jammin' (technoculture & improvisation)
ASEM 2724
This course introduces students to the recent history of musical and cultural forms devoted to improvisation, including jazz, free music, contemporary classical music, psychedelic and progressive rock, funk, jam bands, and electronic dance music. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which subcultures of artists, producers, concert organizers, and listeners have formed around these types of musical expression. The act of improvisation will be examined as a response to emerging technological forms (new musical instruments, recording technologies, concert presentation, and distribution, particularly those enabled by networking technologies) by which musicians and listeners embody new personal as well as collective identities.
The class will ask you to listen closely to recorded materials both inside and outside of class, as well as read from multiple sources. Academic scholars, professional writers for the popular music press, and all sorts of fans of improvised music will provide us with many different ways to approach improvisation as both a concept and a practice. And we will want to make sure to address the various technological and cultural events that shape and inform the kinds of sounds that improvising musicians make. Therefore, rather than a music theory class, we will approach improvisation from several different perspectives, including cultural studies, philosophy, history, media studies, sound studies, and critical theory.
Course Objectives
This class asks you to explore the ways in which “jamming” can help you become a more nimble critical thinker, a more creative communicator, and a better writer. The concept of the “jam” will therefore extend into the class's writing exercises. Inspired by Beat writer Jack Kerouac's notion of “spontaneous get-with-it” as well as his use of jazz music as a productive prompt, several class sessions will provide you with musical cues for you to use as you improvise your own written response. Small groups of you will also be asked to share collective writing spaces, such as a Google document, in which you will be asked to write together. Improvisational practices such as “riffing,” “soloing,” and “call and response” will be explored in search of writerly counterparts.
Finally, you will explore different aspects of documenting improvisation as another way of modeling the writing scholar's practice. The act of recording, editing and releasing improvised music has proven problematic, even controversial, but essential for such music to reach a wide audience. Improvised music has exemplary producers like Teo Marcero, who faced the daunting task of editing the free jazz sessions of trumpeter Miles Davis into LP format, or the Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, who first transformed their band's meandering and prolific output into condensed songs. These producers suggest methods for editing raw material into formats for widespread documentation and distribution. You will therefore be asked to explore the creative task of editing both your own and other students' works.
Required Recordings
Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960)
John Coltrane, Meditations (1965)
Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (1969) & Bitches Brew (1970)
Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa (1969)
Sound Tribe Sector 9, Artifact (2005), Artifact: Perspectives (2005)
Supersilent, 6 (2003)
Primary Texts
(available in DU Bookstore)
1) How To Write About Music, edited by Marc Woodworth & Ally-Jane Grossan (Bloomsbury 2015)
2) The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation, edited by Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble,& George Lipsitz (Duke University Press 2013)
(additional readings from the following will be posted below as assigned)
Week 1
Tues, March 24: Course Introduction
Thur, March 26: Spontaneous Get-With-It
* Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose (video)
* Allen Ginsberg Reads "Howl" (1959) (video)
* Jack Kerouac, "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose"
* Jack Kerouac, "from On the Road"
* Fiona Paton, "A New Style for American Culture"
DUE: spontaneous get-with-it (5 points)
Week 2
Tues, March 31: Writing as Listening
DUE: sound observations (5 points)
* Pauline Oliveros, "Some Sound Observations"
Thur, April 02: The Album Review
LISTEN:
Miles Davis, In A Silent Way (1969)
DUE: The Album Review exercise (5 points)
We will also work with the following reviews in class, so you may want to look at them ahead of time:
In A Silent Way | Album Reviews | Rolling Stone
Miles Davis: In a Silent Way | AllMusic (All-About-Jazz)
Miles Davis: The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions | Album Reviews | Pitchfork
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way - On Second Thought - Stylus Magazine
Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way”: NPR
Week 3
Tues, April 07: The Blind Review
READ: The Album Review (HTWAM Ch. 1: 17-35)
DUE: The Blind Review (HTWAM : pg. 36) (10 points)
Thur, April 09: Make It Better
LISTEN: Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960)
LISTEN: John Coltrane, Meditations (1965)
READ: The Fierce Urgency of Now, "Introduction: Dissolving Dogma" (1-31)
DUE: Make It Better (HTWAM: pg. 37) (10 points)
Week 4
Tues, April 14: Track-By-Track
LISTEN: Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa: Outtakes (1969)
LISTEN:
Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa (1969)
LISTEN: Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa (1971)
LISTEN: Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa Live (various)
* Erik Davis, “Recording Angels: The Esoteric Origins of the Phonograph”
* Alex Ross, "The Record Effect: How Technology Has Transformed the Sound of Music"
Thur, April 16: The Annotated Mix Tape / Contemporary Jam & Remix
READ:
Track-By-Track (HTWAM Ch. 3: 65-88)
READ: Alternatives - Rob Sheffield on Tommy James & The Shondells, Pixies, The Cure, Rolling Stones And Others (HTWAM Ch. 9: 280-3).
LISTEN:
Sound Tribe Sector 9, Artifact (2005) + STS9, Artifact: Perspectives (2005)
READ:
* Uncredited review of STS9, Artifact, Pure Music
* Dub Sean, fan review of STS9, Artifact, Sputnik Music
* Brad Farberman, review of STS9, Artifact, Jambands.com
* Mike Greenhaus, review of STS9, Artifact: Perspectives, Jambands.com
* Mike Greenhaus, interview, "Sound Tribe Sector 9: From Crystals to Computers," Jambands.com
Week 5
Tues, April 21: New Improvisations
LISTEN:
Supersilent, 6 (2003)
LISTEN: Trace's Cuneiform Sampler (2015)
READ:
The Fierce Urgency of Now, "Improvising Community" (99-139) + "'The Fierce Urgency of Now'" (189-230)
Thur, April 23: Track-By-Track Compilations / Annotated Mix-Tapes
DUE:
Either Track-By Track (HTWAM: pg. 88) or Annotated Mix-Tape/Playlist (HTWAM: pg. 288) (15 points)
Week 6
Tues, April 28: The Personal Essay / Other Voices
Thur, Aprit 30: The Blog Piece
Week 7
Tues, May 05: Artist Profile
Thur, May 07: Music Scenes
* Marcus Boon, “Sublime Frequencies’ Ethnopsychedelic Montages”
* http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/
Week 8
Tues, May 12: Cultural Criticism
Thur, May 14: 33 1/3rd Pitch
Week 9
Tues, May 19: refining the themes
Thur, May 21: refining the themes
Week 10
Tues, May 26: academic mini-conference 1-2
Thur, May 28: academic mini-conference 3-4
Final
Tues, June 02: final 10-1:50pm
* Brian Eno, Discreet Music (1975): http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/discreet-txt.html
* Brian Eno, On Land (1982/1986): http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/onland-txt.html
Trace Reddell is a writer, artist and theorist exploring the interactions of sound and the cosmological imagination. Trace's live cinema performances and video works have screened at over thirty international venues including galleries and new media festivals in New York, London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Berlin, Zurich, Sao Paolo, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Tehran. His net.art and audio projects have appeared regularly on the Web since 1999.