Latch Music Blog

Chandrakantha

Chandrakantha and David Courtney are a husband-and-wife team residing in Houston, Texas who are involved in Indian Music. Check out vocalist Chandrakantha’s bio and percussionist David’s bio. They make available several streaming video performances ranging from single songs to a documentary. Great performances and excellent use of the Internet to promote their music. Click here to check out the streaming videos.

smeltzercartoons.com

Steve Smeltzer is not only a brilliant drummer, he’s a great cartoonist. Steve now has a home base for his cartooning activities. At smeltzercartoons.com you can see a list of his clients, such as Good Housekeeping, Readers Digest, The Saturday Evening Post and more. At the Gallery you can see more of his work. Steve also does wonderful musical cartoons. A few of my favorites were in our Zine issues 6, 7 and 8, as well as Sweetwater Sound’s music calendar. Check out Steve’s work at smeltzercartoons.com, you’ll really enjoy it.

Playing Free
by Dave Latchaw

Playing Free needs to be included in the process of the evolving improvising musician. So much time and focus is spent on learning the harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary to play over tunes, that playing free can easily be ignored. Playing free is often not explored because it makes the musician vulnerable, it’s like playing music without the net. Not having the harmonic and rhythmic structure of an established tune exposes to what degree the musician has their musical language together, and whether they have the confidence to go where they haven’t gone before. Spontaneous composition is the ultimate goal of the improviser, either over an established tune or just Playing Free. Anyone who improvises has to take the time to understand the fundamentals of harmony and rhythm to improvise over tunes, it’s just part of developing the language to expand one’s voice. The study of improvising can be such an academic process that the ability to be inspired from within can be lost in the process. Playing free forces the musician to dive into their personal creative voice which can be scary to the improviser who relies on the harmonic and rhythmic structure of a composition for their inspiration.

Playing Free makes one have to improvise from a different place. One doesn’t have the luxury of going through “this scale works here”, “this scale works there”. The free player is dealing with different, abstract, subtle energies where everything is possible. The vulnerability of playing free makes the musician have to dig deeper into their core being and explore raw untapped areas of their creativity. This makes it possible for purer music to come out in their playing. Through the process of digging deeper, the musician will go back to an established tune and bring a new inspired freedom to that tune, and their playing.

Playing Free is not an excuse for not knowing your harmony. Free musicians sometimes get so wrapped up in the process of playing free that they forget to spend time learning to play changes. Playing outside the changes does not instantly make you deep. There is a difference between art and jive. Free music does not always have to be atonal either. Free musicians sometimes forget to explore the tonal side of playing free. With time and study anyone can learn their harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary, and this study will keep expanding one’s abilities to achieve greater degrees of sophistication. Harmony and rhythm are languages where the more you know, the more you can say. The combination of both disciplines, playing over structured tunes and playing free, are essential for the complete expression and growth of one’s musical abilities.

One should explore Playing Free in both solo and group situations. In the solo situation, it allows one to get more connected to the expressive capabilities of their instrument. When playing free, the musician is forced to be inspired by sound and their own internal spirit, your axe is just a device you use to bring your soul to the creation of music. Tapping into the “soul”, the “zone”, the “continuum”, or whatever you want to call it, always makes for more interesting music. Playing free as a group will make the group even more in tune with each other because of the demands of creating without pre-determined material. The group has to be more sensitive to each other and more attentive, because every possibility is available at any moment. It is the group’s sensitivity to the flux of energies that will make the music cool or not. Through the demands of playing free, the group can bring a whole new level of cohesiveness to pre-determined music.

A good place to try and start playing free would be with rhythmic ideas. Tap your fingers on a table top and explore the rhythmic possibilities you can create. Then notice the subtle difference in the pitches that you can create on that table. Then move on to your axe, and try some ideas which include pitches. If you’re challenged by playing completely free, try it in stages. Start with playing free using just one mode or pentatonic scale, and explore the various possibilities it brings. It’s very possible to create some of the same elements that tribal folk music started from. Try it with your friends, you can have blast creating spontaneous music on the fly in group situations.

Free music is an acquired taste for most listeners. A lot of listeners dismiss free music because they have to be engaged in a process of digging into the subtle abstract energies of the music to appreciate it. The general public do not want to work that hard! As a musician, don’t get caught up in the dismissal of free music and playing free. Remember, it’s a tendency with most people to criticize what they can’t do or don’t understand. Give Free Music a listen and give it a try. The worst thing that could happen is you might like it.