Sphinx

I think it’s only appropriate to round off my blogging year – apart from the usual annual review, and unless something else strikes me in the meantime – with a final reflection on teaching inspired by my jazz composition course, which has been the one unquestionably positive experience in this basically rubbish year. This time it’s not about online learning and teaching, but a more general thought about managing seminars; and it’s inspired not by the tutor, but by conversation with other students on the discussion thread where we posted our homework exercises for comment (stifles deep sigh at total failure to get any sort of online discussion going in any of my modules this past term…).

This was in the week when we were exploring writing and arranging for a larger number of instruments; one person raised the topic of graphic scores, another talked about their experience of actually performing one, and we all started developing projects to work on over Christmas. Graphic scores are fascinating things, as this handy explainer with pretty pictures from, ahem, Classic FM handily explains. Partly, the exercise is a matter of “why the hell not?”, bringing together art and music in a way that goes beyond video projection as a background to performance, but still more such scores aim to push musicians to expand their imaginations and explore new creative approaches – rather than just playing boring old specified notes. And considered at the level of the ensemble performance and from the perspective of the composer, especially in jazz, it’s a means of finding new balances between freedom and structure, through elements of chance and play.* (And, yes, I’m indulging in especially long sentences with a lot of subordinate clauses, as a kind of antidote to the experience of having to revise a chapter for an editor who regards semi-colons as some kind of Old World decadence…).

This is where I start ambling towards a point. Let’s think of a seminar as an extended jazz performance, with the lecturer in the role of band leader – but a Charles Mingus sort of band leader, where it’s all about the ensemble, rather than one of those flashy show-offs who just want a backing group. The topic and the prescribed reading are the lead sheet, so everyone is working with the same material, Ideally everyone has rehearsed these enough to improvise successfully around the themes and structure and create something interesting and worthwhile – even another retread of Autumn Leaves can be exciting and productive for those involved, if only as practice for interacting with others and responding to their ideas. No, no one’s going to want to listen to a recording (even in pandemic times); it’s about what happens in the moment.

That’s the aim. More often, it’s a matter of hoping that enough people have done the prep to carry the rest, and that there are one or two who can produce flashes of brilliance out of nothing on the spur of the moment (but not allowing them to unbalance the whole performance). And we’re all familiar with the occasions when the only thing to do to produce anything passable is to stick closely to the music, or for the leader to become increasingly dictatorial in forcing people to perform, or to take solo after solo to fill the silences.

And I do understand why this is from my own playing career, or rather lack of one – I find playing with others terrifying, so haven’t done it much (I was just gearing up to try again in March…), so it feels even more terrifying. I know the answer is to be well prepared and to stick to what I know in the first instance – but until I’ve actually got some experience, there is no way of knowing how much preparation is sufficient, and that then becomes a reason for finding excuses to postpone. Yes, it would do me good to have a scheduled session and know that I’ll be told off if I don’t show; if I had to do it, I would. For a significant number of my students, either the thought of having to improvise around some passages of Thucydides is even more appalling than the idea of having to improvise around Satin Doll is for me, or they have even less motivation.

So what’s the way forward? Thinking about this in terms of jazz isn’t just whimsical self-indulgence; above all, it offers an alternative perspective on things which I’ve come to take for granted, and suggests new approaches that I might try…

(1) It’s not just about the material. Okay, this may be a tricky starting-point, since in many cases seminars are about the coverage of new material, necessary for the assessment, not least because that’s how we persuade students they’re worth turning up to. But if we focus on the contents as raw material to be explored and reconfigured in the way that jazz musicians take apart a standard, where does that take us? Need to find the balance between forbidding complexity and excessive simplicity, either of which demand a higher level of knowledge and ability. Need to find the balance between too little and too much – again, discussion of a single paragraph could make for a fascinating hour in the right hands, but not with beginners, while setting too much for fear of running out of things to say will just lead to everyone being under-prepared. Select stuff that’s the right level of difficulty, and a good basis for practice, not because it’s classic or especially important.

(2) Learning to participate. There are many different facets to being a skilful improviser and constructive group member. It’s about having something to say when it’s your turn – and the prepared riff or solo, and structures that allow people to make use of stuff they’ve prepared, certainly have their place – but also being able to come up with something when suddenly put on the spot. But it’s also about responding to what others have said – ideally, the discussion takes on a life of its own, rather than ping-pong exchanges between the leader and individual students, but while waiting for that to develop there’s a lot to be said for structured dialogue, designating specific people to respond to one another – develop the previous motif in some way… Spontaneity has to wait until everyone is up to it, even if that’s less enjoyable for the leader, who needs to know when to cajole, when to orchestrate, and when to get out of the way for a bit.

(3) Creating a safe space. I think one of the reasons I am so terrified of trying to play jazz with other people is the anecdote about the drummer throwing his cymbal on the floor when a young Charlie Parker tried to sit in and didn’t know his scales well enough; yes, the whole point of the story is that Parker then practised his socks off and anyway was a genius they just didn’t recognise it yet – but since I’m definitely not a genius, what I get is the fear of utter humiliation. Actual amateur jam sessions aren’t like that (even if there is always That Guy needing to demonstrate his superiority); seminars are even less like that – but I think that is what students fear. Even with lots of preparation, you can’t know if what you have to say is worthwhile or stupid (and there is always That Guy who sounds boundlessly confident on the basis of very little actual knowledge). The goal is to make sure that everyone feels they can try things out without fear, that there is something valuable in every contribution even if it’s just the making of it rather than the contents. And this links back to (1): the more that the seminar contents matter for assessment, the more often the leader will need to spend time – and risk student demoralisation – by correcting errors and misapprehensions, explaining things at length, calling a halt to a promising line of discussion because it’s a bit off topic etc. Ideally, what happens in the seminar discussion stays in the seminar discussion; it’s about the process, not the product.

And what about graphic scores and the like? Well, those are really about shaking experiences participamts out of their comfort zones, so not on the whole relevant to inexperienced participants who don’t yet have a comfort zone. But I can still imagine some possibilities, whether to destabilise the ‘me leader, you humble rabbits’ dynamic of the seminar room by shifting responsibility for organising the discussion to chance, or by presenting the task of commenting on ancient sources in a new way. I’ll need to think about this further…

* Yes, my Christmas project is Knight’s Moves, an 8×8 board with different patterns of notes or instructions on each square, which each musician moves about as they wish using the knight’s chess move, partly in tribute to Georges Perec’s La Vie Mode d’Emploi…