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The project seeks to explore how improvising musicians can expand their understanding and practice of melody beyond traditional linear and tonal frameworks. Specifically, I investigate: · How can melodic orientation in improvisation be re-conceptualized to include multidirectional, spatial, temporal, and illusory dimensions? · What compositional and improvisational methods can support such expanded melodic approaches in both individual and collective performance contexts? · How can these methods challenge and reshape conventional jazz ensemble roles and pedagogies? The aim of the project was to develop methods that open up multidirectional connections and pathways in improvisers’ melodic perceptions, directions, and orientations. This serves both to challenge and shift the traditional roles melodic instruments have occupied, and to disrupt the underlying habitual musical structures that characterize conventional jazz ensemble practice. At the same time, the project offers an alternative to traditional jazz pedagogy, aiming to develop both individual and collective improvisational strategies within ensemble formats that use melodic orientation as a conceptual and methodological framework. Furthermore, the project seeks to map out this conceptual and methodological framework as a resource for improvising musicians in both professional and educational settings. It was important to me that this work and experimentation be grounded in a performative practice. The work centered around two improvising ensembles made up of acoustic and electroacoustic instrumentalists and vocalists: – One ensemble consisting of professional improvisers, and – One ensemble made up of students from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC), placing the research within a practice-based educational context.
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Process Notes
I encourage the reader to scroll and orient themselves in the process note chapter. Think of it as moving through an archive box: each note, each page, is placed in sequence. The scrolling itself offers a kind of slowness as if leafing through folders and documents. The notes were taken chronologically, and so a timeline reveals itself, but it is the reader who decides the pace, whether to skim quickly across the surface or to pause and spend time with the details.
