Contributing music︎︎︎
Here is a collection of guidelines that represents the kinds of strategies I use when making music on the spot—with improvised dance and sometimes with other improvising musicians:
- Allow more silence
- Avoid too many easy cultural associations
- Balance the range of dynamics
- Be inconclusive
- Be well-organized
- Change physical location
- Contribute freshness
- Emphasize subtlety
- Encourage open-endedness
- Include contemplation
- Include multi-layer, multi-energy collages
- Indicate connection with dancers/room
- Less overt emotionality
- Less pulse
- Less pushing
- Less theme and variations
- Maintain stylistic variety
- Make eye contact
- Match intentions in room
- More unfamiliar material
- More unpredictability
- Mystery (unknowability)
- Occasional humor
- Occasional surprises
- Offer challenges
- Pepper in friendly discontinuity
- Play quietly often
- Provide contrast
- Respect self and others
- Sometimes “non-music”
- Sometimes less perfect
- Subtract narrative content (not all “saying” implies saying something)
- Support concentration
- Support imagination
- Take an extra moment
- Use different rates of change