weimerhead

On Thursday DJ TR!P spoke in to the forum class about his understanding and application of improvisation. What I found interesting about his presentation was that his situation is a little ‘closer to home’ for me, compared to Dr. Chandrakant Sardeshmukh’s presentation for example. His public speaking ability was not that great, but that did not get in the way of him ultimately being able to get his message across, and I feel that those who payed careful attention to what he had to say were rewarded. He spoke extensively about collaboration, and gave me a few ideas to try when it came to performing with him.

Being an Adelaide based musician, I was really interested to get an understanding of TR!P’s career and how everything is working out for him and music around my city. I still have not decided whether I would be content with a career such as his, but he certainly has given me plenty to think about. There is an appeal in working in bars and clubs, having a job like that, but at the same time, I cannot see there being too much money in it. Perhaps work like this would be good to do while your still young, in your 20’s or around that mark. However if you ever wanted to start a family or business or buy a car or anything like that, well I think you might have to reconsider your line of work. Plenty of thinking to be done.

Accompanying TR!P was a CD turntable, something I have heard about but never scene in the flesh before. If I ever were to consider using a turntable (it is very possible) I would defiantly go for one of these- simply before you can burn a CD with your own material on, rather than having to recycle old music as with a turntable. The rest TR!P’s arsenal: a sampler, a fader/mixing desk, a game boy and of coarse a laptop running Windows. He, like so many of his kin, used Fruity Loops from his laptop.

The actual performance went really well from what I could tell. The audience seemed very pleased with what we produced- this is the main thing I guess. The only thing that I am a little concerned with, is that people might not have been able to distinguish between what was coming from my laptop and TR!Ps’. Apart from that it was a reasonably deep performance and a nice environment for everyone to jam in. As always, Dave’s guitar lines were tasteful while still being over-the-top awesome- his ability to improvise on his solo instrument was surely freer than mine or probably anyone else. I certainly envy his skill with improvisation. Nevertheless the rest of the group had their moments, and it pulled together well.

One other thing that I though about in the performance was the how TR!P and I had to agree on a tempo before each song. We verbally told each other the tempo then manually set it from our computer. However, if he were using a Mac, and if Live and Fruity Loops supported OSC (OpenSoundControl) we perhaps would not have to discuss the tempo, but rather just have them synced. Also we could have then changed the tempo if we so desired and still been on exactly the same page. All this in the future I guess.

Bibliography

Hopprich, Tyson. “Improvisation." Workshop presented at EMU Space, 5th Floor, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide. 5/10/06.