Listening is one choice in an improvised setting. There also is the opposite; not listening. This decision has a negative connotation in improvised settings. It is used to critique a performance that isn’t reaching a certain standard instead of analyzing the interactions at their own value.

 

Ive heard this used in the case against extreme juxtaposition; when someone reacts to another player by playing the very opposite thing they might be playing. When someone says that a performer is not listening, it seems that they are trying to say the performer is not meeting their expectations of what they should be achieving. 

 

When put in a musical situation even the slightest reaction is in relation to what’s around it. Even if you actively choose to go against what is happening it is still in relation to what you are going against. so merely “not listening” is almost impossible. This critique is a lazy way of brushing over a common occurrence. The person might not have done what you have wanted but this is not a negative occurrence. This simply means your perception of what someone’s response may be is not currently happening. The performer going against your own ideal interaction is making what’s happening denser, adding the opposite of your playing into the mix. The mark of a weak improviser is to handle this in a rejecting manner. You are faced with a challenge and instead of seeing how you might react differently in that situation you chose to crumble and simply default to blaming the other party for not listening. A more constructive way of approaching this would be to see how to better react to a surprising occurrence. 

 

Derek Bailey would often talk about actively trying to avoid listening. This would result in a very unique occurrence. In some of derek’s performances he is resisting very strong pulses usually in the form of “lines”. A great example of this is Dereks duo record with Tristan Honsinger. Tristan cuts through with incredibly virtuosic lines and Derek chooses to lay back, and seemingly develop his own world completely independently of Tristan.  To do this he has to have a strong lack of pulse within himself. He actively avoids the strong urge to follow the other musician. This creates a denser music. It makes the music have a lot more information to dissect. If he were to simply follow Tristan we would hear a typical result of a guitar comping for a solo instrument, but Derek’s method would be to actively avoid that. 

 

Improvised music has the potential to be very dense and very full of information to comb through. Instead it seems we have faulted to “deep listening” for results that tend to fall flat of density in favor of a more minimalistic approach. This is not to say that very little is a bad thing, or that accompanying is bad. It is a very small piece of a large array of tools an improviser has. when they are only using a singular tool you can expect very similar results, and if you are achieving the same result every time  could you say you are improvising? We should be constantly on our toes, uncomfortable, and expecting to meet new things. Instead we are defaulting to pulse, energy, and singular notes for some sort of deeper meaning. My music means nothing other than itself. If you look for a deeper meaning you are only met with your own reflection of your ideas. This music is pure interplay of reactions and ideas. No other music can say that of itself. We should embrace this instead running back to conventions that are prevalent in all forms of organized music.