ways of knowing, leading to both explicitly and intuitively known improvisatory models. The central aim of the chapter is an exploration of ethnographic methods for revealing aspects of unconscious (intuitive) models. Musical analysis first uncovers how overtly taught arja drumming patterns from various different performers share certain fundamental features. While acknowledging the dangers of codification, the shared features of these taught patterns are taken as a kind of model: a set of guidelines for idiomatic improvised performance. These guidelines are then framed and nuanced by informally acquired oral music theory that prescribes, among other things, complementary performative roles for the two drums favoring a balance of freedom with constraint and complementary musical roles of beat-keeping (ngematin) and structure-marking (ngegongin). Detailed, ethnographically-informed musical analysis thus illuminates kendang arja’s unconscious model, while broadly comparative discussions throughout the chapter suggest potential for parallel approaches to research and analysis across genres and cultures.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Beyond Generalizations: The Freedom of Kendang Arja
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0006
[arja drumming;kendang arja;collective improvisation;musical analysis;regional style;individual style;interpretation;embellishment;recombination;expansion]
The second of two chapters in a music-analytic case study of collective improvisation, this chapter examines kendang arja, a collectively improvised practice for two interlocking Balinese drum (kendang) players. Building on the model and knowledge base proposed in Chapter 5, this chapter considers the many ways that arja musicians diverge from their models in improvised performance. Short improvised patterns as well as longer passages of paired drumming are closely analyzed in the context of the four improvisational processes theorized in Chapter 1: interpretation, embellishment, recombination, and expansion. Yet the chapter also assumes a wider lens, examining how larger structural elements of the music and the dramatic performance it accompanies, as well as aesthetic preferences discovered through fieldwork, such as a desire for balancing busyness (ramé) with sparseness, might influence an improviser’s moment-to-moment decisions. It likewise considers how regional style, pedagogical lineage, and the personal choices and preferences of individual style can shape collectively improvised practice. The chapter aims to be both specific and broad-reaching: ethnographically-informed musical analysis offers a detailed and comprehensive template for collective improvisation in arja drumming, while comparative observations of diverse practices point to the usefulness of a unified approach for analyzing collectively improvised musics worldwide.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Postlude
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226667744.003.0007
[collective improvisation;ethnomusicology;musical analysis;comparative analysis;comparative approaches;cross-cultural research;analytical framework;mbira;mbira dzavadzimu;kendang arja]
This chapter examines the use and usefulness of cross-cultural research and comparative analysis in ethnomusicology. It opens by unpacking the historical roots of the discipline’s skepticism toward comparative approaches before then making a case for their reconsideration. As a conclusion to the book Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond, the chapter argues for the potential of comparative approaches to deepen the musical analysis of collectively improvised practices by providing a unified analytical framework: a metalanguage encouraging intertextual reference among researchers of diverse practices. Using the analytical models proposed in Chapters 1 and 4, the chapter presents a comparative analysis of improvisational processes in Shona mbira dzavadzimu music and Balinese kendang arja (arja drumming) to illustrate the potential of a cross-cultural approach. The analysis aims to show that, rather than being reductive, comparisons on the level of process can draw unique aspects of each practice into clearer focus, the premise of commonality elucidating the details of difference. It shows how analytical frameworks with cross-genre applicability help place collectively improvised practices of all stripes on a level playing field for analysis, enabling deeper insight into collectivity and improvisatory processes across cultures.
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
