Last December, I participated in an open, improvised electronic jam session, organized by a local electronic artists collective in a music venue in Grenoble, France. I found the format extremely interesting: instead of giving participants fixed individual time slots, the aim was to engage in collective improvisation. Each musician could bring one synth, and all sound went through a mixing desk operated by the organizers.
The rules and recommendations, introduced in a quick briefing in the beginning, were very helpful: out of the 15 participants (which did not know each other), only 4 could play at the same time, participants should aim for a balance between various elements (drums, pads, leads, fx), and everyone’s focus should be on communicating, complementing each other, and being willing to ‘let go’ of one’s own ideas… In addition, the organizers introduced a playful element with a ‘wheel of fortune’ to change the mood of a section (eg dark, uplifting, ambient,…) (which did not work very well in practice), and the possibility of modifying BPM (by rolling a dice).
The result was a lot of fun! We played nonstop in constantly changing configurations from 19:00 to 23:30. Some moments lacked coherence, of course, but others were really good, and things started to come together extremely well.
I wanted to share this here because I had never read about this format before and found it absolutely great…
Some impressions:
