Newsflash! My new Swedish freejazz quartet: GuitCussion. Soundclip inside.

Wilmer X

SG-smasher
The group has two guitarists, and two drummers: GuitCussion.

Here´s a clip we recorded this last Sunday, an improvisation in the studio called Blue Congo. The other guitarist plays a Ovation Breadwinner into a digital sound unit, I play my Gibson Les Paul-SG 1961 into my old Fender Blues Deville. What says you?

Blue Congo:
http://fandalism.com/stefanthorpenberg/c672
 
I confess. I don't understand that style of music. Reminds me of what the band room sounded like in high school before the director walked in.
 
Interesting, as always. Certainly not accessible, but brilliant. I have always admired your playing and your willingness to experiment.
 
Thanks Gary. Now we recorded this weekend for two days and have more than 3 hours material and sometimes it was perhaps more accessible. Here´s a little jazz oriented tune, where the other guitarist play an acoustic and I comment on my old Les Paul-SG. It´s called "Keith":

Keith:
 
When I say "not accessible" I am speaking in the commercial sense. Something that will not thrill the masses but opens the mind. I enjoyed "Keith" as well.

One day we'll need to do live versions of Rainbow Time and What Ya Gonna Do! :hippie:
 
Live versions of those two songs would be very cool. :)

However: here´s another tune recorded last Sunday. It´s an idea from one of the drummers, whos got a PhD in polyrythmics (?!!), where he wanted us to play with no specific rythm, or out of rythm. When I listen to it I tend to nod my head in big circles, because there is no real "1" in the beat. Funny effect. My guitar sounds very nasty. The other guitarist runs his guitar through a digital unit and it sounds like synth sometimes, and like a cello in the end.

Limp:
 
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I have discovered i don't like free jazz very much. But more power to yah.
 
It´s fun that you, Flamencology, talks with such selfconfidence about something that you obviously don´t know so much about.

If you have read Harald Stenströms PhD-thesis Free Ensemble Improvisation from 2009 you should know that people don´t talk about "free jazz" as an idiom, but prefer the term "non-idiomatic" music. That is; people who play has no wish to sound like any specific and already existing music form, like be-bop, swing, rock, barock, freejazz and so on, but are free to do whatever they wish in the moment they play.

With this, it becomes strange to say that someones playing should be "representative" of free jazz, since it means that one actually should play according to an existing "freejazz" idiom. If so, the music shouldn´t be free. Try to read Stenströms thesis, it´s based on many interviews of free music players, and you can find it on the Internet (I know Stenström and has played with him some times).

AND: the new band GuitCussion is not only me.
Also on guitar we have Brakophonic, professional musician who has played freemusic for more than 25 years, and released many records. He has also produced many records for others, and have a record company (Brakophonic records) based in Atlanta, USA.
On drums we have Henrik Wartel, professional musician who has played free music since the 1970s, with almost everyone in Europe in this area, and started his career touring in Europe with the Swedish trombonist Eje Thelin´s group.
Also on drums we have Per-Anders Skytt, professional musician who has played freemusic for many years, and has a PhD in polyrythmics. He´s teaching drums at many universities, and gives lectures in polyrythmics, when he´s not touring with different groups and constellations.

But you still believe that you know more than we do about freejazz, and that we should take your opinion on our music seriously?
 
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I'm not interested in seeing who's cock is longer, Wilmer. That's not my thing.

I've posted my music here, I've got nothing to hide.

Free jazz has been around for a half-century now, and there is a canon, like it or not, and your music isn't representative. I didn't say anything about the quality of your music.

That said, I do disagree strongly with the thesis that free jazz is "play whatever you want spontaneously". Again, that's not a criticism, it's one of philosophy. To me, there must be "jazz" in free improvisational music for it to be "free jazz". There is no jazz in your free jazz.

Phil said that, based on your music, he doesn't like free jazz. That's like saying that you dislike coconut because you bit down on the shell.
 
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I´m not telling about the members long experience from European freejazz, to brag, in your words; as a "cock contest". I do that just to let you know that we know what we are doing. And you obviously don´t, since you continue to say that there is no "jazz" in our music, and we should stay true to the canon, the idiom, the tradition. That´s a conservative take on a music form that is absolute progressive. It is still called freejazz in Europe, probably because of the improvised style, and many of those who played it came from the jazz scene (Han Bennink had even played with Wes Montgomery when Wes visited Holland in the early 1960s, but today Benninks drumming is very very strange).

However: we play non-idiomatic music, free music where there is no canon, no tradition and no place for the jazz police. I told you about Harald Stenströms thesis Free Ensemble Improvisation from 2009, and here´s the abstract. You can find the whole dissertation as a pdf-file at Gothenburg University, or I can mail it to you if you´re interested.

ABSTRACT
Title: Free Ensemble Improvisation
Language: English
Keywords: aleatorics, artistic research, attractor state, central tone, chaotic systems, collective
understanding, comprovisation, conceptual model, directed motion, ensemble size,
feedback and feedforward, free ensemble improvisation, gesture, importance of rhythm,
indeterminacy, interactional skill, listening skill, musical evaluation, musical interaction,
musical maturity, musical chemistry, musical interpretation, musical composition, nonidiomatic
improvisation, rhythmic flow, sound properties, stylistic influences
ISBN: 978-91-977757-8-6
The aim of this doctoral project has been to study so-called non-idiomatic improvisation
in ensembles consisting of two or three musicians who play together without any
restrictions regarding style or genre and without having predetermined what is to be
played or how they should play.
The background to this thesis has been the author’s own free improvising, which he
has pursued since 1974, and the questions that have arisen whilst music-making. The
thesis takes three of these questions as its point of departure:
– what is free ensemble improvisation, what characterizes free ensemble improvisation
and how can it be defined
– how does free ensemble improvisation relate to:
– – instrumental technique
– – idiomatic improvisation and stylistic influences
– – composition
– – interpretation
– – aleatorics and indeterminacy
– – different types of sytems (e.g. biological, social, dynamic/chaotic systems)
– what might a conceptual model as a theoretical base for free ensemble improvisation
look like?
The artistic/performative part of this research project has primarily consisted of public
concerts, as a result of longer/shorter periods of cooperation with four permanent and a
number of temporary (ad hoc) ensembles.
The results provide a better understanding of what free ensemble improvisation is,
in what respects it differs from other forms of music-making and how it can be defined.
Free ensemble improvisation’s relations to the points mentioned above were found to
be more multifaceted than expected. However, it was possible to attain a basic twolayered
conceptual model as a theoretical base for free ensemble improvisation and, in
its extension, as a basis for the analysis of free ensemble improvisation.
The study includes numerous concert projects, of which several are recorded and included
in this book on two CDs with MP3 files.
 
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