My friend J visited this weekend. She’s one of the many friends I’ve made through spontaneous singing. She and I met at an improv workshop years ago and reconnected this year. We chat a couple of times a month — often spontaneously singing together on the phone.

J runs her own improv group back home and she and I will be co-facilitating some workshops at the Women in Spirituality conference later this fall. So I invited her to attend one of the summer Songtaneous sessions so she could see one “in action.”

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One of the things I like about spontaneous music making is that everyone can do (and does!) it differently. J and her group have been known to make up music for and with dancers and in various locations.

She brought along some percussion and found instruments and a list of intentions, which I told her up front I intend to steal. (The list of intentions, not the instruments. Is it stealing if you tell someone you’re going to do it?)

J and her group collaborated to come up with intentions for how they want to create together. These aren’t rules, but reminders conceived to help banish BBHoF and let music grow.

Here are my two favorites:

4. Everyone here has something yummy to contribute.

9. Find a balance between your own magnificence and insignificance.

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After working with their list this past Saturday, I’m committed to creating something similar for Songtaneous.

Wanna help? Feel free to post your intentions or reminders in the comments section.

Alchemy is when the energy of that which is being held changes the container.
— Eileen Corrigan

Sounds like a definition of improvisation to me. *smile*

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Speaking of containers and changes, I tweaked the Songtaneous Blog design a bit.

My list of Improvisational Vocalists (aka spontaneous singers) was becoming too long to reside happily in the sidebar. So I built a dedicated page that includes the artist names and links to their web sites. Find this new longer list on its own page – Spontaneous Singers. (See the menu at the top of the blog or the sidebar at right for links to the page, too).

I also tidied up my post Categories (see sidebar at right) to help make posts easier to find.

Let me know what you think!
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Remember Songtaneous is THIS SATURDAY (i.e. tomorrow) from 2 to 4 pm.
Hope to sing with you soon. ~sg

A while ago, I rented Ratatouille and watched some videos from the bonus features section. (Here you thought I was going to post about some complicated cooking or decadent dining experience. *smile*) They interviewed the animation director and a chef for the movie.

Guess what both of them talked about?

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Chef Thomas Keller said:

“One of the exciting things about doing something spontaneous is the risk.”

and asks himself

“How can you make each dish feel spontaneous over and over and over again without it becoming somewhat old in your feeling”

and reasons

“[I]t’s about … making sure that each dish that we do is something that is as fresh and as dynamic as it was the first time that we did it.”

(Who knew cooking was so much like spontaneous singing?)

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The director of animation (Brad Bird) said …

“Animation … is not a spontaneous act, but if you do it artfully, you get the feeling of spontaneous thought.”

I relate this to performing and recording improvised music (particularly after being in the studio last week. More on that later.). A tension exists between creating something that’s never before existed and doing so within a set of structures.

In a performance or studio situation, there is less spontaneity. For example, you’ll likely stand facing an audience or a microphone (and if you don’t, adjustments — planned in advance or improvised in the moment — will need to be made). Still when done well, you get keep the “feeling of spontaneous thought.”

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Bird and Keller had more thoughts on creating, including some good advice:

Bird: “You got to try get people excited about what you’re excited about.”

Keller: “It’s not about perfection, it’s about the quest for perfection.”

Bird: “If you try to over-control the process, you limit the process.”

And to think, all this insight from a movie about a cooking rat a rat who cooks. (Some thought a cooking rat was a little too … er … unappetizing.)

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Remember – Songtaneous is THIS Saturday from 2 to 4pm. Hope to sing with you soon. ~sg