Creative Process Part 3 — Bill T. Jones's process

Modern-dance legend Bill T Jones via walterwsmith.wordpress.com

In parts 1 and 2 of our exploration of creative process, we've examined a famous bit of advice from jazz trumpet great, Clark Terry: 

 “Imitate, assimilate, innovate.”

The idea might be that to find our own voice, we might start with our attention fixed upon some external point of reference.  As we imitate and learn, our attention draws inward, integrating what is outside of us with what is inside until, at the end of the process, we have shed the imitation and learned to channel ourselves through our art.  

As Sanford Meisner's Repetition Exercise revealed, accessing our creativity requires a process that allows us to get out of our own way.

With this idea in mind, watch this video of one of the greatest voices of modern dance, Bill T. Jones.

In this video, he demonstrates a multi-phase process.

•  Phase 1 — Perform the dance phrase
   
• Phase 2 — Perform the phrase as if teaching a class, as clearly as possible with detailed verbal description.
   
• Phase 3 — While keeping the movement as accurate as possible, perform the phrase while saying whatever you are thinking or feeling.
   
• Phase 4 — Perform the phrase while saying whatever you are thinking or feeling, but now what you say and feel affects your movement, and your movement affects what you are thinking and saying.

Jones's approach to unearthing what he has to express—starting from procedure and then seeing what emerges from it— feels resonant with Terry's and Meisner's.  They are describing one of the great creative paradoxes: to look inward, we have to first look outward.  And in order to accomplish this task, they have created a procedure that frees their attention from the question "What should I do now?"

Jazz great Clark Terry via clarkterry.com

---

Thank you for reading

Creative Process Part 2 supplement — Bounce Hit

Tennis legend Serena Williams.  Image via newyork.cbslocal.com.

In Part 2 of this series on creative process, we’ve touched on methods for getting out of the way of one’s impulses and abilities.

Here is an interesting analog from tennis, a notoriously mental game.  In his classic book of instruction, The Inner Game of Tennis, renowned tennis instructor Tim Gallwey outlines a practice called Bounce Hit:

The mind has difficulty focusing on a single object for an extended period of time.  Let’s face it: as interesting as a tennis ball may be for some, it is not going to easily capture the restless mind, so habituated to distractions of every kind . . . 

So the question arises as to how to maintain focus for extended periods of time.  The best way is to allow yourself to get interested in the ball.  How do you do this?  By not thinking you already know all about it, no matter how many thousands of balls you have seen in your life.  Not assuming you already know how is a powerful principle of focus. 

One thing you don’t know about the ball is exactly when it is going to bounce and when it is going to hit either your racket or your opponents.  Perhaps the most simple and effective means of focus I found was a very simple exercise I called ‘Bounce Hit.’

The instructions I gave were very simple.  ‘Say the word bounce out loud the instant you see the ball hit the court and the word hit the instant the ball makes contact with the racket—either racket.’  . . .  As the student said ‘bounce . . . hit . . . bounce . . . hit . . . bounce . . . hit . . . bounce,’ not only would it keep his eyes focused on four very key positions of the ball during each exchange, but the hearing of the rhythm and cadence of the bouncing and hitting of the ball seemed to hold the attention for longer periods of time.

The results were the same as with any effective focus.  The exercise would give the player better feedback from the ball and, at the same time, help clear his mind of distractions.  It’s hard to be saying ‘bounce-hit’ and at the same time overinstructing yourself, trying too hard or worrying about the score.

W. Timothy Gallwey — The Inner Game of Tennis,  pp. 85-86

Note the resonance with artistic techniques such as Sanford Meisner’s Repetition Exercise that employ a procedure to direct the mind elsewhere, so that our impulses can arise naturally, not artificially.

Lest we view these techniques as relevant only to beginners, watch the video below, in which I swear we can hear Novak Djokovic employing the “bounce-hit” technique in a point against Roger Federer in the 2014 Wimbledon finals.  (Djokovic won the point and the match.)

---

 Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 2 supplement — The Reader's Journal Exercise

Vladimir Nabokov.  Image via babelio.com

We’ve been exploring creative process through the lens of jazz trumpeter Clark Terry’s formulation, “Imitate, assimilate, innovate.”

The last two posts have focused on acting teacher Sanford Meisner’s famous Repetition Excercise.  We saw Meisner and then acting coach Jack Waltzer state that the value of this exercise, rooted in imitation, is that it gets us out of our own head.  We focus elsewhere and thus clear the way for our impulses to emerge naturally (instead of artificially as the result of overthinking).

Hold that thought and consider the following quote from Vladimir Nabokov.

“A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, “Good Readers and Good Writers” 

By reading with the spine, Nabokov is describing something very much like the natural impulses that the Meisner exercise aims to produce, attention unfettered by overthinking (and in Nabokov’s case, over-feeling, too). 

When I teach writing, I ask my students to keep a journal of favorite passages of writing by others.  Here is an excerpt from my instructions to them:

---

As you read begin to notice when the writing does something, stirs your imagination, strikes you as especially vivid, elicits even the slightest shift in your attention.  Take note of those passages (e.g. “p. 32, middle ¶”), and when you are finished reading, go back and record them in your Reader’s Journal, always noting the author, work, and page numbers.  Write out the passages by hand (or, if you must, type them, print them out, and paste them).  The act of transcribing the work from the page to your journal will further inscribe the text into your consciousness.  (Photocopying, not so much and is thus not allowed.) 

Then record any observations about why each passage might have moved you.  Your journal will begin to fill up with passages and notes, for example . . .

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”  Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West.  The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes.  The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them." 

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, opening paragraph

“Greek temples” a surprising but convincing note of epic grandeur

Sound sets so much of the mood: the flat A’s — “accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness” and then the sharpness of the T’s — “frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes.”

Pay particular attention to your aesthetic experience and cultivate that part of your awareness. Becoming a reader who notices even the subtlest effects will make you a better writer.  Furthermore, your Reader’s Journal will allow you to revisit those passages, study them, and unpack their magic, for instance, how the allusion to Greek temples sets off Capote’s description of the plains of western Kansas.

Enter at least 100 words of excerpts every week (not counting your insights about the passages).  Everything you read (in and out of class) is fair game. 

---

My goal, like Nabokov and Meisner, is to cultivate each student's attention as a reader.  Because if she can learn to access her impulses as a reader, she will begin to access them when she reads her own writing and thus learn to discern when her writing feels contrived and where it feels natural.

---

Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 2 supplement — "When you act, don't think!"

The actress Ruby Dee. Note the expressiveness that flows through her relaxation, the result of her ability to quiet her mind and let things happen.  Image via britannica.com.

“When you act, don’t think!”

This is the advice from acting coach Jack Waltzer, who elaborates on the Repetition Exercise in the following clip.

As we saw Sanford Meisner stress in the previous post, artists need a procedure to get their thoughts out of the way so that their impulses can emerge.  Repetition is such a procedure.

Thus, when Clark Terry advises jazz students to “Imitate, assimilate, innovate,” and when Winston Weathers and Otis Winchester advise writers to copy and compose, they are not only encouraging us to learn from masters, they are laying out a procedure that allows us to get out of our own way.

---

Thank you for reading.

---

Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 2 — Sanford Meisner

Sanford Meisner.  Image via pbs.org.

We have been exploring jazz trumpeter Clark Terry’s principle of creative process—Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate.

This is a clip from one of legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner’s master classes.  In this exercise, one of his trademarks, two actors are paired together and begin an improvised scene by repeating each other.  The idea is that one starts from a mechanical repetition and finds one’s way to a repetition that is from one’s own point of view.

Sometimes, a flash of clarity inspires the repeating actor to introduce the next thought and take the lead, at which point the other actor becomes the repeater.   The idea is that the repetition provides a door to emotions that lie beneath the surface.

Meisner interrupts when he feels that the attention of the actors has drifted from the moment and they have begun to force things and get ahead of themselves.  

Staying in the moment is demanding work, which explains the exercise’s design.  From Sanford Meisner on Acting . . .

Meisner: What does it do for you Bruce, to imitate the other fellow’s movements?

Bruce: It takes the heat off yourself.

Meisner: To take the heat off yourself, as Bruce just said, to transfer the point of concentration outside of yourself, is a big battle won.

Sanford Meisner on Acting, Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell, p. 26 

Notice how shifting the point of concentration outward evokes the earlier examples of Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate that we've explored.  Creative work  calls on our deepest attention, and in order to access that attention, we benefit from a procedure that starts outside of ourselves.

---

 Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 1 supplement — A film student's insights

Art students are known to go to museums and copy famous works of art, a centuries-old tradition that resonates with Clark Terry’s advice to students of jazz: “imitate, assimilate, innovate.”  

Last year I encountered an interesting twist on the reproduction-of-masterworks tradition.  Misael Sanchez, a filmmaker, author, and film professor at Sarah Lawrence, teaches an introduction to cinematography class in which students reproduce scenes of their choosing from existing films. 

It’s a brilliant adaptation of the practice of copying great works of art.  Consider how much technical information a beginning film student must absorb about lenses, exposure, lights, camera angles, camera movement, and so forth.  By copying a classic scene of their choosing, students learn see first hand how all of the technical elements integrate to produce the intended effect.

The students all work on each other's projects, rotating roles.  One week you may be the camera operator; the next week a grip, the director of photography, the scene dresser, etc.  Some of the scenes student directors choose to recreate are early film classics.  (I saw a recreation of a scene from Dracula (1931) that was outstanding.)  Others choose more recent films, where a student's excitement about making film might be more immediate.  

The following, for instance is a scene from the 2009 Bollywood smash Dev D. It was selected by my former writing student Shivani Mehta, who grew up in Bombay and was thereby steeped in this genre.

The original scene . . . 

Shivani's recreation of it . . .

The soundtrack is the same (as is the time-lapse footage of traffic at the very end).  This removes a lot of complication and allows the students to focus on questions of composition, lens selection and framing, lighting, and so forth.  As I look at Shivani's version of the scene, I am struck by how exactly she and her collaborators (under Misael's guidance) were able to reproduce the dream-sequence surrealism of the original.

Filmmaker Shivani Mehta

Weeks before making this, Shivani was new to filmmaking.  Soon after she finished it, I had the pleasure of working with her on another film of hers, a music video, and it was clear how quickly and thoroughly she had absorbed the lessons of recreating the scene from Dev D. and all the scenes chosen by her fellow students.  She had started with imitation, but was already assimilating and innovating.  She and her fellow students emerged from Misael's introduction to cinematography with an idea of what their own voice as filmmakers might be.

Looking back on the experience of recreating the scene from Dev D., Shivani writes:

For me, one of the biggest learnings about film making from this experience was that, at the end of the day, a lot depends on intuition and chance. When recreating this scene, the lighting was the hardest to mimic. To get the right hue of pink or three bright circles in just the right spot above her head were the most tedious and time consuming tasks. When I think about how this was initially achieved by the filmmakers of the original, I realize that there is no way they could have planned for those subtleties. As much as technical know-how facilitates the process, filming a scene isn't a science. It is constant improvisation. You make it up as you go.

---

Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 1 supplement — Degas vs. "Picasso"

"Dancer with a Tambourine" by Edgar Degas.  On the left, a study; on the right a painting.  Images via articles.courant.com and fineartamerica.com.

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

This saying is often attributed to Pablo Picasso, though it’s possible this is a refinement of quotes from others, including T. S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky.

Whatever the case, it is commonly regarded by artists to be a profoundly true observation. 

Compare that idea (don’t copy, steal) with this quote from Edgar Degas: 

“You have to copy and recopy the masters and it’s only after having proved oneself as a good copyist that you can reasonably try to do a still life of a radish.”

Edgar Degas (from smithsonianmag.com)

A number of those who endorse the first statement might also endorse this second.  Why?  Jazz trumpeter Clark Terry’s formulation, “Imitate, assimilate, innovate” holds the key.

In the quote above, Degas is describing the first step in Terry’s process— imitation.  In other quotes, Degas bears witness to the wisdom to the rest of Terry's formulation.

“The studies you have amassed are useful only as supports, as valuable pieces of information . . . You must do over the same subject ten times, a hundred times.  In art nothing must appear accidental, even a movement . . . Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.”

Edgar Degas — (quoted in From the Classicists to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century, Edited by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt,  p. 402)

Here, Degas may not necessarily be describing studies of great paintings but of nature.  Still, the general approach fits with Terry’s: a creator fixes her attention outward and then draws it inward—assimilation. 

And below, Degas describes the final step—innovation

“It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.”

Edgar Degas, (quoted in Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas, p. 13)

It is at this point that an artist might be said to have progressed from copying to stealing (in the formulation attributed to Picasso).  Note that what Degas and Terry and others are pointing out is that an artist needs to copy before she can steal. 

---

Thank you for reading.

Creative Process Part 1 — Copy and Compose

The following series on Creative Process draw heavily on Clark Terry's advice to young musicians:  “Imitate, assimilate, innovate.”  I am indebted to my close friend and colleague Donald Schell (founder of Music That Makes Community) for drawing my attention to Terry's quote as well as for the following crucial insight: Imitation leads us to our individuality.

---

via mediavalbooks.nl

In a previous post, I mentioned jazz trumpeter Clark Terry’s advice to those learning to play jazz: “Imitate, assimilate, innovate.”  Jazz players and improvisers from other traditions have followed this path.  They transcribe solos by favorite artists and learn to play them—imitation.  They bring some of those moves into their own solos—assimilation.  And eventually they find themselves playing something utterly original—innovation.  

Terry's insight is a powerful one, one which I want to explore over the next two weeks.  It goes much deeper than the surface understanding that I just presented.  It actually extends all the way to the audience.  They, too, imitate, assimilate, and innovate.  But let's start at the beginning.

The first observation is that Terry’s insight applies in any number of creative forms.  A recent discovery of mine is a book on writing, Copy and Compose: A Guide to Prose Style by Winston Weathers and Otis Winchester. 

From the introduction . . .  

Writing is a skill, and like playing the violin or throwing a discus, it may be learned by observing how others do it-then by trying to imitate, carefully and thoughtfully, the way it was done. In writing, we can “observe” by copying sentences and paragraphs written by master stylists. And we can consciously imitate these sentences and paragraphs in our own writing, making them a part of our basic repertoire. . .

Having copied a model, word for word, in our own handwriting, we next choose a subject of our own, one as distinct and different from the content of the model as possible. Then we write our own passage, keeping in mind the general syntax, diction, phrasing, and any special characteristic of the model. Saying what we want to say, giving expression to our own concepts, observations, ideas, and beliefs, we imitate the manner and style, the structure and syntax, and the formality and texture of the model. Our own version is what is sometimes called a pastiche. In many European schools, students regularly learn the art of writing by composing pastiches or short pieces of composition in the style of another . . .

Reading, copying, and imitating are not an end in themselves, of course. They are means toward the development of our own style and our own mode of expression. By becoming thoughtful, practicing copyists, we can more easily achieve the goal of good writing. Instead of waiting to discover the methods of effective and powerful writing in a time-consuming trial-and-error way, we can become familiar with the work of the masters and benefit from their achievements.  We can more quickly reach an effective level of com- position that will give us power to communicate.

Copy and Compose, Weathers and Winchester, p. 1, 3, 4-5

Weathers and Winchester then provide models of different style of prose sentences.  For example . . .

#1 — The Loose Sentence

I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket. 

G. K. Chesterton, A Piece of Chalk 

After describing the workings of this sentence structure, readers are instructed to . . .

Copy Chesterton's sentence; then compose a similar loose sentence, enlarging upon the initial, main thought by the addition of other details. Extend the sentence as long as you dare, sustaining interest as long as possible.

Copy and Compose, Weathers and Winchester, p. 8

The book proceeds with models of over sixty types of sentences (the periodic sentence, the inverted sentence, the master sentence, and so forth) and then, later in the book, various species of paragraphs (the topic sentence first paragraph, the paragraph of narrative details, the paragraph of contrasts, etc.).  

As Clark Terry suggests, starting from imitation can help us access what is truly original within us.

Copy and Compose is out of print, which is a shame.  The book's ideas, however, are there for the trying.  The approach is well established in all creative forms and for very good reasons, some of which we will explore as we continue.

---

Thank you for reading. 

Funk Part 4 supplement — Soul Train Lines

The immortal Don Cornelius, creator and host of Soul Train.  Image via soultrain.com

We’ve been looking at how group engagement with the groove fosters individual expression.

In the previous two posts, we’ve seen videos of dancers finding their individual voices as they perform dances similar to those all around them.

Here’s a familiar twist on that, where the group surrounds individual dancers who take turns stepping into the center to perform brief dance solos. 

Note . . .   

The soloists require a backdrop of subdued motion from the other dancers.  They mustn’t distract from what she is doing.

When soloing, each dancer strays further from the well-established moves that she might have been drawing on moments earlier when dancing amid the group.  Thus, the group dancing that precedes and follows the dance line provides essential context for this moment.   An evening of all dance line might drain the solos of their meaning.

Finally, consider that what these dancers are doing with their bodies is analogous to what they and we are doing in our minds as we listen.  We take what we hear and make something of our own out of it.  That’s why listening to music, reading a book, watching a dance performance, viewing a film, and all other forms of engaging the creative work of others is itself creative.

---

 Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 4 supplement — Salsa Dancers

An earlier generation of salsa dancers.  Image via pincantedance.com.au.

The principle that individual expression emerges from engagement with a group activity applies across genres.  Again, musical forms that emphasize repetitive rhythms generate all kinds of ideas from the individual listeners.

Watch this video of salsa dancers and note the individual styles on display.  I particularly enjoy how this scene shows the inclusive power of the groove.  The younger dancers in the foreground and the older gentleman in the background (for the first minute or so) are engaged in the same activity, yet each dancer expresses a unique personality.  No wonder we associate dance with freedom (even though the dance form and groove are highly prescribed).

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 4 Supplement — “The Harlem Shake”

The Harlem Shake. Image via nytimes.com.

To demonstrate the principle that we find our way to individual expression through immersion in a group and imitation of what we encounter there, watch this video of dancers performing the Harlem Shake.  (The original Harlem Shake.)

The phenomenon here is familiar to people who dance—each individual dancer takes the moves everyone else is doing and makes them her own.  No one can doubt that they are doing the same dance, yet neither can we doubt that each of these dancers has found a uniquely expressive voice.

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 4 — The Collective as Field of Individual Expression

Funk dance — a highly collaborative form of self-expression.
Image via darkjive.com

I don’t have statistical evidence, but it’s my strong hunch that funk lyrics invoke a sense of community more frequently than most pop genres.  If this speculation turns out to be true, I can think of any number of explanations, most of them pointing to the communal African-American and African music-making traditions that are funk’s heritage.

But apart from the lyrics, it’s interesting to consider how the musical elements emphasize communal expression.  

• The Teeter-Totter Principle (the balancing of syncopation between parts) requires the ensemble’s attention to the distribution of weak and strong beats among parts.  It is anchored in the priority of making the song danceable and thus looks toward a larger community—listeners and dancers.
   
• The Puzzle Principle relies on each player to play a unique part and stick with that part in order for the groove to work.
   
• The Unassuming Principle points to the fact that the groove, above all, is the star of the show.  The groove cannot be owned by any one person, and it is the thing that may never be upstaged.
   
• More than in other genres, the shape of the musical time in funk tends toward evenness because the complex rhythms demand higher levels of group agreement, and more evenly rendered musical time makes that easier.  (You can imagine a ten-piece funk group whose shared sense of time is highly idiosyncratic, where everyone lurches ahead or behind at the very same moment.  But imagine how difficult it would be to pull this off and how hard to dance to.)

Similar observations can be made across various musical traditions, especially those rooted in rhythm.  What I think is worth noting is something that may be obvious, but on further reflection might also be surprising:  The aspects of funk that exalt community and discourage any individual from either taking over or straying from the groove yield an environment where individual expression flourishes.  

One might be tempted to say the opposite, that individual expression demands distance from the crowd:  “If you want to find yourself, listen to something like Schoenberg’s atonal works, which free you from the priorities of the masses.  Listening to James Brown will only turn you into an automaton.”  Such thinking is misguided, and I say that not because I dismiss Schoenberg (which I don’t).  I merely point out that this kind of statement ignores what’s happening when we listen to James Brown (and what might happen if we actually learned to listen to Schoenberg too).

In part, one might see in this the familiar riddle of creative constraint—we access creative freedom when confronted with limitations.  The constraint in funk is “Serve the groove.”

But the other part of this is a less widely discussed principle, which is perfectly stated by jazz trumpet great Clark Terry in his advice to young musicians.  “Imitate, assimilate, innovate.”  As my friend Donald Schell (founder of Music That Makes Community) has observed about Terry’s formulation, the upshot is this: Imitation leads us to our individuality.

Funk’s repetitions (made tantalizing by way of syncopated patterns) invite us into imitation and it brings us into that imitative state with ease.  We take the groove and its dazzling patterns into us and work them over with our bodies and minds and find something waiting at the end of that process—ourselves. 

So for example, you can watch these Soul Train dancers, who are drawing on each other’s moves (and a treasury of other moves known to all of them) and thereby finding their individual dance voices.

Each dancer’s moves are repetitive, but the repetitions lead somewhere.  Note that some of the most individuating aspects of dance are subtle variations on what others are doing.   

Take a moment to reflect upon how all of this creativity is utterly dependent on the groove.  A musical form less attentive to the groove will not unleash such an explosion of creative energy with such ease. 

Funk music and dance (and their related musical forms) have historical links to freedom struggles around the world.  Few things feel as liberating as dancing.  We feel empowered when surrounded by people dancing to the same music, and we also feel liberated because the act of synchronizing with others helps us look inwardly and find some new part of ourselves to set free.

Which is why it is no surprise that funk lyrics contain lines such as these: 

Here's a chance to dance our way
Out of our constrictions
Gonna be freakin'
Up and down
Hang-up alley way
With the groove our only guide
We shall all be moved
Ready or not here we come
Gettin' down on
The one which we believe in
One nation under a groove
Gettin' down just for the funk
Can I get it on the good foot
Gettin' down just for the funk of it
Good God
'bout time I got down one time
One nation and we're on the move
Nothin' can stop us now

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 3 supplement — The Woman at the Bus Stop

Little did this woman know she would become a global video star.

In addition to the relaxation evident in her body, note how beautifully understated her motions are.  Her emphases are executed subtly, always paying attention to whatever music she was hearing in her head. 

The person who posted what would become the viral video overdubbed “Dancing Queen” for effect, and this woman, by virtue of her unassuming deference to the groove, is indeed a dancing queen.

Image via telegraph.co.uk.

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 3 supplement — James Jamerson

“What’s Going On” might not be classified as funk, but the Unassuming Principle is at work here on many levels, most of all James Jamerson’s bass performance. 

Jamerson, who revolutionized the electric bass and has influenced generations of players, is known for his rhythmic counterpoint and melodicism.  What eludes so many of his imitators, however, is his ability to do all of it without calling attention to himself.

The experience of discovering Jamerson often creeps up on listeners.  They have heard Motown hits for years, and then one day while listening to, say, “Bernadette” or “I Second That Emotion,” they think, “Wow!  That bass player.”  Then they start noticing the Jamerson touch alive in so many other songs.  It’s as if some veil has been lifted from their ears.

What defines Jamerson’s greatness is that his playing sounds as if it is content to live beneath that veil. He is said to have recorded this particular track while lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.  Whether or not it’s true, it certainly sounds as if it could be.  His sound and ideas are channeled from the depths of the groove, a place the spotlight can’t reach. 

James Jamerson
Image via en.wikipedia.org

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 3 — The Unassuming Principle

The Soul Train Dancers — peerless evangelists of the Unassuming Principle

My interest in funk has been deepened by confronting the difficulties of playing it.  On the surface, the challenge of funk lies in the syncopations and complexity of the grooves.  But listening more closely reveals the biggest trick of all—rendering the complexity with a performance that somehow attracts attention without calling attention to itself. 

It sounds counterintuitive, because funk is well known for its over-the-top presentation, its outright renunciation of modesty—the mugging of the singers; the sunglasses, capes and top hats; the star-shaped guitars; the spaceships.  Yet all of that requires a particular humility.  

Humility to what?

The groove.

I'm not saying funk at large is unassuming.  I'm saying its bad-assed nature is born of something that somehow never needs to call attention to itself.  To play funk, one must keep one’s cool, in the deepest sense of the word, and let the groove do the work.  

Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” embodies this principle.  The groove elicits relaxation, coolness.  Indeed, the juxtaposition of the easygoing performance against the vocal fireworks and action-packed arrangement is what produces the larger-than-life coolness of funk bands in general.

Note that as you listen, your joints loosen.  And note how deftly that relaxation is balanced against the song's many points of emphasis.   The band implores “Get down! Get down!” but not from a place of effort and tension.  The singing, like the playing beneath it, loosens us up.

The Unassuming Principle is also embodied in funk's dance moves.  This is video from the Jackson Five’s audition for Motown.  They are covering James Brown's "I Got The Feelin'."  Michael Jackson must be eight years old here, and the expressive power of his voice is already astonishing.  The singing embodies the Unassuming Principle, and so does his dancing.   If you are as dazzled by his moves as I am, see if your bedazzlement might be located in his absence of effort.  He’s not trying to be funky; he simply is funky.  The relaxation of his entire presentation suggests "How could it be otherwise?"  

He’s not calling attention to himself, and yet all of our attention is on him.  That is the beautiful mystery of the Unassuming Principle.

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 2 supplement — Earth Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star”

The size of Earth Wind & Fire’s ensemble, with two guitars, multiple drummer/percussionists, multiple vocalists, and horns, demanded a careful ear for arrangement (which is why so many of their imitators fell short of Earth Wind & Fire’s greatness).

What’s interesting to note here is that the primary puzzle pieces of the verse (the drums, the bass, and the guitarist strumming a repeating pattern in the right channel) also accommodate the second guitarist, in the left channel, who improvises a one-note accompaniment.  This gives the piece more looseness, more of the spontaneous, improvised flavor of jazz.   Amazingly, ample room remains for the vocals. 

Such careful arranging is one of Earth Wind & Fire’s trademarks, and very difficult to pull off.  Credit is due not only to the players but also to the judicious ears of their producer, the great Charles Stepney.

Legendary producer Charles Stepney
Image via clarencemcdonald.com

Funk Part 2 supplement — Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va"

One of the 20th century's musical giants, Tito Puente.  Image via lpmusic.com

The Puzzle Principle holds across musical traditions, though it is especially applicable in funk because of the sharp angles that define the genre.

This classic from Tito Puente illustrates the Puzzle Piece principle at work.  Note how the arrangement builds, one part at a time, not only tantalizing the listeners but teaching them how to assemble the parts.

Note also the Teeter-Totter principle at work in the intro, where the accented riff is backed by steady handclaps, so that the syncopation has a strong-beat framework to help make it pop (and perhaps to keep the dancers moving more easily).

Funk Part 2 supplement — Betty Wright's "Clean Up Woman."

The awesome Betty Wright. Image via funky16corners.wordpress.com

This week we’ve been exploring funk music.

In Funk — Syncopation and the Teeter Totter Principal and Funk — The Teeter Totter principle in action. Cameo's "Rigor Mortis" we explored how various funk classics balance strong and weak beats to produce such danceable music.

In Funk — The Puzzle Principle we heard how funk is constructed of intricately designed (and precisely played) parts.  

Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman” illustrates both principles.

Note the Teeter Totter Principle in action here.  The other instruments (two guitars, bass, and horns) work the syncopation, but the drums keep a fairly straight framework around all of it.  Note how the groove come to life with the entrance of the drums.  (A more syncopated drum part might weight things too heavily on the side of the weak beats.)

And note the intricate fitting together of the parts (the Puzzle Principle).  As is often the case with funk, the song starts with the parts introduced one at a time.  One guitar, then the second guitar, then the base, and then the rest of the band.  Notice how this is not only fun, it teaches the listener how to assemble the parts in her mind and listen.

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 2 — The Puzzle Principle

James Brown, master of the Puzzle Principle. Image via alldylan.com.

The classic funk sound that emerged in the late 1960s featured large ensembles and intricate arrangements.  Indeed, one of the rewards of listening to this era of funk is hearing how intricately the grooves have been assembled like puzzle pieces.  The pieces themselves are the simple, repeating parts that the individual musicians play that then fit together to form a dazzling whole.   
 

image via etc.usf.edu

Musicians carve up a unit of musical time into pieces and assemble the pieces into a groove.

Image via tangramfury.com

In funk music, the shapes combine to form intricate patterns.  Note that the sharp angles and intricate design demand a steadier sense of time out of the players.  Without that, the sharp angles would become blurred and the rhythmic images would makes less sense to the listener.

All kinds of genres, including Rock & Roll, make use of repeating patterns.  In rock, the pieces are generally simpler, in part because rock does not move in the shorter subdivisions of funk and also because in rock, the emphasis is on full-chord riffs rather than single-note patterns that can move quickly but less obtrusively, as in funk.

This approach demands each player’s disciplined adherence to the prescribed part.  Without that, the groove would fill up with notes and thereby lose shape, and in funk, the shape of the groove is everything. 

---

James Brown's influence will be heard in subsequent examples, so let's start with him.  “Mother Popcorn” illustrates the Puzzle Principle in action.  See if you can zero in on this or that part; you’ll hear it repeat.  This is no loose jam.  The groove's sharp angles would be lost were the players to stray from their parts.  

Furthermore, note how each part leaves a lot of open space.  The guitar, for instance, is playing single notes instead of chords, which is typical of funk.

Indeed, even when the parts are combined, ample space is left for James Brown to stretch out with his singing and punctuate the band groove with percussive shouts of his own.  This is a product of his insistent attention on the arrangement.

---

Sly Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” is driven by the interplay between the bass and guitar, the drums providing the framework that clarifies the nature of that interplay.  (This is the Teeter Totter Principle in action.)  One of my favorite details of this groove is how Larry Graham’s bass part finds a low, sustained E every other round of the pattern.  It calls pleasing attention to the architecture of the groove.

The above video captures an excavation of the groove, as the band reunites in the studio to hear the tracks in various combinations.

---

Image via metmuseum.org

This sixteenth century gate from India illustrates the principle at work in classic funk music—composition out of simple, repeating patterns that combine to produce the effect.  Note how pleasing and necessary the repetition is.  The intricacy of the design demands it, for without the repetition, the effect would vanish, just as a funk groove would lose definition if the players strayed from their parts. Note also the reliance on sharply drawn lines, which are analogous to the precision demanded of funk players.

---

AWB’s “School Boy Crush” is a good example of how funk grooves typically embody the Puzzle Principle and the Teeter Totter Principle in action.  The groove is constructed from individual simple, repeating patterns (the Puzzle Principle), and these patterns combine weak and strong beats in danceable proportions (the Teeter Totter Principle in action).  In fact, each part takes turns on both sides of the strong/weak-beat teeter totter. 

---

A final thought.  A likely source for this approach might be the compositional insights of African drumming tradition, where the individual musicians play simple, repeating parts that interlock to stunning effect.  Here's a glimpse.

---

Thank you for reading.

Funk Part 1 supplement — The Bar Kays' "Shake Your Rump to the Funk"

If you are dancing along to this funk gem, note what happens during the first ten seconds of the song.

0:00-0:02     drums accent the full-band riffs
0:03-0:05     drums play backbeat
0:06-0:08     drums accent the full-band riffs
0:09- . . .       drums play backbeat

This same sequence repeats at the 1:56 mark.

Do you notice how much easier it is to dance with the backbeat in place?  When the drums join the full-band riffs, it creates a temporary imbalance because the strong-beat framework is eclipsed by the accented syncopated notes (the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth notes in the nine-note riff pattern).

ba-PAH ba-PAH ba-PAH ba-PAH BAH

This is the teeter-totter principle in action (and an example of the fun one can create by challenging the dancers).

Note that this arrangement move relies on the drummer Mike Beard's smooth transition from the accented riff to the backbeat.

---

Thank you for reading.