Part Three: techniques and ideas

8. What can't be seen

'Each art had to determine through operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself.'

The effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not the written elements, the things that can be seen, but rather the things that can't be seen, what the musicians do with what they are given. In a word, improvising.
In broad terms there are three different kinds of improvisation present in jazz. Nothing to do with melodic, harmonic and rhythmic and certainly nothing that I invented, but it was the realisation of this, and the articulation of the concepts that arise from this, which has been of great importance in developing my thinking.
Firstly, and obviously, there is the Solo, the predominant feature of the music, when one person stands in front of the band and says his or her piece. For many observers this is jazz, and the only kind of improvising that they recognise. But there is another, perhaps more subtle, approach that we can call Textural Improvising, which uses various degrees of improvisation to interpret what is written down. Put simply, what a singer does, and what a rhythm section does. The interpretation of melodies, and the interpretation of pulse and harmonic progression are very valid improvising methods. And, as will be shown below, these approaches can be developed into techniques useable by everyone in a jazz group.
The third kind of improvising, Structural Improvising, happens when the shape of a piece changes from performance to performance. In its simplest form, that of a blowing small group, the tune is shaped, not by the usual pre-set routine, but by what happens on stage, where the order of the solos, and their length, changes because of the situation. There are many ways in which this concept can be developed and be influential in compositional thinking.

The Solo

In Jazz Text Charles Hartman makes the very important but little discussed point that the role of a jazz composer is often not only to write the tune, but to be involved in the performance as a musician, as well as having an important contribution to make as bandleader. This includes choosing the musicians and, at times, saying who should solo when.
To state the obvious, soloists are chosen from the musicians available at the time. But how do they get there in the first place? Again, to state the obvious, they are asked to be in the band. Good bandleaders have the knack of choosing the right people - Duke, Miles, Art Blakey are all excellent examples of this - and I might add that I was once told that I had 'the knack of turning raw youngsters into hardened professionals'!
Once in the band, they are selected for a particular solo because of their specific skills. Again, Duke Ellington is a prime example. He allocated a solo not to a specific chair, such as second or third trumpet, but to a specific person, such as Ray Nance or Rex Stewart. And, as Billy Strayhorn pointed out, in rehearsal he often went further 'changing the parts (of a new piece) around because the part and the person weren't the same character'.
This is not the place for a note-by-note analysis of what the soloist can or 'should' do. There are far too many books that purport to tell the player what to play, but none of these have ever been proven to have produced a great solo. As Duke said about something else 'too much talk stinks up the place'. In my view everything can be useful to the jazz soloist, beginner or major-league. Method books and play-alongs are useful as long as it's realised that they don't tell the full story. More important are one's feelings, one's love life, what one reads, what one listens to, what one looks at. The whole enchilada.
What the soloist does should be about context, relating in an individual way to the given elements. Playing notes that 'work', of course (however that requirement is interpreted), but acknowledging the surroundings, knowing where the solo fits into the composition, what it's coming out of and what is coming up. In short, recognising that soloing on 'Freddie Freeloader' is different than soloing on 'Billie's Bounce'.
Many soloists simply want to play their own thing with no regard for their surroundings. Ego is all. As Gunther Schuller says in his essay, Sonny Rollins and the Challenge of Thematic Improvisation, 'most solos suffer from lack of overall cohesiveness, stringing together unrelated ideas, having no relationship to any written element'. (In a concert some years ago two major-name soloists playing a piece of mine could not suppress their egos enough to realise that, in this instance at least, it was not enough just to show off their technique, that they needed to be contributors rather than stars. A lesson many 'lesser' players do not need to learn.)
The normal role of the soloist is to create a solo in a specific place over a given set of chords. Taking this to its extreme produces a string of solos on the same sequence, more than acceptable if the soloists are great, but not so valid if they are not. (Elsewhere in this project there is a quote from Wynton Marsalis that seems, partially, to be on the same lines but, as usual, he has a strange way of expressing it.) click here to read the Marsalis quote

The real role of the soloist in jazz should be to 'illuminate' the composition, shed some light on the given material in a way that no one else could. This seems to be forgotten in a distressingly large number of jazz compositions or, to be pedantic, what we should perhaps call 'big band arrangements'. The solos are seemingly just an afterthought, not integrated into the composition, just used as a change of colour amid an abundance of written notes. For me, the effects peculiar and exclusive to jazz are not being used.
To use jazz soloists effectively, a lot of thought needs to be given as to where they solo. They need to be put into the right environment and this is part of the composer's role. He will use their strong points but may also intuit that a certain soloist is capable of creating something in a space where he normally wouldn't choose to go.
Soloists can be put into many different situations. The conventional role, as stated above, is playing a melody then soloing over the chord progression. But the soloist can also act as an observer, with no set role, listening and reacting to what is going on around them. A third way is as a strongly featured 'in your face' soloist, given - or taking - the choice of ignoring or reacting to what is happening. Using such contrasts can be an important part of a composing strategy, sometimes arrived at consciously as a formal device, sometimes discovered after the event.
Using a soloist as an observer, where there are no set rules regarding what should be played and when, allows the possibility of a much closer integration between what is written and what is improvised. The soloist's job is not to follow the complexities of a chord progression, but to listen to, and comment when he feels fit, on what he hears going on around him. Stan Getz always excelled in this role when accompanying singers, and reached perfection in his two collaborations with Eddie Sauter, Focus, the album which showed that strings can be used effectively in jazz, and the music to Arthur Penn's film Mickey One. In the film his sardonic saxophone commentary as Warren Beatty's down and out character suffers a church service in order to be fed, is worth the price of admission alone.
The composer may want to incorporate the soloist more into the composition by giving him some important compositional motifs as starting points, or by using those motifs as backings to the solo. Ideally, of course, the soloist is aware of the written elements, working away from or towards them and integrating them into his solo. In the first part of George Russell's 'All About Rosie' the stunning piano solo by Bill Evans is interrupted by a band phrase which seems to have arrived because the band, magically, cottoned on to what Evans was doing. It was, of course, Evans who worked towards that moment, and who works away from the written elements after the band phrase is finished.
In some more open pieces the soloist may not know just when the written elements are going to happen, but ideally the director is influenced by what the soloist is playing, and what the soloist plays is influenced by what is introduced by the director. But, as I know to my cost, the director must resist the temptation to sit back and enjoy a solo which is going well. It's all about context and a solo that goes on too long may disrupt the internal flow and overall form of the piece.
Any extended solo needs a well-developed sense of form. There should be some subconscious internal logic underpinning it, and it should come to a satisfactory end at the appropriate time. In this aspect there is a connection, as I have written elsewhere, between some aspects of modern literature and contemporary jazz solos. Critic and poet Conrad Aiken's phrase about William Faulkner's long sentences is just as appropriate to an extended jazz solo: '(their) purpose is simply to keep the form - and the idea - fluid and unfinished, still in motion, and unknown, until the dropping into place of the very last syllable'.

Textural improvising

When playing the melody of a standard song, a good singer, or a good jazz musician, does not simply present what's on the paper. They try to make the tune their own, changing the tone colour of some notes, delaying some, anticipating others, adding notes, taking some away, until what is heard, although obviously related, bears little resemblance to what is written down. Comparing Ben Webster's two versions of 'Chelsea Bridge' with Gerry Mulligan with what's on the paper illustrate this well and, for me, singer Mark Murphy is a prime example of this approach in action. He colours his voice in outstanding ways and, although it sounds as if it was always meant to be there, he often seems to wait until past the last possible moment before placing the next word or phrase.
Similar things happen when you hear what a rhythm section actually plays compared with what they are given to work from, usually just some chord symbols with no bass notes, no piano voicings, no drum rhythms. But, through their special magic (and a good rhythm section is, I believe, as close to a miracle as most of us are likely to get) they create an integrated whole, improvising textures from the given elements of pulse and harmonic basis, while accompanying the soloist - supporting, interacting and stimulating at the same time.
The effects produced by Ben Webster, Mark Murphy, or a good rhythm section, remind us that, in addition to their improvising skills, the textural quality of sound and tone that jazz musicians produce is highly developed and can be changed at will by using varying degrees of articulation. This can serve, as Mingus, Ellington and others show in their different ways, to open up what can seem, on the surface, to be the limited palette of colours in the conventional jazz group. This opening up can create what I have called textural improvising, which can be defined as 'using various degrees of improvisation to interpret what is written down'. These techniques have become an important part of my compositional thinking. They can also be useful in helping players unused to jazz to learn that improvising exists on many levels and need not be complex and exposed.
Shadowing, what critic Andrew Homzey, discussing the work of Charles Mingus, called 'loose-togetherness', can create Interesting textures. Each musician, while paying regard to what the others are doing, is free to make a strong independent statement of the motif or melody, and in so doing can inspire the others to greater heights. The opening of Mingus's 'Hog Calling Blues' on Oh Yeah is a good example of this approach, and, in most versions of 'Walkin'', Miles uses shadowing towards the end of the initial theme statement. Something similar was also seen in early New Orleans jazz, and, although this could have been due to lack of musical skills in playing together, it could equally have been the players' urge to express their individuality.
In the case of 'Walkin'' and many other tunes it could possibly be an anxiety to finish playing the tune and get on with the soloing, but, as is shown to great effect in the classic Miles' version of Wayne Shorter's 'Nefertiti', shadowing can be used consciously. In a reversal of normal practise, the theme is repeated over and over, while the rhythm section, particularly drummer Tony Williams, improvise around it. The opening solo saxophone theme statements are followed by some unisons with the trumpet before the two players develop their own interpretations. The difference in approach achieved by this effect is striking and illustrates what can happen using this technique. It also makes the tune into a real jazz composition, dependent on the performance to make it work. The relatively few other versions I have heard, which have a theme-solos-theme form, pale in comparison.
Motific improvisation is an extension of this approach. Specific motifs can be freely interpreted by a group of musicians to create a textural background to a melody or solo. They can also be given to the soloist to be used as reference points for a solo. These techniques are of obvious importance in combining the resources of improvisation and composition, and blurring the lines between them.
Thickening is a technique developed as an extension of motific improvising. Players are asked to use their own choice of notes on the rhythm of a given motif, and thus gradually 'thicken' it until, perhaps, it overwhelms a soloist. For beginners this technique can teach them, collectively, that improvising on a simple idea can be effective - and can be fun. For example, a simple rhythmic pattern, such as that of 'C Jam Blues', can be transformed into something quite chaotic while still retaining the flavour of the original. In a more advanced situation these ideas can be used to build a wall of sound against which a soloist can react. Thickening is usually most effective if the players start with the written figure, perhaps entering one at a time, allowing the thickened version to emerge gradually. A further development of this technique is asking the players to 'make up something similar' from a given pattern or motif.
Fragmentation combines the ideas behind motific improvisation and thickening. A given melody is gradually built up by each musician choosing which note(s) of the melody to play. This usually works best when the notes are played in the correct place but in some circumstances - certain melodies, repetitive patterns, long notes - this can be changed. The effect is of the full melody gradually emerging from what seems at first to be a mass of random notes. The constantly changing textures add to the effect, which I have likened to having the melody played in full unison many times through in a recording studio, but having the output controlled by an octopus at a mixing console, moving the faders up and down as it pleases.
Pedals are most commonly heard as bass notes, but they can be notes in any range. They may seem very basic but, if subtly altered using the techniques below, can make a very effective building block in a composition. They also have the immense advantage of seeming to create a huge amount of space around them. The notes can be individualised by various techniques. The player can colour the note by varying the tone, adjacent notes can be used to move, possibly by smearing the sound, into and out of the given notes (a thickening process in itself). The note can be re-attacked at will, working with - or against - others. The amount of re-attacking can be specified as slow, fast, continuous, bell notes, sustained, rhythmic and so on.
Asking musicians to 'colour' the given notes can create a 'carpet of sound', using techniques similar to those used when a singer or instrumentalist interprets a melody. The players choose their own note or notes, not just to play organ-type long notes as in many written backgrounds, but in order to create a texture by re-attacking, colouring and thickening them in an individual way. Ideally, they are making an individual 'contrapuntal' contribution, perhaps long notes then trills then resting then arpeggios. With these techniques, especially when differently textured instruments such as bass trombone, bass clarinet, percussion, etcetera are available to cut through the mix, a large group can create fascinating textures, which are affected by the circumstances and will be different each time the piece is played.
There is sometimes a problem getting the horns to be colourful (using individual sounds, using mutes and so on) and not play all the time. As saxophonist and composer Geoff Warren said in Interaction 'it's a shock (for some players) to work with an atmosphere only...' Certainly, non-rhythm section players can find this difficult. In one cruel but apt remark a pianist commented to a section horn player who was somewhat concerned at the amount of freedom offered by such methods, 'your trouble is that usually you don't have to think'.
I should perhaps have been flattered when a critic recently said that I was 'a good orchestrator'. Given that he was speaking of a piece where the band improvised their way through a chord progression behind a solo melody I can only take credit for the method, not for the exact notes heard. (The liner notes explained this, and also invited anyone interested to check out a different performance of the same piece on another CD, an invitation the critic seems to have denied himself.)
The idea of Collective Improvising is present in many of the textural improvising techniques outlined above. In these cases it is far removed from the more usual mass of energy and sound produced by collectively improvising avant-garde jazz groups. However, the effect of a few players or a complete band fully improvising together can be a useful 'colour' in a composer's palette, one that could be likened to a splash of red in the corner of a painting.
This idea of collective improvisation has been used by some of my near-contemporaries in, shall we say, a less than subtle way, and is perhaps a sign of how little they understand the real message of avant-garde jazz. To have everyone playing what they like for a few bars will provide some colour, and a little light relief from the yards and yards of written notes surrounding that section, but always sounds pale and inept when put alongside the real thing.
Collective improvisation can be used to lead to a unison melodic line. This is a useful construction technique but the golden rule, that jazz improvising is about context, is very important here. The players must have regard to where they are going, and, usually, where they are coming from. When it works well it is as if the improvisers have all thought of the same phrase at the same time, and the result is magical.

Structural improvising

Structural Improvising happens when the overall shape of a piece changes in performance. As I said above, at its simplest this is seen in 'blowing' jazz when, without being predetermined, the shape the piece takes depends on the particular occasion. The soloists end when they feel they have said enough. The supporting backings - written, improvised, or rhythm section textural change - happen in different places 'because it feels right' or because of on-stage decisions. All this is a form of improvisation, building upon the contributions of the soloist and rhythm section as the head arrangements of the early Count Basie band showed us so well.
With music that is predominantly written down - big bands, arranged small groups, classical music, and most if not all popular music - such structural improvisation cannot, by definition, happen. But the essence of jazz is not in a predominantly written music. Ideally it encourages improvisation - in the solos, the backings and in the textural changes in the rhythm section - and in the use of structural improvising.
Some of my early pieces, such as Mosaics and Songs for My Father, were movement based, but the order of the movements was determined during the performance by cues from the soloist or myself as bass player bandleader. Other pieces were flexible in terms of who soloed on what and for how long. At that time I hadn't thought out any theory about these concepts, I just did it because it seemed a good idea to try to get away from the common theme-solos-theme jazz formula. Over the years I have developed these ideas, trying to keep the freshness of jazz within larger compositional forms and to contradict the general assumption that large form jazz composition must mean lots of writing.
Most composers pre-determine the form of their pieces in the writing process whereas, with many of my own compositions, I want to find ways of making the actual structure of the composition change. Whether this produces results that are better than conventional music is up to the performers and listeners to decide. If they genuinely believe that the resulting performance is good, then it doesn't matter how it was written, or whether it was structured in performance or not. What can happen - as in the case of the 'good orchestration' mentioned above - is the 'illusion' that it is all written and preorganised. But the reality is that it is a fresh, new performance of something that may appear somewhat sketchy on manuscript paper. It's the interface between the illusion and the reality that is stimulating and exciting to performers and audiences. In a phrase, it's what I do.

Structural improvising on a Micro level

Micro-level structural improvising changes the internal structure of a piece and is common in jazz, particularly in good live performances. All elements of a composition can be controlled in an improvisationary way. The number of times a form such as the blues or standard song is played or the amount of time given to an open form piece; the number of choruses that the soloist plays or length of solo in an open piece; at what point the backings come in; when the final melody appears and so on. As shown above, soloists can be supported, inspired - and controlled - by such on-the-spot decisions.
Repetitive forms such as the blues and standard song form can be used, as in all jazz, as the basis for a composition. In my 'Under the Pier' the blues form stays constant but flexibility is created by an open choice of soloist, and a free choice as to when, and in what order, each of the various cues comes in, and, in some cases, how they are played. Using the fragmentation technique outlined above affects the micro-structure in that it can stretch over a considerable number of choruses. Interaction, Chapters Four and Six, looks at some of the choices a director makes when relating to a soloist in this piece.
Using the repetition of a single note or group of notes as a rhythmic pattern on an open form allows for great freedom in micro structural improvising. In the second part of Three Simple Pieces a simple 6/8 rhythmic figure on two notes is written to be played throughout. In some performances the repetition of the figure is all you get (but it should be realised that keeping something that simple steady for a long period is not an easy thing). In other versions such as the one on The Third Colour CD that simple idea is thickened and developed to exciting heights.
In that piece, the soloist 'observes' what is happening with that pattern and, hopefully, uses the great freedom that such a simple and effective device can give. He or she is also concerned with the written lines, introduced by the director when he feels they will complement what the soloist is playing. In this case the written lines, composed with growth in mind, are played consecutively, but in other pieces the written sections can be freely placed against the solo, and may be used more than once.
As discussed above, 'Nefertiti' shows how a repetitive melody can provide the structure of a piece, and how the number of repetitions depends on the performance. I used this idea on 'A New Dawn' on the Darius CD and extended it in 'Ryoanji', a rubato piece. This is dealt with in Interaction Chapter Five, but suffice it to say for now that 'Ryoanji' contains an improvised background, an observing soloist, and a set of freely played (but consecutive) motifs. It is, thus, a piece that is totally texturally improvised and partially structurally improvised. (A later version included in Forty Years On, a 2004 composition that looks at several of my compositions in new ways, develops the structural aspects much further.)

Structural improvising on a Macro level

Macro-level structural improvising changes the form of the piece, often radically. While micro-level structural improvising changes are within the form, macro-level structural improvising changes are made with the form.
Separate sections of a suite can be played in a different order. Cues can be given by the soloist in, perhaps, a linking cadenza. If the shorter pieces are flexible enough there is no reason why they shouldn't be played more than once (with a different soloist, different backgrounds and so on). As already mentioned some of my early works such as Mosaics and Songs for My Father show this in action.
In these instances there was no musical idea linking the pieces except the soloist's cadenza. In some later pieces a longer written section was incorporated and referred to throughout the piece, serving to hold the form together. In The Third Colour the opening 'Groove' section is the link. It has many textural devices built into it so that it will change on each repetition and there are places built in where new material is introduced. Thus the overall form of the piece is created afresh at each performance by structural improvising methods.
As detailed below, Bread and Circuses uses what we can call a 'containing form', where the overall composition has a shape but some of the quite lengthy internal sections can be played in any order. In Charles River Fragments, the main ballad theme was used as a 'generator' with various sections being spun off from each phrase of the ballad at points determined during the performance.
The object of using structural improvisation methods is to create, at each performance, a different 'whole' from what is on the paper. Surprisingly, perhaps, given the amount of freedom and the changing parameters of different groupings and occasions, I have found that the overall timings, of separate sections or the whole composition, are often very close.
In another interesting spin off from this way of working, I have found that when forced by pragmatic reasons such as shortage of rehearsal time, compositions constructed using macro structural improvisation methods can be reshaped and can work well using only some of the parts. This 'creates a different whole' in a radical way - but one that still works as a jazz composition. In the process, this moves us even further away from the classical approach of one set version of a composition, seemingly written in stone.

Soundbites and Manuscript examples that illustrate the techniques above will be found in the concluding section of this project, 'What happens in Real Time'.

Appendix

The opening quote is from art critic Clement Greenberg in The New Art.
Charles O. Hartman's Jazz Text, Voice and Improvisation in Poetry, Jazz and Song (Princeton 1991) is an interesting book that seems to have slipped below the jazz radar. Gunther Schuller's article on Sonny Rollins is from the first issue of 'The Jazz Review', November 1958, reprinted in Musings (Oxford, 1986).
Among the plethora of books dealing with improvisation, three stand out: Derek Bailey's Improvisation, its nature and practice in music (British Library 1992), although he is a little old fashioned in his approach to jazz; Roger T. Dean's New Structures in Jazz and Improvised Music since 1960 (Open University Press, 1992) which includes 'a composer-improviser dialogue' with myself); and Paul Berliner's monumental Thinking in Jazz, The Infinite Art of Improvisation (University of Chicago Press, 1994). If you are of an academic frame of mind there are an increasing number of books, such as Ingrid Monson's saying something, jazz improvisation and interaction (Chicago Press 1996), which should keep you happy, although my opinion can usually be summed up in the Ellington quote above about 'too much talk stinking up the place'.

Communicating with the musicians

Some of the notational aspects of my work can be seen in the manuscripts elsewhere on this website. Below are some examples of signs and gestures, constantly being revised and adapted for new circumstances, which I have found useful. They are used as reminders of the instructions written on the page, or as improvised instructions in the development of a piece during rehearsal and performance.

Cueing by Numbers
Indicating numbers by finger gestures is a necessary part of this method. If possible use one to five only, leaving the other hand free for additional directing. Cues above 10, which use more than the normally available number of fingers, should be avoided. It is often necessary to indicate big numbers (double bars, new chorus etc) and small numbers. This can be done by big and small gestures.

In rubato and open passages numbers can be used to indicate which bar you are in and/or which notes to play.
The chart below shows my glossary of signals for conducting in this method.

re-attacking	random pointing to indicate the technique; controlled pointing for specifics
thickening	finger and thumb apart
fragmenting a line	scissors gesture
playing motifs in turn loosely	broad sweep sign + motif number
mixing it "freely and overlapping"	two hands entangled
soloists:	play when pointed at
- end solo	downwards sign
- continue	rolling one hand
repeating a section	repeat sign (thumbs and 1st fingers facing)
change from one section to another	clenched fist
sustained chords can be kept alive by internal movement. By reattacking or 'mixing it'	controlled pointing
or, by controlled attack	chop for short chord; hands flat for sustained chord

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