http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051230.mp3
The last recording of 2005, and the last to use this background music for the intro, I swear! By the first recording of the new year, I hope to have a new background theme, some new recording sounds, and perhaps even some new ideas to rejuvenate the process. But this might be a bit optimistic, if the first recording happens in only two days.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051226.mp3
Decided not to use the looper tonight. That meant no percussion track, but otherwise I think the structure of the music is remarkably similar: looping has influenced the way I improvise in a way that persists without the device.

I’m not sure, but I think the synth sound used in the intro loop is the same sound I used in tonight’s recording. I think that’s how you know when it’s time to find a new intro loop.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051222.mp3
I started this one with a single bass line in mind, and no idea what would come after it. Some fairly predictable things came after it. And then some not so predictable. By the end, the original bass line was completely gone and a new song had written itself on top of the old. I love when that happens.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051218.mp3
Half of the job is knowing when not to play. Actually, maybe the entire job is knowing that, and thinking that it’s only half is what I’ve been doing wrong. Anyway, this is one of the more restrained improvs I’ve ever done well — it takes its time getting where it’s going, and is still the second shortest I’ve done all month.

…or, With Hope, All Things Are Possible.
http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051215.mp3

Two gentle sprawls connected by a brief chordal interlude. Hey, if anybody wants to help me figure out a better way to describe this stuff, I’m totally open to suggestions.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051211.mp3
Created a bunch of new drum sounds yesterday. Did not learn how to play with them before recording today. Turned out a bit tribal ambient, verging (unintentionally) on new age toward the end. It’s going to be an interesting week…

Background music: me, 12/04/2005.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051208.mp3
First recording with the new name, “Nascent Music.” Even more chordal and ambient than usual, for the most part. Started out in 5/4, though by the end I think I started feeling it differently because there wasn’t much of an anchor other than the upbeat.

I finally decided on a new name for the podcast: “Nascent Music.” Tweaks to the site are on their way, to use the name and to draw more attention to the podcasts (which are currently not obvious to new visitors, I believe, when a long post like the last one pushes them down to the bottom of the screen).

NB: this entry also appears in my IRC journal, written there because it’s relevant to improvised theater but reproduced here because it’s equally relevant. I haven’t really figured out what to do about the overlap.

The more virtual our world gets, the more malleable words become. It is one thing to recognize the metaphor when we say that we “visit” a website, knowing that of course we are not physically going to a place that is not, itself, physical. It is quite another to say that we are “reading” an audiobook, because listening to a CD is an input activity so similar to reading a book that it seems a metaphor should not be necessary. Or so it seems to me. Of course, this is quite common in English, a “living language” reknowned as one of the world’s more irregular ones, but it seems likely to me that the virtual world is having this effect on other languages as well.

Anyway, I’m “reading” an audiobook about possession — not Euro-Christian demonic possession, but possession by a more naturalistic kind of spirit, what we call a ghost — and it’s just touched on voluntary possession, practiced by shamans hoping to be inhabited by guiding spirits that might offer warnings or predictions of the future.

Is improv, done right, a shamanic state? Even if you do not indulge the idea of an outside force working through us to create a world, would you agree that, together, we walk between worlds? When I sit down to improvise with the Stick, I do not hope to create; I hope to be available, and to color the music that appears as little as possible with all of the idiosyncratic failures of my playing. I am concretely concerned with hearing, knowing, and articulating the right notes at the right time: with making strong choices, clearly executed, that add rather than subtract, just as in scenework. But mostly this is an intuitive process of listening, and of being available; of putting myself as completely at the disposal of the creative flow as possible, without the obstruction of my own intentions and desires. Music is made of notes, not of the musician who plays them; scenes happen between characters, not between the actors who play them.

I’m certainly not the first person to realize the Dao of improv, but this is the first time I’ve ever understood why I have always felt that this was better for me than meditation. One might hope for meditation to lead to some sort of enlightenment, but this is a purely internal transition (though no smaller for it); with improv, something manifests, enters this world. I do wish to clear my mind, to shed my fears and worries and the accumulated bullshit of life — but I would rather become, not an empty vessel, but an open channel through which something better may pass.

http://www.nascentmusic.com/mp3/shanecarey.net/20051204.mp3
I spent several hours configuring new sounds today, and liked some of them so much that I ended up playing with them for longer than usual. I’m inclined to say they’re a little spacey sounding, but …aren’t they all?