Creative Artefacts
The Improvisation Project
Project List
The Project
- Divide everyone into smaller groups of three or four composers each.
- Each group should spend thirty minutes preparing for an improvisation lasting no more than eight minutes and no less than four minutes. Each goup's improvisation will be recorded.
- Consider the general shape of the taped material and decide whether any general areas could be improved upon, for instance, by returning to a previous texture more than once, or by not returning to a previous texture at all, (or by never getting to it in the first place).
- Decide on a set of instruments that you feel appropriate for the piece: use conventional instruments if you wish. Keep the instrumentation within the whole composition group unless you can garantee that another instrumentalist is available.
- Re-compose the piece in fully-notated form. It must include basic material from the improvisation, but does not need to be a transcription. Decide on the good ideas and use them, discard any that do not work so well.
- Write the parts out according to the usual rules, etc...
Some Ideas
I would recommend that you write in a very simple structure. Try to make your own contribution fairly self-sufficient. Remember that you can repeat sections, however, so the three parts may interlock like this:
a, b, a', b', c, a'', b'', a', b', c'
or something...
General Notes from the last time this was done
The greatest single problem in the past has been lack of agreement between group members concerning who is going to do what, and/or acrimony about who has done, or more frequently who has not done, what. Do try to be as firm as possible regarding all these things.
A few other general points:
...
Good luck!