August 3, 2022 • 59 mins
Infinite Improvisation Podcast: adventures in music and creativity with Steve Treseler and Lauren Best.
The fourth episode of a five-part series on how to improvise, exploring each of Infinite Improvisation's creative practices: Experimentation, Play, Limitations, Deep Listening, and Reflection. In this episode, we experiment live with listening activities. We discuss our potential for deep listening and how to develop our deep listening skills.
“Are you listening now?
Are you listening to what you are now hearing?
Are you hearing while you listen?
Are you listening while you are hearing?
Do you remember the last sound you heard before this question?
What will you hear in the near future?”
PAULINE OLIVEROS November 1971
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lauren Best (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to the Infinite Improvisation Podcast.
I'm Lauren Best here with Steve Treseler.
And we're looking forwardto another How episode
. Steve Treseler: Yeah, so the, this fourth, how episode is about deep listening
or listening as a creative practice.
(00:30):
Instead of thinking and planning and how,how do we, how do we listen in different
ways to inform our, our art and creating,yeah, creating new art and new music.
Awesome.
And it's so important.
I mean, we also can't stopdoing it listening, but we can
change how we're listening.
. Steve Treseler: Yeah, exactly.
(00:50):
And this deep listening as a, asa practice The term deep listening
comes from a multi-instrumentalistand composer, Pauline Oliveros, who
created this deep listening as apractice as there time as a composer
and teaching at Mills Mills college.
And she's gonna help guide our,our discussion and I'm actually
(01:11):
gonna play a short quote.
It's a little one minute video fortalking about listening and consciousness.
So this is related towhat, what you just said.
So here's.
Here is Pauline:
Pauline Oliveros (01:28):
Hearing, being what happens with the
ear and that what the ear does.
I mean I'm, I'm getting pretty radicalin saying I think that that which
is called ear training in music.
Schools is really wrong.
Mm-hmm you can't train the ear.
It does what it does, right?
(01:49):
Yeah.
It's a microphone.
It's a microphone.
It does cool microphone.
It's it's a very cool microphone.
It does what it does.
But what, what can be trained is listeningand that's what technology is doing is
change is changing the way we listen.
It can't change the way we hear.
(02:09):
But it can can, but our listeningis, is the kind, I think that
listening is probably very closeto what we call consciousness.
Steve Treseler (02:22):
Yeah.
So as, as you're saying, we can't turn offour ears, but we can direct our attention
to pay attention to what's coming in.
You know, we have a lot of informationcoming in from all our senses that.
Ignore regularly.
Mm-hmm whether it's the sensationsof what your feet in your shoes
right now, or tell my who knows thefeeling of the saliva in your mouth.
(02:42):
Oh, as soon as you pay attentionto it, you've got all this input
that we're largely ignoring.
Cause we can't brains.
Can't pay attention to, to all of it.
So here's a quote from herDeep Listening Handbook.
The deep listening isa form of meditation.
Attention is directed to the interplayof sounds and silences sound is not
limited to musical or speaking sounds butinclusive of all perceptible vibrations.
Lauren Best (03:09):
Awesome.
And I find so much, like once we startlistening it, it was at least for myself.
I start to think, how wasI ignoring that before?
Mm-hmm like, as you're saying, wecan start to become aware of so much
more than we even knew was happening.
Steve Treseler (03:28):
Mm-hmm yeah.
And that's.
Something I do with students andin workshops that we just kind
of stop to listen to all the, theambient sounds in our environment.
And we talk about music being sound onsilence, but it's rarely actually silence.
Mm-hmm , I'm not sure if this makesgreat radio, but let let's just
take, take a moment, everyone.
We're gonna listen to our environmentand see if you can draw your
attention to something that youweren't, that you weren't aware of.
(03:51):
Here we go.
Little dead air.
Okay.
We're still here.
The show's the show's still going.
(04:12):
What did, what did you hear here in yourenvironment or some directed listening?
Lauren Best (04:16):
Well, I, I took off the ear cup also.
Mm-hmm , but I couldn't help, butnotice the amount of sound that was
actually being created by my hair andheadphones moving against one another.
And just like, I mean, that's,what's closest to my ear.
I was hoping to listen outward more.
Right.
But I actually found that there was therewas so much like that I was noticing
(04:39):
like, just from that and from likethe not hum, but just like the, the
room sound mm-hmm in my headphones.
So I still actually didn't getbeyond this part of my head.
Yeah.
Because I was suddenly so aware of that.
Steve Treseler (04:52):
Yeah.
So how often do you actually, youhear your hair and your headphones
and just ignore it, right.
So now as soon as you yeah,take your attention to it.
It's like, oh, wow.
That is really loud.
Yeah.
I heard some, I mean, I know I wasgonna hear some traffic sounds and I
thought I heard some water dripping.
I was like, where's that coming from?
And then I forgot.
There's a clock in here.
That's ticking.
I was like, oh yeah, I'm inthis room hours and hours.
(05:13):
Even without headphones on.
I'm not even aware of the clock ticking.
I'm like, yeah, like, can you hear that?
And all the things I've been recordingfrom home, is there always a clock ticking
there that I just didn't thinking about?
Oh, there's all these sounds that aregoing into my, my home recordings.
But
Lauren Best (05:26):
yeah, I, I remember being in a massage yeah.
And towards the end, noticing thatthere's a clock ticking and I'm thinking,
how do you work in this room all daylong with that clock ticking there?
And then I, I realized like, Ididn't even notice it mm-hmm but
then once I did I really did.
Steve Treseler (05:44):
Yeah.
Lauren Best (05:45):
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (05:45):
so that kind of listening to our environment is, is, is one type one
type of listening we're doing creatively.
Just what what's around us.
That kind of receptive listening.
I know.
What are your thoughts on eitherexpanding on that or other ways
or directions that we listen?
Lauren Best (06:02):
Oh, I just keep thinking about, I'm not sure if this is answering
your question, as you were hoping.
Steve Treseler (06:06):
Okay.
Lauren Best (06:06):
But this moment earlier in the spring, where.
I, I saw this like tinylittle bug jump in the grass.
cause I was there in the grasswith my kid and it looked like a
tiny grasshopper, like tinier thanI'd ever seen grasshopper before.
Like, you know, we're talking about like,like, you know, like half centimeter or
(06:27):
long showing, I'm showing I am Canadian.
Cause I'm giving you a centimeterand it jumped, but I could actually
hear it land cuz there were likeleaves and like things in the grass.
And so like, even though it wasthis like tiny, tiny bug, I could
hear its little tiny footsteps.
Mm-hmm right.
As it landed on something.
And so even though I hadn't noticed thislike any bugs before then, you know, and
(06:51):
then once I noticed one and how it went.
P , you know, as it landed on thislittle, this little leaf, I noticed
suddenly that there were tons ofthese tiny little jumping bugs and
I could hear their little jumps.
So like once I drew my attentionto it and I was quiet, even
though I only saw one at first.
(07:12):
I heard more footsteps.
Right?
Mm-hmm and I was like,there are more of them.
I can hear them cause I could hearthem jumping all around me and then
I looked more closely and I could seethese tiny, tiny, little jumping things.
right.
Steve Treseler (07:27):
Yeah.
And how does that, isthere some lesson there?
I'm not sure.
Lauren Best (07:32):
You never know whose footsteps you're looking like.
Yeah.
That's fine.
Well, I think it like, but a visualcue drew my attention towards it.
Mm-hmm right.
So like listening is not always aquestion of just like turning our ears.
Right.
Mm-hmm like we we'resometimes using other cues.
(07:54):
To see what happens there, or likecreating situations where we're
making sounds in new ways, butit's also engaging our listening
and our perception in new ways.
An activity I've done in, in classeswith young people and their teachers
that I read about from the works ofR Murray Schafer, who's a Canadian
(08:17):
composer, is passing around a piece ofpaper and getting every student to make a
different sound with this piece of paper.
Mm.
And so that's partiallylike a creative exercise.
We're trying to like invent differentways of using this piece of paper,
but what it also is is that suddenlyyou have this group of 20 or 30
(08:37):
people who are all listening reallyintently to a piece of paper.
And we're trying to hear all the detailsin the sounds that are created, which are
of a much different like volume level andtimbre than we're often expecting when
we're doing something creative with sound.
Steve Treseler (08:54):
Yeah.
And even relating it backto other senses, right.
Pauline was saying that it's theperception or all perceptible vibrations.
So that can include light.
I, I suppose, but yeah, returning yourattention, it can be very broad where
you're taking in everything that's comingin around you or like narrowly focus it,
you know, is it like a narrow beam oflight that we're, or like a spotlight,
(09:15):
what we're taking in and this can happen.
I mean, if we're gonna relate that toa musical performance too, we can it's
an important skill to be able to listenbroadly, maybe to the sound of the
entire ensemble in the room around us.
But then we have to like narrow into, ifyou have a stand partner you're playing,
listen to the person next to you, or turnyour attention to one instrument or an
(09:36):
entire section, just different ways ofusing that same kind of attention in, in
that, in that kind of context, whetheryou're listening narrowly or broadly.
Lauren Best (09:45):
Yeah.
And it really draws to mind how likevery specific knowledge or skills, to
kind of use that, we wanna go throughlistening and not necessarily through.
There are times to create with it too,but I'm thinking of, of two things.
One is bird calls.
Mm-hmm right.
How, like you can go out at a particulartime of year or in a particular place.
(10:07):
And if you aren't familiarwith the bird calls, you might
not even notice them at all.
Or you might notice them and be like,oh, those birds are kind of noisy.
mm-hmm right.
But if you're at all becomingfamiliar with bird calls,
even if you only know one.
Right then you probablyhear the chorus of birds.
I always end up talking about the birds.
mm-hmm you might hear the chorus of birdsand then you're like, ah, and a blue jay.
(10:29):
Yeah.
You know, but then like, as you gainmore knowledge of the different kinds
of bird calls, through listening,you start to have a, a, like a
different kind of experience of that.
Mm-hmm because you're able to connectit to similarities and differences or
to birds, you know, or maybe you'relike, ah, I don't know that one, but it
sounds kind of like this and suddenlyit's a much deeper and richer experience.
Steve Treseler (10:51):
And then we can buy that app.
We were talking about,that'll identify it for you.
And maybe
Lauren Best (10:55):
there's a free one.
I found.
Steve Treseler (10:56):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Free.
Good.
And does that make theexperience better or worse?
I'm not sure.
But that anyway, I want, I want totry it, but that's interesting cuz
as yeah, our ear being like themicrophone, it just pulls in all these
bird songs, the bird songs, but whatis, what is familiar and what, what
have we trained ourselves to hear?
(11:17):
Yeah, related back to eartraining, like hearing oh this is.
Your brain's getting the same input, butnow something unfamiliar becomes familiar
and it means something means something.
Lauren Best (11:27):
Totally.
And so I think of like the elements ofmusic and how we often train ourselves to
listen to notes and rhythm mm-hmm . Andlike we often actually don't spend nearly
as much time paying at just as muchattention to other qualities like to the,
kind of, to, to the timbre, to the grooveor to like there even, even articulation.
(11:51):
I think sometimes I, it depends on theinstrument maybe, but cuz sometimes
suffers because we're so focusedon hitting notes or, or, or hitting
particular hitting particular rhythmssometimes when, when we're learning,
we're only focused on the notes andwe forget about the rhythms too.
Mm-hmm but that, so that, that kind.
increasing the depth and or thequality of our listening overall
(12:14):
means we're gonna be getting muchmore out of that listening experience.
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (12:18):
Yeah.
Timbre is a huge one for me.
Some of my favorite musical record, justthe particular sound of the instruments,
or even the recording productionor something that just draws me in
realizing I can hear a same per like alive performance of something that was
like a, you know, a casual recording.
It's like, oh, it doesn'treach me the same way.
It might be the same notes,but without this like immersive
timbre, mm, that's so captivating.
(12:40):
It falls flat, but yeah.
Also listening to the, sort aboutthe dynamics or even the form,
you know, paying attention to howis this developing mm-hmm yeah.
Beyond, beyond the notes, beyondthe notes and rhythms mm-hmm
Lauren Best (12:52):
Yeah.
And then when we talk about form,it becomes like, like we can listen
in these really short moments.
And then there's the, like the,what happens when we listen
over a longer period of timeand how our perception changes.
When the amount of time is stretched.
Yeah, absolutely.
Or when the form withinthat time yeah, is changing.
Steve Treseler (13:13):
Yeah.
So this is largely, I guess, in the,the category of listening, where
we're being perceptive to what'swhat's going on, on, around us.
And also what's in this category is, youknow, listening deeply as we're training
is as musicians, you know, findingreally inspiring artists or recordings
or live performances and, you know,listening really deeply and trying to
(13:34):
assimilate and, and, and copy what we can.
I mean, that's a stage we all,oh, continue to go through.
But especially when we're in theearly development stages, having
these models and listening,listening closely mm-hmm to that.
And then the next episode too,we'll be talking about like deep
listening to, you know, recordingsof ourselves and our performances.
And again, and this is all, this isall related to listening to your, the,
(13:58):
the little bugs popping around too.
But with that level of, ofintensity and, and focus.
Lauren Best (14:05):
but know what's interesting is like you refer to
the intensity and focus of it.
But in that moment itfelt like super easy.
Like, it didn't feel like I hadto like really focus in like
Steve Treseler (14:15):
Yeah.
Lauren Best (14:15):
You know, it's not like I was like, I hope to hear these bugs.
Like, it wasn't like that, eventhough it was like a, a high degree
of attention and focus mm-hmm . Itfelt really gentle and exploratory.
And, and that's what I love aboutthe listening as opposed to doing
is we can access, I think, differentstates of consciousness and
different states of states, of being.
Steve Treseler (14:37):
Yeah, from that performance psychology class, I
took through Noa Kageyama's theBulletproof Musician course he kind
of brings, he just, he we're like,oh, how do we, how do we focus?
And you know, like trying to make surewe're, we're focused actually we're,
our brains are designed to focus.
If you, if the right thingtriggers our attention, we
don't have to try hard to focus.
Mm-hmm , you know, you, you turn on ascreen in a room full of preschoolers
(15:01):
and every, you know, they don't haveto try to the right novel stimulus
comes in and we just zero in on it.
So where it does get hard, ifwe're, if we're forcing ourselves
to focus on something that'snot engaging or interesting.
Do you know, doing yourtaxes or something.
Okay.
I've gotta focus on this.
It feels like a real, a real stretch.
(15:22):
I wanted to share some of Pauline'sdeep listening pieces and this
comes from her yeah, deep, deeplistening composer's sound practice.
And what she says about these,about her, her compositions.
(15:43):
The range of notational practices employedto present my work, as a composer
includes conventional staff notation,graphic notation, metaphors, prose,
oral instruction, and recorded media.
And Sonic meditations are notated throughprose instructions or recipes, and
some of these are in written form only.
And she'll change these instructions,giving adapting 'em to the,
(16:06):
the people in the room and.
So here's, here's a, here's one calledEarpiece, it's a series of 13 questions.
And so her piece of music is yourresponse to these questions is the piece.
Lauren Best (16:22):
Hmm.
Steve Treseler (16:23):
All right.
Lauren and listeners, are you ready?
Lauren Best (16:27):
But hold on.
I'm going to engage with thesequestion, like, like, like.
me and the listenersare doing this together.
Steve Treseler (16:35):
Yeah.
Yeah, you're doing, you'redoing this and you're, you're
listening to the own answers.
So this is the dialoguein, in your head, so, okay.
If you feel moved to shout out aresponse, I suppose that's okay.
But all right.
So Earpiece is from 1998by Pauline Oliveros.
Are you listening now?
Are you listening towhat you are now hearing?
(17:02):
Are you hearing while you listen,
Are you listening while you were hearing?
Do you remember the last soundyou heard before this question?
What will you hear in the near future?
(17:26):
Can you hear now and also listento your memory of an old sound?
What causes you to listen?
Do you hear yourself in your daily life?
(17:52):
Do you have healthy ears?
If you could hear any soundyou want, what would it be?
Are you listening to soundsnow or just hearing them?
(18:14):
What sound is most meaningful to you?
There we go.
There's our first deep listening piece.
Lauren Best (18:31):
I have to say.
That was incredibly challenging.
because I was hearing my babywaking up from his nap yeah.
And crying.
And so for all of these questions, thatsound was literally in the background.
And I just felt myselfgetting increasingly.
(18:52):
And someone's gettingthe baby, don't worry.
Steve Treseler (18:53):
Oh.
Lauren Best (18:54):
But I felt Myself getting increasingly hotter and unable to think
to think of the responses I wanted to,instead of this sound, which was so
like connected to me at the core thatit was like overtaking my consciousness.
Steve Treseler (19:10):
But that was it.
That was your art experience.
Lauren Best (19:12):
Exactly.
And it was a very likephysical experience of that.
Steve Treseler (19:17):
Yeah.
So.
But yeah, I mean, you were thinkingthe experience was gonna be something
else and that's, that's what it was
Lauren Best (19:28):
Exactly.
As, as it so often goes.
Right?
Steve Treseler (19:31):
Yeah.
But a lot of those questions areyou hearing while you're listening?
Are you listening while you're hearing?
If we hadn't.
Yeah.
But listen to the, the clip of hertalking, you might be like, well, what's,
what's the diff what's, why is sheharping on this hearing versus listening?
We, we have a little more insight intowhat that, into what that, that means.
Lauren Best (19:50):
Mm interesting.
Steve Treseler (19:50):
But this actually, oh yeah, go ahead.
Lauren Best (19:53):
Well, I was just thinking the way the questions are designed
though, is that even if we hadn'thave had that mm-hmm I think that it
sort of leads to those considerations.
Steve Treseler (20:02):
Yeah.
And those questions also transitioninto another area that I want to
get to, which is audiation, whichis, imagine, sounds so, sounds that
we're, we're imagining on our own.
Like, can you.
also listen to a memory of an oldsound and this is yeah, incredibly
(20:22):
important tool as a, as a, as a musician.
Well, and as a, as a human.
And a human musician listening andimagining previous sounds or me
listen, me listening to, to soundsthat you're dreaming up on your own.
Lauren Best (20:38):
Mm-hmm and it, it also starts to ask us how much of
what we think we hear is actuallyimagined sound based on what we
are expecting things to sound like.
Steve Treseler (20:49):
yeah.
Lauren Best (20:50):
And how much are we actually hearing all the sound at the time?
Steve Treseler (20:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, that reminds me of a story.
A friend of mine, Michael Van Bebberis, is transcribing a bunch of
famous Charlie Parker solos thathave already been transcribed before,
but now, it's known for having someerrors in the F the famous version.
So he's redoing it to be complete.
And he's realizing there'scertain notes that were written
down, that everyone plays.
And you listen to Charlie, Parker'srecording, and you think the notes are
(21:18):
there and you listen, but he was justslowing down and filtering stuff out.
And these notes just aren't there, but wehear them cause we're so used to looking
at them and having played them ourselves.
Hmm.
. So you listen to the recordingand you hear these notes
that aren't actually there.
Lauren Best (21:32):
Totally, totally.
Or if you listen back to yourself,speaking, or other people speaking,
or, you know, people will leave outwords or not say the word they meant
to, and often we still understand it.
And we just, I mean, thethere's been there's things like
this with reading too, right?
Like where we can remove some ofthe words and still read it or,
(21:52):
or read things that are I've I've.
Seeing things that are half French, halfEnglish and , I can, you know, yeah.
I can still read it, even thoughit actually doesn't really make
sense, but but our brains areable to, to put things together.
That's a little different halfFrench, half English, but you know,
when actual like words or sorry,letters are removed it can work mm-hmm
. Steve Treseler: Yeah.
And so, yeah, fairly recentterm, this idea of audiation.
(22:17):
Which is the word I think I said earlier,which is the, it's imagined sound.
So sort of the idea of visualization.
You know, you can imagineyour childhood home.
If you close your eyes, you cansee a picture of it, but audiation
is hearing sounds, maybe getting asong stuck in your head, or if you
can imagine now think of a piece ofmusic that's really important to you.
(22:37):
Another, take another.
Another dead air time, but just thinkof a piece of music and then like hit
the, imagine hitting the play button andyou're listening to it and try to hear
it as vividly as if you're listeningthrough speakers or hearing it live.
(23:03):
Okay.
Hit pause.
So everyone who's listening, we wereall in the same space together, but
everyone's having a vividly differentexperience unless we happened to all
choose to listen to the same song.
But,
and interestingly
Steve Treseler (23:14):
unlikely.
Lauren Best (23:14):
Yeah.
Even if we all did the same song,like if we all imagined like Happy
Birthday to You, the Happy Birthday song
Each of us are going toimagine that differently.
Right.
And so if I mm-hmm if I said, imaginethe last time you heard Happy Birthday.
Yeah, right.
(23:34):
But I imagine yourselfsinging Happy Birthday.
Steve Treseler (23:39):
hmm.
Lauren Best (23:42):
And I like, I think it gets for some people, it can, some of these
will be harder or easier for other people.
And then if I said, you know, likeimagine a flute playing Happy Birthday
Imagine bagpipes playing Happy Birthday
. Steve Treseler: Yeah.
And we're all hearing it slightly,slightly differently from what we're
(24:02):
imagining or even more narrow, youknow, imagine, imagine, Imagine by John
Lennon, we all hear it in our head.
We all remember it slightly differently.
So it's not gonna be thesame, the same experience
mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (24:14):
But drawing on that is so important, especially if we're
getting to improvising or creatingour own, our own music, you know, one
approach is being able to, you maypre-hear or audiate something in your
head, and then you want to get iton the outside, on your instrument.
And as we were talking off air about that,there's different, different approaches.
You know, are we supposed to be playingwhat we hear or pre hear or play
(24:37):
something that might or saying somethingthat might, that might surprise us?
Mm-hmm and there's a.
Couple little quotes here, I'vequeued up from my e-book, but Art
Farmer, renowned jazz trumpet playersays you really have to practice the
coordination between the mind andthe fingers, the ideas, and the body.
And you have to practice findingthe ideas on your horn and
(24:57):
getting there at the same time.
As the idea comes into your head, it'sa matter of developing instant touch.
so I like calling at thatand one other we'll have this
queued up, Stephen Nachmanovitchanother quote from Free Play.
Where do we go to listen to themusic that has not yet been heard?
There's a place in our body wherewe can listen, where we can turn and
listen, if we go there and become quiet,we can start to bring the music up.
Lauren Best (25:20):
Mm-hmm and I'm very curious about different forms of
audiation and how different peoplemay experience that differently.
And some people, you know, pairvisualizations with audiation or
for some people that comes reallynaturally to pair visualizations or
some people have other like synesthesiatype experiences with audiation.
(25:46):
But I know with visual imagery, like somepeople think in images and some people
do not have visual imagery regularlyand some people have like an internal
dialogue or internal narrative and theywould say like, they think in words
which apparently not everyone does.
So I'm very curious and I'm, I'm, I'masking this before, before, like looking
(26:10):
into it in a lot of detail, I'm surethere's been some research around it,
but I'm, I'm guessing that we are goingto learn more and more about audiation
and about how like the, how differentindividuals may be unique from one another
or, and how that may compare or contrastbetween different people and different
life stages and different cultures.
Steve Treseler (26:33):
Yeah.
And as we're, we're, you know,just how our memories are formed.
It's not like we just hit record ona camera and document everything.
And this could be why eyewitnesstestimony isn't really reliable.
Cause what we remember, isn't the samething as what happened, the way that
our brain stores it and packages it.
So it's similar with audiation and Iimagine some people can hear th yeah,
(26:53):
people hear things in, in different ways.
And some might imagine music on a staffpaper, or, you know, as synesthesia
with cross, which is crossed sensesin some ways where some people who
hear particular sounds it activatesthe visual centers or certain touches
might taste a certain way or mm-hmm sothat's yeah, that'd be interesting.
(27:17):
Mm-hmm interesting to know.
Yeah.
Look into what kind ofresearch is out there.
Yeah.
I don't know much about that.
Lauren Best (27:20):
What, what they do know that I, that I've read up on a little lately.
Mm-hmm is that in the developmentof audiation comparison between
different like for example,different tonalities is important.
So children, so they, they havedone experiments with children
where they listen to all majormusic and then like to a variety
(27:42):
music in a variety of tonalities.
And they found that the children wholisten to a greater variety sang more in
tune, in major keys not like one mightthink, oh, if they listen to all major
keys, that's what they're gonna know best.
And that's what they'll,they'll, you know, perform best.
But it was actually the variety gavethem a way of comparing different things.
(28:04):
And so they had a better understandingof the major tonalities by hearing
a, a, a wider variety of tonalities.
We need comparison in orderto be able to make meaning.
And so again, this kind, this, thisbrings us back to the importance of
listening and of developing our listeningand, and of exposing ourselves to
different types of things to listen to.
(28:25):
But also just increasing our awarenessso we can let our conscious and our
subconscious do do that comparing
. Steve Treseler: I remember reading.
I'm trying to remember where Iread this, but some studies about
developing perfect pitch, like hear,hearing a note on an instrument and,
and knowing what the name of it is.
So it's something that amajority of musicians, even
professionals cannot, cannot do.
(28:46):
And a lot of, like, I grew up throughsaying, it's something you're born with.
Some people have perfect pitch and go,oh, that's an F sharp, minor chord.
And a lot of us can hear the intervalsand the relationships between the
notes, but not the absolute pitch.
Most of the time.
I had heard it, it looked like thatit is something that can be developed,
but during that early critical period,it was before age four or five.
(29:07):
So sort of the, the same time wherewe're more easier for us to learn native
languages and the things like like that.
So, It is something you can learn.
I've known someone as an adultthat was working really hard to do
it and got, got pretty close, but
nice
Steve Treseler (29:22):
interesting at what?
Yeah.
How that, how that all develops,but yeah, back to audiation.
I let's, I'd like to, are you, doyou wanna, do you wanna play a game?
Lauren Best (29:32):
Let's play a game.
Steve Treseler (29:33):
Yeah, no, this is the intuitive melody game.
I, I, I, Hmm.
Haven't quite set it up likea game, I guess, but when
I say, do you play a game?
Do you wanna compose a song?
It's always, yeah.
People are like, okay, let's do it.
So let's, we can each let's each do this.
I'll have I'll, I'll walk you throughit and I'll go through the same process.
(29:54):
So basically taking soI'll have you, yeah.
At the, at the keyboard.
Lauren Best (30:00):
I'm at the keyboard
Steve Treseler (30:01):
and, and the microphone, if as, as possible mm-hmm and yeah, just.
Taking a few, you know, a few breathsjust to kind of center yourself a bit.
And then what I want you to dois sing a pitch and then match
it and find it at the piano.
So I don't know if you haveperfect pitch, if you do, that's
easy to match it on the piano.
Otherwise it's a little trial anderror, or you may be in between
notes on the piano, but mm-hmm
(30:23):
. Lauren Best: I do not have perfect pitch spoiler.
Sing a note, and then you'll find the nearest one at
the piano through trial and error.
And then you'll, then you'llmatch singing and playing.
Cool.
Lauren Best (30:34):
I actually hear the note already.
Steve Treseler (30:36):
Okay.
Lauren Best (30:37):
Which is, I was not expecting, I was hoping
to just sing and then, but
Steve Treseler (30:45):
find that note,
Lauren Best (30:51):
it was cl I think closest to A five.
Okay.
Steve Treseler (30:54):
So now, so now you'll, you'll play, play and sing the pitch and
listen and let your inner hearing guide.
The next note, it'll reveal the noteof your melody, then sing the second
pitch and find it on the keyboard.
So it's like listening, singing, playing.
So start with the, A flat andthen move to the next one.
(31:30):
Here we go.
Now, do your, you got your twonote, two note melody, so sing
and play it at the same time
Lauren Best (31:35):
together, like sorry, together or in sequence?
Steve Treseler (31:42):
In sequence.
Hm, major third.
See, I was hearing a minor third.
I think that might have been wrong.
No, I'm just kidding.
Lauren Best (31:51):
I think I, I don't think I was singing in pitch.
Like I think I, I sang a very.
Or did you?
No,
Steve Treseler (32:02):
no, no.
I mean, in my head, you, thatwas what you were singing.
Lauren Best (32:04):
Oh, like in your head to go between.
Steve Treseler (32:05):
Yeah, no, no, no.
I was, I was making a badjoke, but, but I don't
Lauren Best (32:08):
think I sang exactly the C and I didn't like, as I was singing
it, I was kind of like I don't knowif that's even what I wanted to play,
like why that note thanks brain.
Yeah.
And then like, as I, and thenas, as I played it, like, yeah,
it was really interesting.
It was like, I was.
(32:28):
Yeah, just the piano is in suchlike everything is so like discreet.
Right.
And so like where I was.
Steve Treseler (32:35):
Yeah.
That's the problem with, yeah.
Doing this with a, with a pianonow we're boxed into Western equal
temperament, which totally that'sits own that's its own issue.
Lauren Best (32:46):
Yeah.
Like my instinct was togo a little out of that.
Like, I, I, I.
. Yeah,
it was strange.
I, okay.
Steve Treseler (32:53):
I guess we'll use your keyboard as a
limitation for now, but okay.
But analysis after creating, right.
That's next episode.
So let's then just continue that process.
So now play your first two notes andthen sing the third and con, and then
continue that process until it feelslike you've reached the end of a phrase.
(33:20):
And then sing those three insequence and then add the next,
Lauren Best (33:34):
it's really hard to turn off my brain for this.
I think I should try it withmy eyes closed sometime.
Because I'm, I'm hearingthings before it's even like
time to hear the next thing.
Oh.
So then when it's time to hear the nextthing, I end up hearing a different
thing and I'm having to consciouslychoose whether to follow like, oh,
what I remember hearing or what I,
(33:55):
what I now
Steve Treseler (33:56):
either.
Yeah.
Either way can work.
Lauren Best (33:57):
That's interesting.
Steve Treseler (33:57):
I would just see, I wait until that exact
moment and see what you hear.
Yeah.
Here then.
All right.
Keep going, unless that'sthe end of your phrase.
Mm
Lauren Best (34:15):
oh, I, I, this is very hard not to follow it.
It's so hard.
Like.
Steve Treseler (34:19):
That, that can work too.
Well.
Why can you follow it and play that?
So this is what ArtFarmer was talking about.
The instant touch.
Can you play?
So, okay, well let's, let's release thelimitation and just let you let you go.
Lauren Best (34:43):
Yeah.
It's I feel like I'mcheating all over the place.
It's like they're so interconnected.
I, I think, you know what I mean?
Like it's so hard to turn off my brain.
Mm-hmm like, it's I?
Yeah.
And actually I was doingthis this morning on guitar.
Hmm.
Much harder on guitar because I, I'm notnearly as fluent with guitar as I am piano
Steve Treseler (35:06):
But yeah, if you make the adaption, I mean, the whole point
of this is to create a melody throughlistening and intuiting the melody rather
than trying to plan and think, think ofsomething like it's already, you're like
revealing melody that's already there.
Yeah.
Lauren Best (35:22):
And it felt like, it felt like so many melodies
were emerging so quickly.
Oh, , you know, it like, do youfind that is like somewhat typical
that like, like you're just tryingto hear the next note and you're
hearing like the next six notes.
Steve Treseler (35:38):
Mm.
yeah.
Often, or I can hear it in twodifferent directions or on purpose.
I'll the first thing that I hear.
I'll like reject it and like,let's hear something else.
And I'll do that just to maybebreak out of maybe patterns
that I, that I fall into.
Yeah.
So that definitely happens.
But if you do it in this step, wheredo it one note at a time sometimes,
(35:58):
you know, following differentprocess, you'll get a you know, you'll
get different, different results.
Lauren Best (36:04):
And interestingly it's like, it picked up steam as it went.
Yeah.
So, right.
Like the first note was one thing.
And then once I had two notes, right.
Like the second note felt a littleoff, but then like once I was yeah.
Once I ended it up in, in amajor totality, like my brain
was like, I know where this goes.
Yeah.
And then suddenly, like every thoughtI had, even if I tried to be like, not
(36:25):
that let's do this, then it would stillbe like, there were just, yeah, like
my, my audiation would run away from me.
Like yeah.
Every time, you know, likeyou'd just be like, yeah.
And,
Steve Treseler (36:37):
and in this case, this is the time where you just kind of follow
what you hear and follow the intuition.
I think that that would work.
But if you feel like you're alwaysslipping into similar tonalities
or, and you wanna break out of it,that's where we use limitations
from the previous episode to, whichis a different challenge for then.
You're putting a differentset of limitations.
Lauren Best (36:56):
And if I was doing this with myself, like, you know what I mean?
Like if I was like just spending a bunchof time trying to like, use this sort
of as a prompt mm-hmm what I thinkI would do is because I'm having like
melodies upon melodies upon melodies isI would kind of like free play and sort
of try to get some of those out mm-hmmor maybe even sing a bunch of them and
(37:19):
just let it like, go, go, go, go, go.
Because then.
they would already be out.
They would already be, have somethingI like created and remembered and I
can remember doing in hopes that thenI could approach the activity mm-hmm
with like, like, you know what I mean?
Like I've gotten them outta the way kindof mm-hmm is one approach I might take.
Steve Treseler (37:38):
Yeah.
And yeah, recording all of that.
So you can come back to it andmaybe it could be you know,
different sections of it and
Lauren Best (37:44):
totally, and like, sometimes it
Steve Treseler (37:46):
it's like it must be so hard for you to have an
endless flow of musical ideas.
Lauren Best (37:51):
Well, I was gonna say, it's not like, it's, it's sort of like, oh,
I guess I have lots of ideas right now.
Great.
Like, but like it's not necessarily,like, it feels almost like
remembering someone else's idea.
Like it's not it's, it's likehow with language, right.
We get to a point with language whereif you hear someone say half of a
(38:12):
sentence, you can likely finish theirsentence and it might not be correct,
but it will sort of like seem right.
And then, you know, you reach a pointwhere if you hear someone give half of
a speech, you might be able to like makeup the entire second half of the speech.
Right.
Mm-hmm but yeah, sometimes it feelslike there's lots and lots of ideas,
but it's almost like they aren't.
(38:32):
Like, I'm not directing them theway I want, you know what I mean?
It's like, I'm hearing them, but it'snot necessarily what I'm looking for.
What I'm wishing would appear.
It's like this flow.
So the other strategy I would take withmyself, if you're, if you're curious.
Yeah.
Is I would try this like really,really, really, really slowly.
Like I would spend like 30seconds to a minute with each.
(38:57):
Hmm, so that I tried to likeremove myself from some of those
other like urges and ideas.
And rather than like finishing thesentence with what comes to mind right
away, because my brain can just do that.
right.
I would try to like really sink into eachnote and see if by stretching it out.
I could kind of remove myself from someof those, like typical, like cadences.
(39:21):
Yeah, but I mean, there's nothing wrongwith coming up with something that's yeah.
In typical cadences, but Ijust, I felt like I was yeah.
Responding with well I feltlike I was like some politicians
who say a lot of catch phrases.
Steve Treseler (39:35):
Mm-hmm and you're just go going, going back to going
back to your sound soundbites.
Well, and then I know people when youcome up with something and it seems
like you're remembering it and thenpeople are worried about, oh, Did I
did, is this already another song?
Did I steal someone else's song?
Like you accidentally wrote somethingthat you're just remembering and at
(39:55):
this point, just keep going with it.
I know, I guess got Beattles onthe brain when Paul McCartney wrote
Yesterday, at that point it wasscrambled eggs was the first line.
Yeah.
And who's walking.
Wait, has someone else wrote this?
He thought that.
You know, someone was describing,he walking around, like he thought
he was Beethoven or something.
He had this melody, but he was soconvinced that he didn't write it.
He just thought it was a gem.
And wasn't sure if it was reallyhis or not, but yeah, totally.
(40:16):
Let's get to that later.
Well, let's, let's hearyou try a, a, a slow one.
And then if your brain, you know, tryingto finish the phrase, you can just
kind of let those be there, but thenwhen it comes time for the next note,
listen for what you're hearing there forone note and then play the first few.
And then add the next one and see ifwe can slow, slow down the stream of
(40:39):
wanting to finish the next seven in a row.
Lauren Best (40:41):
And I'm also going to try not to look at the piano.
So I can't think aboutthe like key . Yeah.
So I can't like think asmuch about what's going on.
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (41:04):
Wow.
there you go.
That'll teach you to look at the keyboard.
Okay.
Lauren Best (41:09):
Yeah.
Okay.
It's funny.
I thought it was maybe G it's F
. Steve Treseler: Okay.
(41:37):
Yeah.
I felt like
Steve Treseler (41:43):
I'm I wanna go in between pitches.
Yeah.
Lauren Best (41:54):
I didn't look, I swear.
Steve Treseler (42:12):
No, I made it.
So now play your wholephrase from the beginning.
Lauren Best (42:19):
Ah,
Steve Treseler (42:29):
Yeah, sing and play it and then continue on until the phrase is over.
Lauren Best (42:39):
You know, I still want to.
Like, if we weren't recordingright now, I would've hung out
on some of those notes and justlike dipped the pitches and stuff.
Yeah.
Like I'm feeling veryquarter tone-y today.
Steve Treseler (42:52):
Yeah.
Well, that's I, that, that is a potentialshortcoming of, of doing it this way.
The, the trying to the instanttouch, but through, doing it at the
moment, an equal temperament, but,
Lauren Best (43:05):
but at the same time, like that's, that was cool.
Like, it was like, it was veryinteresting to me that that urge
like emerged this time around mm-hmmbecause I was kind of having, I'm
sorry, I'm interrupting the process.
Yeah.
I was kind of having that the first time.
Right.
But I squashed it and then Ilike was playing, you know, had
all these things in mind thatwere really like pretty constant.
(43:25):
And then there, I was feeling like.
like really just like experimentingwith just sliding pitches.
Yeah.
Like if, again, if we weren't recordingwhere I was trying to like keep
picking notes, I probably would've justdone a lot of slipping and sliding.
Yeah.
Which I actually, like, I, I do thatwith like the seaboard exploring or even
(43:47):
like with pitch bending on the piano.
And certainly with the voice.
Lots of especially like having playedso much piano where like, it is equal
temperament, like really experimentingwith with what we do with pitch and the
voice and noticing how others do that.
Steve Treseler (44:03):
So, yeah.
Is, is your phrase complete or wasthat a interruption in the middle?
Lauren Best (44:10):
Hmm,
I didn't get the last note.
Yeah, I was, like I said,I was feeling a lot of like
chromatic movement and sliding.
So again, Like I findthese kinds of prompts.
(44:34):
I'm always wanting to break the rules.
I'm like, oh, that's great.
Now I can, I have an idea forsomething else I can do with it.
Steve Treseler (44:39):
Yeah.
And, and maybe that that's it.
If you're trying to like come up withsome new ideas, it might be that.
So then you make the decision.
It's like, am I gonna staywithin the limitation?
Is the challenge and not go off ontosomething else or you follow the, you
know, you eat the marshmallow and go inthat, oh my, my I'm feeling slidey pitch.
Let's get rid of the piano orbe able to have the pitch bend.
(45:00):
It may set you outinto, to something else.
So when, when does it, whendoes it smart to stick with the
limitation for the challenge?
And when, when does that might justset the stage for something else?
Like you have some kind of writing promptfor a poem and then it, you have this
other idea and then just go and do that.
But either way you've you'vesolved the solved the problem.
Lauren Best (45:24):
But slowing down, definitely cool to see in real time.
Steve Treseler (45:29):
Mm.
Lauren Best (45:29):
Definite.
Did it appear to you to be quitesignificantly slower than the first round?
Steve Treseler (45:35):
Yes.
Lauren Best (45:35):
Okay.
Steve Treseler (45:37):
Yeah, the first you were just going and you had heard
this like kind of more stream ofconsciousness, like you were improvising.
. I mean, you weren't like morelike performance improvisation
where you just kind of hear thenext flow of lines and go with it.
And this, this one it'sslowing, slowing down.
Lauren Best (45:52):
Yeah.
And it did feel slower, but I was, I thinkI was surprised at how effective that was.
Yeah.
Cause like, I don't feel likethe runaway train as much.
I feel like I'm gonna behearing for the rest of the day.
Mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (46:06):
Yeah.
And that's a little more, that's alittle more what I was expecting from
the exercise and how people approach it.
But you know, it goes differentways, but then yeah, you're learning
something about the process.
And are you when, when to gowith the runaway train or when
to slow down and which melodyends up being more meaningful?
It's interesting.
Lauren Best (46:23):
And it's amazing how much my audiation really like changed.
Yeah.
Still the same person sitting herestill the same piano, same episode.
Yeah.
Right.
Like we didn't change that much,but my audiation experience
mm-hmm was totally different.
Yeah.
Cool.
And like at the end I was like, Ugh,do I have to end the phrase here?
(46:44):
Yeah.
I was like, that's the note.
I hear it.
Fine.
Steve Treseler (46:49):
Yeah.
You've got, yeah, you've a,you've quite a, vivid, internal
conversation going with yourself.
Lauren Best (46:56):
I didn't actually say all those things, but I just mean,
like I had I had some resist Iactually, I think I don't talk with
myself as much as some people do.
Mm-hmm but that's whatthe energy would've said.
I mean, because like, I didn'treally want to end on that note,
but I was like, there it is.
It's in my head.
I hear it.
Can't lie about that to myself.
Steve Treseler (47:17):
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That's that's the process.
I'll I'll do a, I'll doa, I'll do a quick one.
Lauren Best (47:21):
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (47:22):
Then we have to mash 'em together.
No, I, I don't know what, whatwe do with these melodies.
That's some other thing, whoa.
I,
I, I don't know how I did that.
Okay.
(48:05):
Hm.
(48:33):
Hmm.
Lauren Best (48:42):
Mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (48:43):
and then at the end, I was like, oh, that was
actually a whole tone thing.
I don't normally likesing whole tone scales.
How did the it's just it'sthe way it, the way it went.
Lauren Best (48:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love how surprises come out of it.
Steve Treseler (48:55):
Yeah.
Again like, oh, what would be good?
Part of me was going like,oh, what would be good here?
No, it was like, Nope, listen, listen.
Okay.
And then.
And then there's all kinds ofthings you can do, you know,
take when we have these melodies.
So I just like making a bunch of intuitivemelody, intuitive melody, intuitive
melody, and then you can choose one andwhat you do with it, you can use that
as a theme and do more variations indevelopment, or that could be a bass line
(49:19):
and you add something else on top of it,or you take the melody and put a bass
line under it, or some kind of groove orthere's so many different things you can
Lauren Best (49:26):
mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (49:26):
you can do.
So in classes, sometimes all thestudent play an intuitive melody
that they wrote is the theme.
And then other people have different rolesto give it different sound environments.
But anyway, just, yeah, give everyonethe, the introduction into the process
of how we can use listening andaudiation to actually generate something.
(49:47):
Mm-hmm at a certain point when youhave, when you've exercised this
muscle, you can do it more on thefly and being able to play and match
what you're singing and playing.
Hmm.
At a FA at a faster rate mm-hmm or ifI'm playing saxophone, I can't sing at
the same time, but some I can tell ifI'm pre-hearing it and then play it.
But if I'm playing a jazz halland I pre hear something and I
play something else, I may try togo back to what I was hearing, or
(50:09):
just be surprised by what I played.
And then, you know, you don't havethe, the time to go back and edit.
Lauren Best (50:16):
Mm-hmm . I keep thinking about like, doing this,
with slash without piano, becauselike I improvise vocally a lot.
And so like, I do this fairlyoften without actually finding
the notes on the piano.
I think it actually made mewell, I think it's, it changed
(50:36):
my audiation and my thinking.
I think finding it on piano andplaying it on piano almost made me
less intuitive because I startedthinking about like the theory of it
or not looking at my fingers helped.
Steve Treseler (50:47):
And yeah, I use this for folks.
Sometimes people can intuitively singsomething and then might not have, an
idea of how to map it or whether it'simportant to write it down or not.
That's a whole other thing,but if you wanna, yeah, yeah.
Totally make a chart for otherpeople to play and, and read.
But no, I'm, I'm all for if we need yeah.
Take it off the piano or takeit out of equal temperament.
(51:07):
That's all.
Okay.
That's all good, but I dohave a lot of students.
Part of this comes from, I have a lot ofstudents that come in and go, I can sing
all these ideas, but as soon as I put thesaxophone in my mouth, it sounds awkward.
And I'm trying to play the right notesand trying to make this connection
between this like intuitive senseof something that's audiated and
they can sing and it all fits.
It even hits the harmony.
And then you've got thisobstacle of an instrument.
(51:28):
Yeah.
And nothing comes out.
So that's what I like using this process.
Mm-hmm but in your case for what you'retalking about, ditch the, you know,
follow the intuitive melodies and ditchthe ditch, the piano and record it.
And,
Lauren Best (51:39):
but it forced me to slow down and actually do something repeatable
mm-hmm because like I can improviseintuitive melodies all day long.
In fact, I often do.
Right.
But whether those are something thatlike, I, I identify or repeat, like this
helped kind of like tease that out andslow it down and put an equal temperament.
(51:59):
which, for better or worse.
Today was me.
It was, it was very interesting tohave my awareness brought to that.
Right.
I wouldn't say I, I I'm often not like, Iwouldn't say I'm often like improvising in
super slidey places, but sometimes I am.
Right.
And so it was, it kind of helped slowdown and tee tease out what was going
(52:21):
on because as, as like, as you'resaying, like, I could just sing and
sing and sing like melodies otherwise.
Right.
But this kind of creates adifferent type of process.
Steve Treseler (52:30):
And for people that maybe, you know, don't feel like
they can sing and sing and singmelodies, like might be like me who
I'm not really a trained singer.
So I don't intuitively I mean, I, I, Istill will noodle around and sing, sing
things, but I can't think of anything,you know, we'll slow down and just
listen and, and listen to what it's.
Yeah.
This workshop by AnthonyWilson guitar player, and it
(52:52):
was called like discovering,
or revealing the alreadycomplete musical idea.
And he had a bunch of us in a roomdo this, we listened and then wrote
it down without an instrument.
It was just, just listening to notation.
And then we all came up.
It was pretty powerful.
Then everyone played, you know,played their, played their piece.
And we listened to what we were alljust coming up with in our imagination.
(53:14):
Mm-hmm , which is pretty, really awesome.
Right on.
I wanna wrap up let's let'sfinish with a, another Pauline
Oliveros deep listening piece.
You ready?
Mm-hmm so our final piece thatwe'll perform with our listeners
here, this one's called Rhythms 1996.
(53:35):
What is the meter ortempo of your normal walk?
How often do you blink?
What is the currenttempo of your breathing?
What is the current tempo of your heart?
What other rhythms do you hear?
(53:56):
If you listen, what is yourrelationship to all of the rhythms
that you can perceive at once?
What a performance.
Lauren Best (54:17):
I became aware during that, that I actually
could hear my heartbeat at first.
I was like, I can't hear my heartbeat.
I don't know.
I'm gonna have to take my pulse.
And then I was like, Ican hear my heartbeat.
I actually, I can hear that lub dub.
It might only be because of the pressureof the headphones on my, like on my
(54:38):
circulatory system, but I, I could and
really interesting.
Steve Treseler (54:42):
Feel it.
I don't know if I couldhear, if I could hear it.
I was definitely feeling it.
Lets see.
And I still hear traffic more thanmy heartbeat, but yeah, that's that's
but then, yeah, you're just thislike physiological blob of rhythms,
you know, our breathing and ourblinking and walking and all of that.
And there's your piece of reallysophisticated, poly rhythm
with pulses that are shifting?
Lauren Best (55:04):
Yeah, totally.
Steve Treseler (55:05):
And we're, that's when we're performing all the time.
Lauren Best (55:07):
Well, and, and our relationship to rhythm, like I'm
not someone who tends to listen tomusic when I, when I run or jog.
because like, I'm either really withthe rhythm or not with the rhythm.
Right?
Like it's kind of like being withthe rhythm or not becomes like
central to what's happening asopposed to it just being like a
lighthearted way of like helping you.
Steve Treseler (55:26):
Oh.
But then it's like a Steve Reich phasingor something you're in or you're off.
Or if you've got like, when there'slike, you're on the bus and the windshield
wipers, aren't synced with each other andthey're together and get a little bit off.
Yeah.
That kinda thing.
And that can happen with yourrun that doesn't make your
run more enjoyable apparently.
Lauren Best (55:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and then I'm like, am I tired?
I don't know.
I just . Have to stay with time.
Steve Treseler (55:46):
Oh yeah.
And if it's a littletoo fast, that could be,
yeah.
Be a training regimen or you gottaget the right playlist at your, at
the right running tempo, I guess.
Lauren Best (55:56):
Yeah.
And we, we didn't talk a wholelot about, about rhythm and about
like just rhythm and breath andsynchronization and entrainment.
And and the power of that, which is,which is pretty, pretty incredible,
both like, you know, just on physicallevel of how things entrain, but how
we, entrain to each other, like howwe fall into step with each other,
(56:18):
walking, how, you know, how movingtogether helps us feel connected
because it literally does connect us.
Like they've used music to helpnewborn premature babies like
regulate their heart rate and theirbreathing patterns because of the.
How much we can fall into sync with that.
Steve Treseler (56:37):
Wow.
It, it reminded me of, I think I readfrom VJ IR piano player talking about.
Just different musical phrases and mapmapping it to physiological process
like a, like a musical phrase itmatches with, with the breath and a a
pulse, and the time signature wouldmatch with a step or a heartbeat.
Mm-hmm and, or quickly moving phonetic,kind of frenetic kind of rhythms like
(56:58):
your fingers or your mouth or thingsthat are moving very quickly, but all
these different rhythms existing at once.
And what, what, what types ofrhythms sound natural to us?
Hmm, can be very much mapped to how theyexist in our body, but that's another,
another area of audiation too, which wecan get to pre-hearing a, a rhythm or a
groove, and there's all kinds of otherthings that we can audiate not just the
(57:22):
pitches like we were demonstrating today.
Pre-hearing the rhythm, pre-hearing thetimbre or the form or the instrumentation.
There's all these things we canimagine, other than just note by note.
Lauren Best (57:33):
Mm-hmm . Yeah, totally.
And that, that again and things thatmay like come more naturally to some
people or other people, or, you know,there isn't like a wrong way to audiate
like or to to, to connect with rhythms.
I'm thinking about how just anotherthing with babies, how like the rhythms
that babies hear in utero and in thefirst few months of their life, like
(57:57):
imprint on them, and then they findthose rhythms more recognizable and
kind of easier to move to, or to, tomake music to the, the rhythms that
are presumably part of their culture.
Like what they've been exposedto in that kind of like key time.
But we can certainlylearn rhythms later, too.
. . Steve Treseler: Hmm.
Sounds like we'll stillhave more to talk about.
(58:19):
We can have an episode.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
And we've been discussing.
Yeah, we're gonna be launching ourInfinite Improvisation discord.
So you can join us for some ofthese experiments and conversations
and love to hear your intuitivemelodies as we get that going.
And we conversationsaround, around these things.
So we're looking forward to makingthis a multidirectional conversation.
(58:41):
We certainly enjoy broadcasting toall of you, but getting, getting folks
connected so you can join the mailinglist at infiniteimprovisation.com
and be kept up to date.
And we learn when we get our,our community community started.
Awesome.
I'm looking forward to it until next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Infinite Improvisation Podcast.
I'm Lauren Best here with Steve Treseler.
And we're looking forwardto another How episode
. Steve Treseler: Yeah, so the, this fourth, how episode is about deep listening
or listening as a creative practice.
(00:30):
Instead of thinking and planning and how,how do we, how do we listen in different
ways to inform our, our art and creating,yeah, creating new art and new music.
Awesome.
And it's so important.
I mean, we also can't stopdoing it listening, but we can
change how we're listening.
. Steve Treseler: Yeah, exactly.
(00:50):
And this deep listening as a, asa practice The term deep listening
comes from a multi-instrumentalistand composer, Pauline Oliveros, who
created this deep listening as apractice as there time as a composer
and teaching at Mills Mills college.
And she's gonna help guide our,our discussion and I'm actually
(01:11):
gonna play a short quote.
It's a little one minute video fortalking about listening and consciousness.
So this is related towhat, what you just said.
So here's.
Here is Pauline:
Pauline Oliveros (01:28):
Hearing, being what happens with the
ear and that what the ear does.
I mean I'm, I'm getting pretty radicalin saying I think that that which
is called ear training in music.
Schools is really wrong.
Mm-hmm you can't train the ear.
It does what it does, right?
(01:49):
Yeah.
It's a microphone.
It's a microphone.
It does cool microphone.
It's it's a very cool microphone.
It does what it does.
But what, what can be trained is listeningand that's what technology is doing is
change is changing the way we listen.
It can't change the way we hear.
(02:09):
But it can can, but our listeningis, is the kind, I think that
listening is probably very closeto what we call consciousness.
Steve Treseler (02:22):
Yeah.
So as, as you're saying, we can't turn offour ears, but we can direct our attention
to pay attention to what's coming in.
You know, we have a lot of informationcoming in from all our senses that.
Ignore regularly.
Mm-hmm whether it's the sensationsof what your feet in your shoes
right now, or tell my who knows thefeeling of the saliva in your mouth.
(02:42):
Oh, as soon as you pay attentionto it, you've got all this input
that we're largely ignoring.
Cause we can't brains.
Can't pay attention to, to all of it.
So here's a quote from herDeep Listening Handbook.
The deep listening isa form of meditation.
Attention is directed to the interplayof sounds and silences sound is not
limited to musical or speaking sounds butinclusive of all perceptible vibrations.
Lauren Best (03:09):
Awesome.
And I find so much, like once we startlistening it, it was at least for myself.
I start to think, how wasI ignoring that before?
Mm-hmm like, as you're saying, wecan start to become aware of so much
more than we even knew was happening.
Steve Treseler (03:28):
Mm-hmm yeah.
And that's.
Something I do with students andin workshops that we just kind
of stop to listen to all the, theambient sounds in our environment.
And we talk about music being sound onsilence, but it's rarely actually silence.
Mm-hmm , I'm not sure if this makesgreat radio, but let let's just
take, take a moment, everyone.
We're gonna listen to our environmentand see if you can draw your
attention to something that youweren't, that you weren't aware of.
(03:51):
Here we go.
Little dead air.
Okay.
We're still here.
The show's the show's still going.
(04:12):
What did, what did you hear here in yourenvironment or some directed listening?
Lauren Best (04:16):
Well, I, I took off the ear cup also.
Mm-hmm , but I couldn't help, butnotice the amount of sound that was
actually being created by my hair andheadphones moving against one another.
And just like, I mean, that's,what's closest to my ear.
I was hoping to listen outward more.
Right.
But I actually found that there was therewas so much like that I was noticing
(04:39):
like, just from that and from likethe not hum, but just like the, the
room sound mm-hmm in my headphones.
So I still actually didn't getbeyond this part of my head.
Yeah.
Because I was suddenly so aware of that.
Steve Treseler (04:52):
Yeah.
So how often do you actually, youhear your hair and your headphones
and just ignore it, right.
So now as soon as you yeah,take your attention to it.
It's like, oh, wow.
That is really loud.
Yeah.
I heard some, I mean, I know I wasgonna hear some traffic sounds and I
thought I heard some water dripping.
I was like, where's that coming from?
And then I forgot.
There's a clock in here.
That's ticking.
I was like, oh yeah, I'm inthis room hours and hours.
(05:13):
Even without headphones on.
I'm not even aware of the clock ticking.
I'm like, yeah, like, can you hear that?
And all the things I've been recordingfrom home, is there always a clock ticking
there that I just didn't thinking about?
Oh, there's all these sounds that aregoing into my, my home recordings.
But
Lauren Best (05:26):
yeah, I, I remember being in a massage yeah.
And towards the end, noticing thatthere's a clock ticking and I'm thinking,
how do you work in this room all daylong with that clock ticking there?
And then I, I realized like, Ididn't even notice it mm-hmm but
then once I did I really did.
Steve Treseler (05:44):
Yeah.
Lauren Best (05:45):
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (05:45):
so that kind of listening to our environment is, is, is one type one
type of listening we're doing creatively.
Just what what's around us.
That kind of receptive listening.
I know.
What are your thoughts on eitherexpanding on that or other ways
or directions that we listen?
Lauren Best (06:02):
Oh, I just keep thinking about, I'm not sure if this is answering
your question, as you were hoping.
Steve Treseler (06:06):
Okay.
Lauren Best (06:06):
But this moment earlier in the spring, where.
I, I saw this like tinylittle bug jump in the grass.
cause I was there in the grasswith my kid and it looked like a
tiny grasshopper, like tinier thanI'd ever seen grasshopper before.
Like, you know, we're talking about like,like, you know, like half centimeter or
(06:27):
long showing, I'm showing I am Canadian.
Cause I'm giving you a centimeterand it jumped, but I could actually
hear it land cuz there were likeleaves and like things in the grass.
And so like, even though it wasthis like tiny, tiny bug, I could
hear its little tiny footsteps.
Mm-hmm right.
As it landed on something.
And so even though I hadn't noticed thislike any bugs before then, you know, and
(06:51):
then once I noticed one and how it went.
P , you know, as it landed on thislittle, this little leaf, I noticed
suddenly that there were tons ofthese tiny little jumping bugs and
I could hear their little jumps.
So like once I drew my attentionto it and I was quiet, even
though I only saw one at first.
(07:12):
I heard more footsteps.
Right?
Mm-hmm and I was like,there are more of them.
I can hear them cause I could hearthem jumping all around me and then
I looked more closely and I could seethese tiny, tiny, little jumping things.
right.
Steve Treseler (07:27):
Yeah.
And how does that, isthere some lesson there?
I'm not sure.
Lauren Best (07:32):
You never know whose footsteps you're looking like.
Yeah.
That's fine.
Well, I think it like, but a visualcue drew my attention towards it.
Mm-hmm right.
So like listening is not always aquestion of just like turning our ears.
Right.
Mm-hmm like we we'resometimes using other cues.
(07:54):
To see what happens there, or likecreating situations where we're
making sounds in new ways, butit's also engaging our listening
and our perception in new ways.
An activity I've done in, in classeswith young people and their teachers
that I read about from the works ofR Murray Schafer, who's a Canadian
(08:17):
composer, is passing around a piece ofpaper and getting every student to make a
different sound with this piece of paper.
Mm.
And so that's partiallylike a creative exercise.
We're trying to like invent differentways of using this piece of paper,
but what it also is is that suddenlyyou have this group of 20 or 30
(08:37):
people who are all listening reallyintently to a piece of paper.
And we're trying to hear all the detailsin the sounds that are created, which are
of a much different like volume level andtimbre than we're often expecting when
we're doing something creative with sound.
Steve Treseler (08:54):
Yeah.
And even relating it backto other senses, right.
Pauline was saying that it's theperception or all perceptible vibrations.
So that can include light.
I, I suppose, but yeah, returning yourattention, it can be very broad where
you're taking in everything that's comingin around you or like narrowly focus it,
you know, is it like a narrow beam oflight that we're, or like a spotlight,
(09:15):
what we're taking in and this can happen.
I mean, if we're gonna relate that toa musical performance too, we can it's
an important skill to be able to listenbroadly, maybe to the sound of the
entire ensemble in the room around us.
But then we have to like narrow into, ifyou have a stand partner you're playing,
listen to the person next to you, or turnyour attention to one instrument or an
(09:36):
entire section, just different ways ofusing that same kind of attention in, in
that, in that kind of context, whetheryou're listening narrowly or broadly.
Lauren Best (09:45):
Yeah.
And it really draws to mind how likevery specific knowledge or skills, to
kind of use that, we wanna go throughlistening and not necessarily through.
There are times to create with it too,but I'm thinking of, of two things.
One is bird calls.
Mm-hmm right.
How, like you can go out at a particulartime of year or in a particular place.
(10:07):
And if you aren't familiarwith the bird calls, you might
not even notice them at all.
Or you might notice them and be like,oh, those birds are kind of noisy.
mm-hmm right.
But if you're at all becomingfamiliar with bird calls,
even if you only know one.
Right then you probablyhear the chorus of birds.
I always end up talking about the birds.
mm-hmm you might hear the chorus of birdsand then you're like, ah, and a blue jay.
(10:29):
Yeah.
You know, but then like, as you gainmore knowledge of the different kinds
of bird calls, through listening,you start to have a, a, like a
different kind of experience of that.
Mm-hmm because you're able to connectit to similarities and differences or
to birds, you know, or maybe you'relike, ah, I don't know that one, but it
sounds kind of like this and suddenlyit's a much deeper and richer experience.
Steve Treseler (10:51):
And then we can buy that app.
We were talking about,that'll identify it for you.
And maybe
Lauren Best (10:55):
there's a free one.
I found.
Steve Treseler (10:56):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Free.
Good.
And does that make theexperience better or worse?
I'm not sure.
But that anyway, I want, I want totry it, but that's interesting cuz
as yeah, our ear being like themicrophone, it just pulls in all these
bird songs, the bird songs, but whatis, what is familiar and what, what
have we trained ourselves to hear?
(11:17):
Yeah, related back to eartraining, like hearing oh this is.
Your brain's getting the same input, butnow something unfamiliar becomes familiar
and it means something means something.
Lauren Best (11:27):
Totally.
And so I think of like the elements ofmusic and how we often train ourselves to
listen to notes and rhythm mm-hmm . Andlike we often actually don't spend nearly
as much time paying at just as muchattention to other qualities like to the,
kind of, to, to the timbre, to the grooveor to like there even, even articulation.
(11:51):
I think sometimes I, it depends on theinstrument maybe, but cuz sometimes
suffers because we're so focusedon hitting notes or, or, or hitting
particular hitting particular rhythmssometimes when, when we're learning,
we're only focused on the notes andwe forget about the rhythms too.
Mm-hmm but that, so that, that kind.
increasing the depth and or thequality of our listening overall
(12:14):
means we're gonna be getting muchmore out of that listening experience.
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (12:18):
Yeah.
Timbre is a huge one for me.
Some of my favorite musical record, justthe particular sound of the instruments,
or even the recording productionor something that just draws me in
realizing I can hear a same per like alive performance of something that was
like a, you know, a casual recording.
It's like, oh, it doesn'treach me the same way.
It might be the same notes,but without this like immersive
timbre, mm, that's so captivating.
(12:40):
It falls flat, but yeah.
Also listening to the, sort aboutthe dynamics or even the form,
you know, paying attention to howis this developing mm-hmm yeah.
Beyond, beyond the notes, beyondthe notes and rhythms mm-hmm
Lauren Best (12:52):
Yeah.
And then when we talk about form,it becomes like, like we can listen
in these really short moments.
And then there's the, like the,what happens when we listen
over a longer period of timeand how our perception changes.
When the amount of time is stretched.
Yeah, absolutely.
Or when the form withinthat time yeah, is changing.
Steve Treseler (13:13):
Yeah.
So this is largely, I guess, in the,the category of listening, where
we're being perceptive to what'swhat's going on, on, around us.
And also what's in this category is, youknow, listening deeply as we're training
is as musicians, you know, findingreally inspiring artists or recordings
or live performances and, you know,listening really deeply and trying to
(13:34):
assimilate and, and, and copy what we can.
I mean, that's a stage we all,oh, continue to go through.
But especially when we're in theearly development stages, having
these models and listening,listening closely mm-hmm to that.
And then the next episode too,we'll be talking about like deep
listening to, you know, recordingsof ourselves and our performances.
And again, and this is all, this isall related to listening to your, the,
(13:58):
the little bugs popping around too.
But with that level of, ofintensity and, and focus.
Lauren Best (14:05):
but know what's interesting is like you refer to
the intensity and focus of it.
But in that moment itfelt like super easy.
Like, it didn't feel like I hadto like really focus in like
Steve Treseler (14:15):
Yeah.
Lauren Best (14:15):
You know, it's not like I was like, I hope to hear these bugs.
Like, it wasn't like that, eventhough it was like a, a high degree
of attention and focus mm-hmm . Itfelt really gentle and exploratory.
And, and that's what I love aboutthe listening as opposed to doing
is we can access, I think, differentstates of consciousness and
different states of states, of being.
Steve Treseler (14:37):
Yeah, from that performance psychology class, I
took through Noa Kageyama's theBulletproof Musician course he kind
of brings, he just, he we're like,oh, how do we, how do we focus?
And you know, like trying to make surewe're, we're focused actually we're,
our brains are designed to focus.
If you, if the right thingtriggers our attention, we
don't have to try hard to focus.
Mm-hmm , you know, you, you turn on ascreen in a room full of preschoolers
(15:01):
and every, you know, they don't haveto try to the right novel stimulus
comes in and we just zero in on it.
So where it does get hard, ifwe're, if we're forcing ourselves
to focus on something that'snot engaging or interesting.
Do you know, doing yourtaxes or something.
Okay.
I've gotta focus on this.
It feels like a real, a real stretch.
(15:22):
I wanted to share some of Pauline'sdeep listening pieces and this
comes from her yeah, deep, deeplistening composer's sound practice.
And what she says about these,about her, her compositions.
(15:43):
The range of notational practices employedto present my work, as a composer
includes conventional staff notation,graphic notation, metaphors, prose,
oral instruction, and recorded media.
And Sonic meditations are notated throughprose instructions or recipes, and
some of these are in written form only.
And she'll change these instructions,giving adapting 'em to the,
(16:06):
the people in the room and.
So here's, here's a, here's one calledEarpiece, it's a series of 13 questions.
And so her piece of music is yourresponse to these questions is the piece.
Lauren Best (16:22):
Hmm.
Steve Treseler (16:23):
All right.
Lauren and listeners, are you ready?
Lauren Best (16:27):
But hold on.
I'm going to engage with thesequestion, like, like, like.
me and the listenersare doing this together.
Steve Treseler (16:35):
Yeah.
Yeah, you're doing, you'redoing this and you're, you're
listening to the own answers.
So this is the dialoguein, in your head, so, okay.
If you feel moved to shout out aresponse, I suppose that's okay.
But all right.
So Earpiece is from 1998by Pauline Oliveros.
Are you listening now?
Are you listening towhat you are now hearing?
(17:02):
Are you hearing while you listen,
Are you listening while you were hearing?
Do you remember the last soundyou heard before this question?
What will you hear in the near future?
(17:26):
Can you hear now and also listento your memory of an old sound?
What causes you to listen?
Do you hear yourself in your daily life?
(17:52):
Do you have healthy ears?
If you could hear any soundyou want, what would it be?
Are you listening to soundsnow or just hearing them?
(18:14):
What sound is most meaningful to you?
There we go.
There's our first deep listening piece.
Lauren Best (18:31):
I have to say.
That was incredibly challenging.
because I was hearing my babywaking up from his nap yeah.
And crying.
And so for all of these questions, thatsound was literally in the background.
And I just felt myselfgetting increasingly.
(18:52):
And someone's gettingthe baby, don't worry.
Steve Treseler (18:53):
Oh.
Lauren Best (18:54):
But I felt Myself getting increasingly hotter and unable to think
to think of the responses I wanted to,instead of this sound, which was so
like connected to me at the core thatit was like overtaking my consciousness.
Steve Treseler (19:10):
But that was it.
That was your art experience.
Lauren Best (19:12):
Exactly.
And it was a very likephysical experience of that.
Steve Treseler (19:17):
Yeah.
So.
But yeah, I mean, you were thinkingthe experience was gonna be something
else and that's, that's what it was
Lauren Best (19:28):
Exactly.
As, as it so often goes.
Right?
Steve Treseler (19:31):
Yeah.
But a lot of those questions areyou hearing while you're listening?
Are you listening while you're hearing?
If we hadn't.
Yeah.
But listen to the, the clip of hertalking, you might be like, well, what's,
what's the diff what's, why is sheharping on this hearing versus listening?
We, we have a little more insight intowhat that, into what that, that means.
Lauren Best (19:50):
Mm interesting.
Steve Treseler (19:50):
But this actually, oh yeah, go ahead.
Lauren Best (19:53):
Well, I was just thinking the way the questions are designed
though, is that even if we hadn'thave had that mm-hmm I think that it
sort of leads to those considerations.
Steve Treseler (20:02):
Yeah.
And those questions also transitioninto another area that I want to
get to, which is audiation, whichis, imagine, sounds so, sounds that
we're, we're imagining on our own.
Like, can you.
also listen to a memory of an oldsound and this is yeah, incredibly
(20:22):
important tool as a, as a, as a musician.
Well, and as a, as a human.
And a human musician listening andimagining previous sounds or me
listen, me listening to, to soundsthat you're dreaming up on your own.
Lauren Best (20:38):
Mm-hmm and it, it also starts to ask us how much of
what we think we hear is actuallyimagined sound based on what we
are expecting things to sound like.
Steve Treseler (20:49):
yeah.
Lauren Best (20:50):
And how much are we actually hearing all the sound at the time?
Steve Treseler (20:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, that reminds me of a story.
A friend of mine, Michael Van Bebberis, is transcribing a bunch of
famous Charlie Parker solos thathave already been transcribed before,
but now, it's known for having someerrors in the F the famous version.
So he's redoing it to be complete.
And he's realizing there'scertain notes that were written
down, that everyone plays.
And you listen to Charlie, Parker'srecording, and you think the notes are
(21:18):
there and you listen, but he was justslowing down and filtering stuff out.
And these notes just aren't there, but wehear them cause we're so used to looking
at them and having played them ourselves.
Hmm.
. So you listen to the recordingand you hear these notes
that aren't actually there.
Lauren Best (21:32):
Totally, totally.
Or if you listen back to yourself,speaking, or other people speaking,
or, you know, people will leave outwords or not say the word they meant
to, and often we still understand it.
And we just, I mean, thethere's been there's things like
this with reading too, right?
Like where we can remove some ofthe words and still read it or,
(21:52):
or read things that are I've I've.
Seeing things that are half French, halfEnglish and , I can, you know, yeah.
I can still read it, even thoughit actually doesn't really make
sense, but but our brains areable to, to put things together.
That's a little different halfFrench, half English, but you know,
when actual like words or sorry,letters are removed it can work mm-hmm
. Steve Treseler: Yeah.
And so, yeah, fairly recentterm, this idea of audiation.
(22:17):
Which is the word I think I said earlier,which is the, it's imagined sound.
So sort of the idea of visualization.
You know, you can imagineyour childhood home.
If you close your eyes, you cansee a picture of it, but audiation
is hearing sounds, maybe getting asong stuck in your head, or if you
can imagine now think of a piece ofmusic that's really important to you.
(22:37):
Another, take another.
Another dead air time, but just thinkof a piece of music and then like hit
the, imagine hitting the play button andyou're listening to it and try to hear
it as vividly as if you're listeningthrough speakers or hearing it live.
(23:03):
Okay.
Hit pause.
So everyone who's listening, we wereall in the same space together, but
everyone's having a vividly differentexperience unless we happened to all
choose to listen to the same song.
But,
and interestingly
Steve Treseler (23:14):
unlikely.
Lauren Best (23:14):
Yeah.
Even if we all did the same song,like if we all imagined like Happy
Birthday to You, the Happy Birthday song
Each of us are going toimagine that differently.
Right.
And so if I mm-hmm if I said, imaginethe last time you heard Happy Birthday.
Yeah, right.
(23:34):
But I imagine yourselfsinging Happy Birthday.
Steve Treseler (23:39):
hmm.
Lauren Best (23:42):
And I like, I think it gets for some people, it can, some of these
will be harder or easier for other people.
And then if I said, you know, likeimagine a flute playing Happy Birthday
Imagine bagpipes playing Happy Birthday
. Steve Treseler: Yeah.
And we're all hearing it slightly,slightly differently from what we're
(24:02):
imagining or even more narrow, youknow, imagine, imagine, Imagine by John
Lennon, we all hear it in our head.
We all remember it slightly differently.
So it's not gonna be thesame, the same experience
mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (24:14):
But drawing on that is so important, especially if we're
getting to improvising or creatingour own, our own music, you know, one
approach is being able to, you maypre-hear or audiate something in your
head, and then you want to get iton the outside, on your instrument.
And as we were talking off air about that,there's different, different approaches.
You know, are we supposed to be playingwhat we hear or pre hear or play
(24:37):
something that might or saying somethingthat might, that might surprise us?
Mm-hmm and there's a.
Couple little quotes here, I'vequeued up from my e-book, but Art
Farmer, renowned jazz trumpet playersays you really have to practice the
coordination between the mind andthe fingers, the ideas, and the body.
And you have to practice findingthe ideas on your horn and
(24:57):
getting there at the same time.
As the idea comes into your head, it'sa matter of developing instant touch.
so I like calling at thatand one other we'll have this
queued up, Stephen Nachmanovitchanother quote from Free Play.
Where do we go to listen to themusic that has not yet been heard?
There's a place in our body wherewe can listen, where we can turn and
listen, if we go there and become quiet,we can start to bring the music up.
Lauren Best (25:20):
Mm-hmm and I'm very curious about different forms of
audiation and how different peoplemay experience that differently.
And some people, you know, pairvisualizations with audiation or
for some people that comes reallynaturally to pair visualizations or
some people have other like synesthesiatype experiences with audiation.
(25:46):
But I know with visual imagery, like somepeople think in images and some people
do not have visual imagery regularlyand some people have like an internal
dialogue or internal narrative and theywould say like, they think in words
which apparently not everyone does.
So I'm very curious and I'm, I'm, I'masking this before, before, like looking
(26:10):
into it in a lot of detail, I'm surethere's been some research around it,
but I'm, I'm guessing that we are goingto learn more and more about audiation
and about how like the, how differentindividuals may be unique from one another
or, and how that may compare or contrastbetween different people and different
life stages and different cultures.
Steve Treseler (26:33):
Yeah.
And as we're, we're, you know,just how our memories are formed.
It's not like we just hit record ona camera and document everything.
And this could be why eyewitnesstestimony isn't really reliable.
Cause what we remember, isn't the samething as what happened, the way that
our brain stores it and packages it.
So it's similar with audiation and Iimagine some people can hear th yeah,
(26:53):
people hear things in, in different ways.
And some might imagine music on a staffpaper, or, you know, as synesthesia
with cross, which is crossed sensesin some ways where some people who
hear particular sounds it activatesthe visual centers or certain touches
might taste a certain way or mm-hmm sothat's yeah, that'd be interesting.
(27:17):
Mm-hmm interesting to know.
Yeah.
Look into what kind ofresearch is out there.
Yeah.
I don't know much about that.
Lauren Best (27:20):
What, what they do know that I, that I've read up on a little lately.
Mm-hmm is that in the developmentof audiation comparison between
different like for example,different tonalities is important.
So children, so they, they havedone experiments with children
where they listen to all majormusic and then like to a variety
(27:42):
music in a variety of tonalities.
And they found that the children wholisten to a greater variety sang more in
tune, in major keys not like one mightthink, oh, if they listen to all major
keys, that's what they're gonna know best.
And that's what they'll,they'll, you know, perform best.
But it was actually the variety gavethem a way of comparing different things.
(28:04):
And so they had a better understandingof the major tonalities by hearing
a, a, a wider variety of tonalities.
We need comparison in orderto be able to make meaning.
And so again, this kind, this, thisbrings us back to the importance of
listening and of developing our listeningand, and of exposing ourselves to
different types of things to listen to.
(28:25):
But also just increasing our awarenessso we can let our conscious and our
subconscious do do that comparing
. Steve Treseler: I remember reading.
I'm trying to remember where Iread this, but some studies about
developing perfect pitch, like hear,hearing a note on an instrument and,
and knowing what the name of it is.
So it's something that amajority of musicians, even
professionals cannot, cannot do.
(28:46):
And a lot of, like, I grew up throughsaying, it's something you're born with.
Some people have perfect pitch and go,oh, that's an F sharp, minor chord.
And a lot of us can hear the intervalsand the relationships between the
notes, but not the absolute pitch.
Most of the time.
I had heard it, it looked like thatit is something that can be developed,
but during that early critical period,it was before age four or five.
(29:07):
So sort of the, the same time wherewe're more easier for us to learn native
languages and the things like like that.
So, It is something you can learn.
I've known someone as an adultthat was working really hard to do
it and got, got pretty close, but
nice
Steve Treseler (29:22):
interesting at what?
Yeah.
How that, how that all develops,but yeah, back to audiation.
I let's, I'd like to, are you, doyou wanna, do you wanna play a game?
Lauren Best (29:32):
Let's play a game.
Steve Treseler (29:33):
Yeah, no, this is the intuitive melody game.
I, I, I, Hmm.
Haven't quite set it up likea game, I guess, but when
I say, do you play a game?
Do you wanna compose a song?
It's always, yeah.
People are like, okay, let's do it.
So let's, we can each let's each do this.
I'll have I'll, I'll walk you throughit and I'll go through the same process.
(29:54):
So basically taking soI'll have you, yeah.
At the, at the keyboard.
Lauren Best (30:00):
I'm at the keyboard
Steve Treseler (30:01):
and, and the microphone, if as, as possible mm-hmm and yeah, just.
Taking a few, you know, a few breathsjust to kind of center yourself a bit.
And then what I want you to dois sing a pitch and then match
it and find it at the piano.
So I don't know if you haveperfect pitch, if you do, that's
easy to match it on the piano.
Otherwise it's a little trial anderror, or you may be in between
notes on the piano, but mm-hmm
(30:23):
. Lauren Best: I do not have perfect pitch spoiler.
Sing a note, and then you'll find the nearest one at
the piano through trial and error.
And then you'll, then you'llmatch singing and playing.
Cool.
Lauren Best (30:34):
I actually hear the note already.
Steve Treseler (30:36):
Okay.
Lauren Best (30:37):
Which is, I was not expecting, I was hoping
to just sing and then, but
Steve Treseler (30:45):
find that note,
Lauren Best (30:51):
it was cl I think closest to A five.
Okay.
Steve Treseler (30:54):
So now, so now you'll, you'll play, play and sing the pitch and
listen and let your inner hearing guide.
The next note, it'll reveal the noteof your melody, then sing the second
pitch and find it on the keyboard.
So it's like listening, singing, playing.
So start with the, A flat andthen move to the next one.
(31:30):
Here we go.
Now, do your, you got your twonote, two note melody, so sing
and play it at the same time
Lauren Best (31:35):
together, like sorry, together or in sequence?
Steve Treseler (31:42):
In sequence.
Hm, major third.
See, I was hearing a minor third.
I think that might have been wrong.
No, I'm just kidding.
Lauren Best (31:51):
I think I, I don't think I was singing in pitch.
Like I think I, I sang a very.
Or did you?
No,
Steve Treseler (32:02):
no, no.
I mean, in my head, you, thatwas what you were singing.
Lauren Best (32:04):
Oh, like in your head to go between.
Steve Treseler (32:05):
Yeah, no, no, no.
I was, I was making a badjoke, but, but I don't
Lauren Best (32:08):
think I sang exactly the C and I didn't like, as I was singing
it, I was kind of like I don't knowif that's even what I wanted to play,
like why that note thanks brain.
Yeah.
And then like, as I, and thenas, as I played it, like, yeah,
it was really interesting.
It was like, I was.
(32:28):
Yeah, just the piano is in suchlike everything is so like discreet.
Right.
And so like where I was.
Steve Treseler (32:35):
Yeah.
That's the problem with, yeah.
Doing this with a, with a pianonow we're boxed into Western equal
temperament, which totally that'sits own that's its own issue.
Lauren Best (32:46):
Yeah.
Like my instinct was togo a little out of that.
Like, I, I, I.
. Yeah,
it was strange.
I, okay.
Steve Treseler (32:53):
I guess we'll use your keyboard as a
limitation for now, but okay.
But analysis after creating, right.
That's next episode.
So let's then just continue that process.
So now play your first two notes andthen sing the third and con, and then
continue that process until it feelslike you've reached the end of a phrase.
(33:20):
And then sing those three insequence and then add the next,
Lauren Best (33:34):
it's really hard to turn off my brain for this.
I think I should try it withmy eyes closed sometime.
Because I'm, I'm hearingthings before it's even like
time to hear the next thing.
Oh.
So then when it's time to hear the nextthing, I end up hearing a different
thing and I'm having to consciouslychoose whether to follow like, oh,
what I remember hearing or what I,
(33:55):
what I now
Steve Treseler (33:56):
either.
Yeah.
Either way can work.
Lauren Best (33:57):
That's interesting.
Steve Treseler (33:57):
I would just see, I wait until that exact
moment and see what you hear.
Yeah.
Here then.
All right.
Keep going, unless that'sthe end of your phrase.
Mm
Lauren Best (34:15):
oh, I, I, this is very hard not to follow it.
It's so hard.
Like.
Steve Treseler (34:19):
That, that can work too.
Well.
Why can you follow it and play that?
So this is what ArtFarmer was talking about.
The instant touch.
Can you play?
So, okay, well let's, let's release thelimitation and just let you let you go.
Lauren Best (34:43):
Yeah.
It's I feel like I'mcheating all over the place.
It's like they're so interconnected.
I, I think, you know what I mean?
Like it's so hard to turn off my brain.
Mm-hmm like, it's I?
Yeah.
And actually I was doingthis this morning on guitar.
Hmm.
Much harder on guitar because I, I'm notnearly as fluent with guitar as I am piano
Steve Treseler (35:06):
But yeah, if you make the adaption, I mean, the whole point
of this is to create a melody throughlistening and intuiting the melody rather
than trying to plan and think, think ofsomething like it's already, you're like
revealing melody that's already there.
Yeah.
Lauren Best (35:22):
And it felt like, it felt like so many melodies
were emerging so quickly.
Oh, , you know, it like, do youfind that is like somewhat typical
that like, like you're just tryingto hear the next note and you're
hearing like the next six notes.
Steve Treseler (35:38):
Mm.
yeah.
Often, or I can hear it in twodifferent directions or on purpose.
I'll the first thing that I hear.
I'll like reject it and like,let's hear something else.
And I'll do that just to maybebreak out of maybe patterns
that I, that I fall into.
Yeah.
So that definitely happens.
But if you do it in this step, wheredo it one note at a time sometimes,
(35:58):
you know, following differentprocess, you'll get a you know, you'll
get different, different results.
Lauren Best (36:04):
And interestingly it's like, it picked up steam as it went.
Yeah.
So, right.
Like the first note was one thing.
And then once I had two notes, right.
Like the second note felt a littleoff, but then like once I was yeah.
Once I ended it up in, in amajor totality, like my brain
was like, I know where this goes.
Yeah.
And then suddenly, like every thoughtI had, even if I tried to be like, not
(36:25):
that let's do this, then it would stillbe like, there were just, yeah, like
my, my audiation would run away from me.
Like yeah.
Every time, you know, likeyou'd just be like, yeah.
And,
Steve Treseler (36:37):
and in this case, this is the time where you just kind of follow
what you hear and follow the intuition.
I think that that would work.
But if you feel like you're alwaysslipping into similar tonalities
or, and you wanna break out of it,that's where we use limitations
from the previous episode to, whichis a different challenge for then.
You're putting a differentset of limitations.
Lauren Best (36:56):
And if I was doing this with myself, like, you know what I mean?
Like if I was like just spending a bunchof time trying to like, use this sort
of as a prompt mm-hmm what I thinkI would do is because I'm having like
melodies upon melodies upon melodies isI would kind of like free play and sort
of try to get some of those out mm-hmmor maybe even sing a bunch of them and
(37:19):
just let it like, go, go, go, go, go.
Because then.
they would already be out.
They would already be, have somethingI like created and remembered and I
can remember doing in hopes that thenI could approach the activity mm-hmm
with like, like, you know what I mean?
Like I've gotten them outta the way kindof mm-hmm is one approach I might take.
Steve Treseler (37:38):
Yeah.
And yeah, recording all of that.
So you can come back to it andmaybe it could be you know,
different sections of it and
Lauren Best (37:44):
totally, and like, sometimes it
Steve Treseler (37:46):
it's like it must be so hard for you to have an
endless flow of musical ideas.
Lauren Best (37:51):
Well, I was gonna say, it's not like, it's, it's sort of like, oh,
I guess I have lots of ideas right now.
Great.
Like, but like it's not necessarily,like, it feels almost like
remembering someone else's idea.
Like it's not it's, it's likehow with language, right.
We get to a point with language whereif you hear someone say half of a
(38:12):
sentence, you can likely finish theirsentence and it might not be correct,
but it will sort of like seem right.
And then, you know, you reach a pointwhere if you hear someone give half of
a speech, you might be able to like makeup the entire second half of the speech.
Right.
Mm-hmm but yeah, sometimes it feelslike there's lots and lots of ideas,
but it's almost like they aren't.
(38:32):
Like, I'm not directing them theway I want, you know what I mean?
It's like, I'm hearing them, but it'snot necessarily what I'm looking for.
What I'm wishing would appear.
It's like this flow.
So the other strategy I would take withmyself, if you're, if you're curious.
Yeah.
Is I would try this like really,really, really, really slowly.
Like I would spend like 30seconds to a minute with each.
(38:57):
Hmm, so that I tried to likeremove myself from some of those
other like urges and ideas.
And rather than like finishing thesentence with what comes to mind right
away, because my brain can just do that.
right.
I would try to like really sink into eachnote and see if by stretching it out.
I could kind of remove myself from someof those, like typical, like cadences.
(39:21):
Yeah, but I mean, there's nothing wrongwith coming up with something that's yeah.
In typical cadences, but Ijust, I felt like I was yeah.
Responding with well I feltlike I was like some politicians
who say a lot of catch phrases.
Steve Treseler (39:35):
Mm-hmm and you're just go going, going back to going
back to your sound soundbites.
Well, and then I know people when youcome up with something and it seems
like you're remembering it and thenpeople are worried about, oh, Did I
did, is this already another song?
Did I steal someone else's song?
Like you accidentally wrote somethingthat you're just remembering and at
(39:55):
this point, just keep going with it.
I know, I guess got Beattles onthe brain when Paul McCartney wrote
Yesterday, at that point it wasscrambled eggs was the first line.
Yeah.
And who's walking.
Wait, has someone else wrote this?
He thought that.
You know, someone was describing,he walking around, like he thought
he was Beethoven or something.
He had this melody, but he was soconvinced that he didn't write it.
He just thought it was a gem.
And wasn't sure if it was reallyhis or not, but yeah, totally.
(40:16):
Let's get to that later.
Well, let's, let's hearyou try a, a, a slow one.
And then if your brain, you know, tryingto finish the phrase, you can just
kind of let those be there, but thenwhen it comes time for the next note,
listen for what you're hearing there forone note and then play the first few.
And then add the next one and see ifwe can slow, slow down the stream of
(40:39):
wanting to finish the next seven in a row.
Lauren Best (40:41):
And I'm also going to try not to look at the piano.
So I can't think aboutthe like key . Yeah.
So I can't like think asmuch about what's going on.
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (41:04):
Wow.
there you go.
That'll teach you to look at the keyboard.
Okay.
Lauren Best (41:09):
Yeah.
Okay.
It's funny.
I thought it was maybe G it's F
. Steve Treseler: Okay.
(41:37):
Yeah.
I felt like
Steve Treseler (41:43):
I'm I wanna go in between pitches.
Yeah.
Lauren Best (41:54):
I didn't look, I swear.
Steve Treseler (42:12):
No, I made it.
So now play your wholephrase from the beginning.
Lauren Best (42:19):
Ah,
Steve Treseler (42:29):
Yeah, sing and play it and then continue on until the phrase is over.
Lauren Best (42:39):
You know, I still want to.
Like, if we weren't recordingright now, I would've hung out
on some of those notes and justlike dipped the pitches and stuff.
Yeah.
Like I'm feeling veryquarter tone-y today.
Steve Treseler (42:52):
Yeah.
Well, that's I, that, that is a potentialshortcoming of, of doing it this way.
The, the trying to the instanttouch, but through, doing it at the
moment, an equal temperament, but,
Lauren Best (43:05):
but at the same time, like that's, that was cool.
Like, it was like, it was veryinteresting to me that that urge
like emerged this time around mm-hmmbecause I was kind of having, I'm
sorry, I'm interrupting the process.
Yeah.
I was kind of having that the first time.
Right.
But I squashed it and then Ilike was playing, you know, had
all these things in mind thatwere really like pretty constant.
(43:25):
And then there, I was feeling like.
like really just like experimentingwith just sliding pitches.
Yeah.
Like if, again, if we weren't recordingwhere I was trying to like keep
picking notes, I probably would've justdone a lot of slipping and sliding.
Yeah.
Which I actually, like, I, I do thatwith like the seaboard exploring or even
(43:47):
like with pitch bending on the piano.
And certainly with the voice.
Lots of especially like having playedso much piano where like, it is equal
temperament, like really experimentingwith with what we do with pitch and the
voice and noticing how others do that.
Steve Treseler (44:03):
So, yeah.
Is, is your phrase complete or wasthat a interruption in the middle?
Lauren Best (44:10):
Hmm,
I didn't get the last note.
Yeah, I was, like I said,I was feeling a lot of like
chromatic movement and sliding.
So again, Like I findthese kinds of prompts.
(44:34):
I'm always wanting to break the rules.
I'm like, oh, that's great.
Now I can, I have an idea forsomething else I can do with it.
Steve Treseler (44:39):
Yeah.
And, and maybe that that's it.
If you're trying to like come up withsome new ideas, it might be that.
So then you make the decision.
It's like, am I gonna staywithin the limitation?
Is the challenge and not go off ontosomething else or you follow the, you
know, you eat the marshmallow and go inthat, oh my, my I'm feeling slidey pitch.
Let's get rid of the piano orbe able to have the pitch bend.
(45:00):
It may set you outinto, to something else.
So when, when does it, whendoes it smart to stick with the
limitation for the challenge?
And when, when does that might justset the stage for something else?
Like you have some kind of writing promptfor a poem and then it, you have this
other idea and then just go and do that.
But either way you've you'vesolved the solved the problem.
Lauren Best (45:24):
But slowing down, definitely cool to see in real time.
Steve Treseler (45:29):
Mm.
Lauren Best (45:29):
Definite.
Did it appear to you to be quitesignificantly slower than the first round?
Steve Treseler (45:35):
Yes.
Lauren Best (45:35):
Okay.
Steve Treseler (45:37):
Yeah, the first you were just going and you had heard
this like kind of more stream ofconsciousness, like you were improvising.
. I mean, you weren't like morelike performance improvisation
where you just kind of hear thenext flow of lines and go with it.
And this, this one it'sslowing, slowing down.
Lauren Best (45:52):
Yeah.
And it did feel slower, but I was, I thinkI was surprised at how effective that was.
Yeah.
Cause like, I don't feel likethe runaway train as much.
I feel like I'm gonna behearing for the rest of the day.
Mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (46:06):
Yeah.
And that's a little more, that's alittle more what I was expecting from
the exercise and how people approach it.
But you know, it goes differentways, but then yeah, you're learning
something about the process.
And are you when, when to gowith the runaway train or when
to slow down and which melodyends up being more meaningful?
It's interesting.
Lauren Best (46:23):
And it's amazing how much my audiation really like changed.
Yeah.
Still the same person sitting herestill the same piano, same episode.
Yeah.
Right.
Like we didn't change that much,but my audiation experience
mm-hmm was totally different.
Yeah.
Cool.
And like at the end I was like, Ugh,do I have to end the phrase here?
(46:44):
Yeah.
I was like, that's the note.
I hear it.
Fine.
Steve Treseler (46:49):
Yeah.
You've got, yeah, you've a,you've quite a, vivid, internal
conversation going with yourself.
Lauren Best (46:56):
I didn't actually say all those things, but I just mean,
like I had I had some resist Iactually, I think I don't talk with
myself as much as some people do.
Mm-hmm but that's whatthe energy would've said.
I mean, because like, I didn'treally want to end on that note,
but I was like, there it is.
It's in my head.
I hear it.
Can't lie about that to myself.
Steve Treseler (47:17):
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That's that's the process.
I'll I'll do a, I'll doa, I'll do a quick one.
Lauren Best (47:21):
Yeah.
Steve Treseler (47:22):
Then we have to mash 'em together.
No, I, I don't know what, whatwe do with these melodies.
That's some other thing, whoa.
I,
I, I don't know how I did that.
Okay.
(48:05):
Hm.
(48:33):
Hmm.
Lauren Best (48:42):
Mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (48:43):
and then at the end, I was like, oh, that was
actually a whole tone thing.
I don't normally likesing whole tone scales.
How did the it's just it'sthe way it, the way it went.
Lauren Best (48:51):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love how surprises come out of it.
Steve Treseler (48:55):
Yeah.
Again like, oh, what would be good?
Part of me was going like,oh, what would be good here?
No, it was like, Nope, listen, listen.
Okay.
And then.
And then there's all kinds ofthings you can do, you know,
take when we have these melodies.
So I just like making a bunch of intuitivemelody, intuitive melody, intuitive
melody, and then you can choose one andwhat you do with it, you can use that
as a theme and do more variations indevelopment, or that could be a bass line
(49:19):
and you add something else on top of it,or you take the melody and put a bass
line under it, or some kind of groove orthere's so many different things you can
Lauren Best (49:26):
mm-hmm
Steve Treseler (49:26):
you can do.
So in classes, sometimes all thestudent play an intuitive melody
that they wrote is the theme.
And then other people have different rolesto give it different sound environments.
But anyway, just, yeah, give everyonethe, the introduction into the process
of how we can use listening andaudiation to actually generate something.
(49:47):
Mm-hmm at a certain point when youhave, when you've exercised this
muscle, you can do it more on thefly and being able to play and match
what you're singing and playing.
Hmm.
At a FA at a faster rate mm-hmm or ifI'm playing saxophone, I can't sing at
the same time, but some I can tell ifI'm pre-hearing it and then play it.
But if I'm playing a jazz halland I pre hear something and I
play something else, I may try togo back to what I was hearing, or
(50:09):
just be surprised by what I played.
And then, you know, you don't havethe, the time to go back and edit.
Lauren Best (50:16):
Mm-hmm . I keep thinking about like, doing this,
with slash without piano, becauselike I improvise vocally a lot.
And so like, I do this fairlyoften without actually finding
the notes on the piano.
I think it actually made mewell, I think it's, it changed
(50:36):
my audiation and my thinking.
I think finding it on piano andplaying it on piano almost made me
less intuitive because I startedthinking about like the theory of it
or not looking at my fingers helped.
Steve Treseler (50:47):
And yeah, I use this for folks.
Sometimes people can intuitively singsomething and then might not have, an
idea of how to map it or whether it'simportant to write it down or not.
That's a whole other thing,but if you wanna, yeah, yeah.
Totally make a chart for otherpeople to play and, and read.
But no, I'm, I'm all for if we need yeah.
Take it off the piano or takeit out of equal temperament.
(51:07):
That's all.
Okay.
That's all good, but I dohave a lot of students.
Part of this comes from, I have a lot ofstudents that come in and go, I can sing
all these ideas, but as soon as I put thesaxophone in my mouth, it sounds awkward.
And I'm trying to play the right notesand trying to make this connection
between this like intuitive senseof something that's audiated and
they can sing and it all fits.
It even hits the harmony.
And then you've got thisobstacle of an instrument.
(51:28):
Yeah.
And nothing comes out.
So that's what I like using this process.
Mm-hmm but in your case for what you'retalking about, ditch the, you know,
follow the intuitive melodies and ditchthe ditch, the piano and record it.
And,
Lauren Best (51:39):
but it forced me to slow down and actually do something repeatable
mm-hmm because like I can improviseintuitive melodies all day long.
In fact, I often do.
Right.
But whether those are something thatlike, I, I identify or repeat, like this
helped kind of like tease that out andslow it down and put an equal temperament.
(51:59):
which, for better or worse.
Today was me.
It was, it was very interesting tohave my awareness brought to that.
Right.
I wouldn't say I, I I'm often not like, Iwouldn't say I'm often like improvising in
super slidey places, but sometimes I am.
Right.
And so it was, it kind of helped slowdown and tee tease out what was going
(52:21):
on because as, as like, as you'resaying, like, I could just sing and
sing and sing like melodies otherwise.
Right.
But this kind of creates adifferent type of process.
Steve Treseler (52:30):
And for people that maybe, you know, don't feel like
they can sing and sing and singmelodies, like might be like me who
I'm not really a trained singer.
So I don't intuitively I mean, I, I, Istill will noodle around and sing, sing
things, but I can't think of anything,you know, we'll slow down and just
listen and, and listen to what it's.
Yeah.
This workshop by AnthonyWilson guitar player, and it
(52:52):
was called like discovering,
or revealing the alreadycomplete musical idea.
And he had a bunch of us in a roomdo this, we listened and then wrote
it down without an instrument.
It was just, just listening to notation.
And then we all came up.
It was pretty powerful.
Then everyone played, you know,played their, played their piece.
And we listened to what we were alljust coming up with in our imagination.
(53:14):
Mm-hmm , which is pretty, really awesome.
Right on.
I wanna wrap up let's let'sfinish with a, another Pauline
Oliveros deep listening piece.
You ready?
Mm-hmm so our final piece thatwe'll perform with our listeners
here, this one's called Rhythms 1996.
(53:35):
What is the meter ortempo of your normal walk?
How often do you blink?
What is the currenttempo of your breathing?
What is the current tempo of your heart?
What other rhythms do you hear?
(53:56):
If you listen, what is yourrelationship to all of the rhythms
that you can perceive at once?
What a performance.
Lauren Best (54:17):
I became aware during that, that I actually
could hear my heartbeat at first.
I was like, I can't hear my heartbeat.
I don't know.
I'm gonna have to take my pulse.
And then I was like, Ican hear my heartbeat.
I actually, I can hear that lub dub.
It might only be because of the pressureof the headphones on my, like on my
(54:38):
circulatory system, but I, I could and
really interesting.
Steve Treseler (54:42):
Feel it.
I don't know if I couldhear, if I could hear it.
I was definitely feeling it.
Lets see.
And I still hear traffic more thanmy heartbeat, but yeah, that's that's
but then, yeah, you're just thislike physiological blob of rhythms,
you know, our breathing and ourblinking and walking and all of that.
And there's your piece of reallysophisticated, poly rhythm
with pulses that are shifting?
Lauren Best (55:04):
Yeah, totally.
Steve Treseler (55:05):
And we're, that's when we're performing all the time.
Lauren Best (55:07):
Well, and, and our relationship to rhythm, like I'm
not someone who tends to listen tomusic when I, when I run or jog.
because like, I'm either really withthe rhythm or not with the rhythm.
Right?
Like it's kind of like being withthe rhythm or not becomes like
central to what's happening asopposed to it just being like a
lighthearted way of like helping you.
Steve Treseler (55:26):
Oh.
But then it's like a Steve Reich phasingor something you're in or you're off.
Or if you've got like, when there'slike, you're on the bus and the windshield
wipers, aren't synced with each other andthey're together and get a little bit off.
Yeah.
That kinda thing.
And that can happen with yourrun that doesn't make your
run more enjoyable apparently.
Lauren Best (55:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and then I'm like, am I tired?
I don't know.
I just . Have to stay with time.
Steve Treseler (55:46):
Oh yeah.
And if it's a littletoo fast, that could be,
yeah.
Be a training regimen or you gottaget the right playlist at your, at
the right running tempo, I guess.
Lauren Best (55:56):
Yeah.
And we, we didn't talk a wholelot about, about rhythm and about
like just rhythm and breath andsynchronization and entrainment.
And and the power of that, which is,which is pretty, pretty incredible,
both like, you know, just on physicallevel of how things entrain, but how
we, entrain to each other, like howwe fall into step with each other,
(56:18):
walking, how, you know, how movingtogether helps us feel connected
because it literally does connect us.
Like they've used music to helpnewborn premature babies like
regulate their heart rate and theirbreathing patterns because of the.
How much we can fall into sync with that.
Steve Treseler (56:37):
Wow.
It, it reminded me of, I think I readfrom VJ IR piano player talking about.
Just different musical phrases and mapmapping it to physiological process
like a, like a musical phrase itmatches with, with the breath and a a
pulse, and the time signature wouldmatch with a step or a heartbeat.
Mm-hmm and, or quickly moving phonetic,kind of frenetic kind of rhythms like
(56:58):
your fingers or your mouth or thingsthat are moving very quickly, but all
these different rhythms existing at once.
And what, what, what types ofrhythms sound natural to us?
Hmm, can be very much mapped to how theyexist in our body, but that's another,
another area of audiation too, which wecan get to pre-hearing a, a rhythm or a
groove, and there's all kinds of otherthings that we can audiate not just the
(57:22):
pitches like we were demonstrating today.
Pre-hearing the rhythm, pre-hearing thetimbre or the form or the instrumentation.
There's all these things we canimagine, other than just note by note.
Lauren Best (57:33):
Mm-hmm . Yeah, totally.
And that, that again and things thatmay like come more naturally to some
people or other people, or, you know,there isn't like a wrong way to audiate
like or to to, to connect with rhythms.
I'm thinking about how just anotherthing with babies, how like the rhythms
that babies hear in utero and in thefirst few months of their life, like
(57:57):
imprint on them, and then they findthose rhythms more recognizable and
kind of easier to move to, or to, tomake music to the, the rhythms that
are presumably part of their culture.
Like what they've been exposedto in that kind of like key time.
But we can certainlylearn rhythms later, too.
. . Steve Treseler: Hmm.
Sounds like we'll stillhave more to talk about.
(58:19):
We can have an episode.
Yeah.
Sounds good.
And we've been discussing.
Yeah, we're gonna be launching ourInfinite Improvisation discord.
So you can join us for some ofthese experiments and conversations
and love to hear your intuitivemelodies as we get that going.
And we conversationsaround, around these things.
So we're looking forward to makingthis a multidirectional conversation.
(58:41):
We certainly enjoy broadcasting toall of you, but getting, getting folks
connected so you can join the mailinglist at infiniteimprovisation.com
and be kept up to date.
And we learn when we get our,our community community started.
Awesome.
I'm looking forward to it until next time.
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