The BeBop Mind

 

#2, August 2024

Periodic missives at the intersection of

music, improvisation, and cognitive science.

In this issue:

  • Musical News

  • The Unlearning Project

  • Reharmonizations

Musical News

John Lockwood, Mark Walker and me are back at the Beehive on Tuesday September 3 in Boston.

 

It's a school night, but we would love to see you there. We will be playing music from our recording session that weekend (Our recording date in June got scrubbed due to Covid. We are trying again in early September).

 

If you are not in the area, pass this on.

 

Below is an excerpt from our Beehive date in June.

The Unlearning Project

(aka the quest to play by ear unencumbered by harmonic rules or patterns)

 

 

 "A mind is what a mind does. We can all agree...Where most people seem to disagree is on what constitutes or counts as thinking. I suggest that to ask and debate that question is both productive and useful...(because) it views thinking not as a fixed entity...but as a process (of) what it is that minds and things do together, shifting our attention away from the sphere of isolated and fixed categories (objects, artifacts, etc.) to the sphere of the fluid interaction between people and things, that is, to the realm of material engagement."

-- Lambros Malafouris (2018)

 

This perhaps why I find myself at times not playing the guitar but having the guitar play me.

 

I think at one's best what is happening in very high level improvisation as a completely dissolved boundary between self and instrument. To Malafouris' point. We are not playing the instrument (or typing on the keyboard or drawing on the paper or swinging with the bat) but experiencing the instrument not as an extension or tool but AS us. No boundary.

 

Reharmonizations

 

"I Hear a Rhapsody"

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