Liberation from all of it

Another one from my early 30's. I certainly had a lot to say back then.

I sought liberation from position playing, patterns, 'chords' and such.  The way that I choose to handle this was in the way that I shed and what I worked on.  My first thought towards this goal was around the age of 17.  I believed that improvisation is, in essence, spontaneous composition, what I had not yet realized was that when playing in a certain context (such as the framework of a 'tune') the 'solo' not only needed to make musical sense unto itself (i.e. no 'licks' or formulaic playing) but needed to be a literal development on the head, or main theme, as it were (it took me another few years for this one to hit).

Anyway, as a means to this end, I started approaching my practice sessions as a time to learn to make strong musical sense with very few notes (this is by no means the only thing I worked on – there was the composing, reading, etc).  The only way to do this is to master time and rhythm (still haven't, but… it's gettin' there).  Anything that is played with good time and self-assured rhythmic intent will work anywhere.  Add a real sense of melody and you have a true voice.

I would by first choosing a rhythmic back drop (always!).  This often took the form of a metronome (or drum machine) or a piece of recorded music.  The next thing I would do is choose 3 random notes.  These would be literal notes, not a graphical point on the guitar.  In other words I would think to myself "Eb, D, and B", as opposed to "4th string 1st fret, etc…"  This way I had to use all of those notes from everywhere on the fingerboard… ah ha!  Yep!  And, I had to make the playing of them sit well in the groove and give the playing momentum.  So I was making music with every pitched inch of my instrument (well, at this point, the part with strings at least).

When playing with the recorded music (often times Shostakovich, or Bartok string quartets, various fusion albums) the goal was to interact with the music as though I were a part of it.  I am not talking about 'fantasy jamming', I mean that I would try to be an additional voice within the music (not *soloing*).  This was difficult depending on a few things such as: did the random notes I chose work with the music well?  If not, I would spend a lot of time trying to play in between the 'inside' notes on the recording so the movement between notes would make some sense.  Etc…  As time went on I started choosing 4 notes, 5 notes…  By the time I was using all twelve I had discovered the concept of tone rows and went on that tangent for a while trying to make them groove beautiful…

When I worked with the metronome I would work on the same thing, but an odd thing started to happen.  I noticed that I became sort of 'rain man-ish' using the 'nome.  I would come out of my practice trance and find myself obsessively regrouping the beats in bars of four by eights (5+3, 2+2+1+2+1, etc) and sixteenths (this became really bad, after a while I was doing it on a macro and micro level at the same time – partials, beats, bars, etc…), all the while maintaining a melodic/thematic/rhythmic mental mandate (needless to say, I had almost no social life as a kid – nor now).

This (among many other things) has left me with the ability to be free from the imposition of the instrument to give more respect to the music that I am participating in by allowing myself to be moved by it and play accordingly.  Taking the head and playing an exposition...