Free improvisation

I met the Oxford Improvisers last night, went along to their Monday night session. It was great fun - like going swimming, an hour of being completely immersed in something so completely alien to the rest of your life.

Within the world of harp and folk all the sounds are fairly nice, not very aggressive, certainly not very discordant (even if you consider Irish fiddlers liking of flat C sharps). With this is was aggressive sounds, crashes, scrapes, extreme chromaticism (barely tonal centres), gestures and barren silences. There was a guy with an amazing bag of percussion *stuff* - pots, pans, anything. One particularly fine bit of bent metal. Not very lyrical at all - I brought some lyricism I think.

I was also singing and what a joy it was for it to not only be allowable but completely appropriate to make utterly horrible deranged noises. I found singing allowed me to follow the chromatic movement much more easily - on harp I'm still not mapped chromatically as much as I want to be.

So any - my new hobby - free improvisation. The players were all really lovely too, fun, happy people. In common with playing folk or trad (or maybe any aural music?) you had that sense of knowing them unexpectedly well afterwards. I think I have probably seen their faces in the street a few times but after such a session where attention flows so clearly I feel I will recognise them instantly now.