And more music….
This is an excerpt from our session on Thursday, and i wanted to share it because there’s quite a nice story behind this section of the rehearsal.
We’ve been happily working on a number of more rhythmical, upbeat pieces for the show, but one area that has proved trickier is trying to create very “free” improvisation.
I had been trying to explain this by doing the old trick of asking each musician to play “one note with lots of space”, but it never quite worked. Mainly because i think my explanation was quite conceptual, and (in retrospect) unnecessarily complex.
BUT then we had a breakthrough. At one point in the session, i wanted to include a recording i made a few weeks back of a thunderstorm in Kampot. I was trying to explain where the recording came from, but the translation got a bit confused. Then, there was a sudden flurry of enthusiasm, which i didn’t quite follow - until Punisa translated for me - “Ok, we get it. We need to be the storm! The Gong can be the thunder … Tro Sao can be the wind … Ksae Diew can be the frogs, and Roneat can be the rain.”
Not really what i was trying to say - but much more interesting. So we started playing, and almost immediately, they started into some very natural and quite beautiful free improvisation.
Lesson number one - in a context where there isn’t much tradition or awareness of free improv, the idea of “sonic pictures” is a very helpful way to create space and permission for this kind of music.
Lesson number two - sometimes miscommunication is a very valuable thing. In this case, it allowed us to stop worrying about the precise details of what the other was trying to say, and to focus on the underlying ideas we each wanted to convey in the music.
The track is now called “Khmer Storm”, and one of my favourite parts of the upcoming show.
