31 Jul 2023
I wrote a directed improvisation text score for every day of the month of July 2023. Of course there were some days I missed or skipped but I got caught up pretty quickly. I wrote 31 scores overall. Below are some selections. You can see the whole collection on my mastodon thread.
Oblique Strategies Ripoff Score
(aka just the coda)
for solo player:
Set up to record yourself
Play until you run out of ideas
Then hit record and play some more
End when it feels right
Knowing
Think of someone you don’t know well
but would like to be closer with
play something
to help them know you
it’s ok to be shy
but if you record it
do it in one take with no edits
and maybe send it to them, or not
Extremes
For everything you play
make it either very soft or very loud
and either very long or very short
with either very long or very short pauses between
the rest is up to you
soaking
sit in a body of water or take a bath
long enough for you body to get used to it
take notes of the transition
as your body integrates to a familiar state
with the aqueous
use these notes to construct your own score, i.e.
“started out very cold
“moved into numbness
“acclimated to the new sense of gravity
“and increased resistance to movement
“I shifted from feeling other to feeling part”
perform this score close to another body of water
or with a photo of one nearby
eavesdropping
for any number of players
go to at least 3 places
where you can hear other people talking
write down one sentence from each place
that really sticks out to you
and what seems/feels interesting about it
then perform them
either immediately after, or at a later time/place
If in a group, use one person’s notes
or move through each person’s notes sequentially
someone may recite them before
Low-tech field recording
For solo player
To prepare, get a blank piece of paper
and a writing implement
and draw some number of parallel lines
across the sheet of paper
like so:
0’ ____
1’ ______
etc
go somewhere where sonic events happen
Sit down
Begin listening to your surroundings
and make a mark every time a sonic event happens
in a corresponding place on the timeline
ex. if you get to 30” mark in the middle of the 0’ line
Perform this score later
Each mark is an event
Substrata
for any number of players
Locate a diagram
of the different layers of earth
below where you will be playing this piece
(If digital, print it out)
Perform descending through each layer
moving through the different
mineral compositions, densities,
perhaps discovering gems or an aquifer
go as deep as you can, then resurface