Incremental Variation

Knowing how to make a variation is part of almost every task, every game, every experiment, business, social relationship, every craft, and every form of art. Variations are sometimes used to avert boredom, but it’s much more than that. It may be that, without variation, we cannot give any clear shape or form to our materials. We’ll look at that question as we move into this exercise. The ability to vary materials and their usage is vital for composers and improvising musicians. Among the basic elements of variation is the action of substitution—that is, having one thing replace or ‘stand in’ for another.

Variation presupposes repetition; without repetition, what is there to vary? The act of creating a variation necessitates distinguishing the essential from the expendable—structure from decoration, the body from the clothing. And this requires both skill and a sense of the appropriate.

If a piece of music were absolutely devoid of any repeating elements—if it were entirely random or aleatoric—there would be no need for variation, no way to use it, no way to even apply it. Change is only meaningful in a situation that has aroused some expectations. Even humour typically involves a twist of the anticipation that has been created in a story. Arthur Koestler gives a wonderful analysis of humour in The Act of Creation that addresses this same dichotomy. Darwin’s notion of natural selection is meaningful as a study of the relationship between similarity and variation.

Playing a solo in a jazz style requires knowledge of the stable elements that hold the form intact while the solo is woven through the original structure. What is this original structure? In much early jazz, the tune (plus its harmonic support) were regarded as the warp, leaving the weft (the weaving) for improvisation on that melody. More contemporary jazz improvisation has tended to use the harmony itself as the main warp—the stable, regarding melody as the more mobile element. That is, the original melody is sometimes replaced entirely with one which is newly minted on the spot, as long as the harmonic sequence provides a dependable and audible stability. And in still more contemporary practice, even phrasing, rhythm, and textural elements can serve the function of stability for improvisational behaviour. Perhaps any kind of movement—physical or psychological—requires a harmonious marriage of stability and mobility. It is easiest to see in bodily movements and most especially in sports where locating one’s stability is often the first priority. So I propose that the act of improvising requires an acute awareness of this pair of polarities: stability and mobility.

The exercise of Incremental Variation which follows is one vehicle by means of which variation process can be studied. People often wonder if improvisation can really be practiced … and how would you practice? And the question arises: if you practice, is it still improvisation? Well, there are a great many skills that go into the art of improvising and there is no question that those skills can be practiced. And the skills can involve materials that, through repetition and variation, can be sequenced and developed in a way that walks the musician to the door of spontaneous, original creation—perhaps the ultimate hope of artists working in all mediums.

Making a study of variation can be slippery so, with no pretence at formulating a complete coverage of the topic, I’m assembling a variety of materials for this first post about variation. The first set of images shows a rudimentary list of musical variations. Many of these techniques have been used in the music of different styles and historical periods and they are used, under various names, in many different cultures. I have written some very brief definitions, but you can easily find out more about them in books and on the internet. On <www.imslp.org> you can access hundreds of scores of well-known variations, and youtube.com has many performances of variations. And once you become more aware of variation process, you will hear it on many levels in almost any music you’re listening to.

Playing with other musicians. The exercise of Incremental Variation is an excellent format to begin improvising with others. There is a three-page score and audio track showing a mock improv for two pianos, but it should be clear that you can try this with almost any combination of instruments.

A note about incremental variation

Most musicians will naturally vary several musical parameters in parallel—one change supporting a corresponding change in another parameter. For example, most musicians tend to play a rising line with some degree of crescendo, even without intention. In this exercise, you are asked to disassociate that tendency to some degree in order to bring a high degree of focus to each separate change. It does thwart your natural musical intelligence to some degree but it really helps you focus on what you’re doing: studying the effect of each variation and maintaining the stability of each successive variations.

Click on the page controls (on either side) to see page 2. This is a list that resulted from a discussion with the improvisation class about what kinds of variations they could think of. There are many more and many variants of each category but this is not presented as a model to follow but only to give the viewers some confidence to make up such a list for themselves.

Strategies

At the beginning of work on variations, students (and all of us) greatly benefit from the clarity we bring to our practice. Remember that this work on variation takes place in the context of repeated patterns in which we make small (incremental) changes.

a/ So first of all you need to maintain the integrity of the motives you’re currently repeating: notes, time, articulation, etc. It all needs to become sufficiently internalized that you can stabilize it while deciding on your next move. That is, keep repeating what you’re doing while you’re projecting your next move. That’s not easy, but practice makes it possible.

b/ Second, you then prepare the moment when we will change. This is not unlike the way kids will sway their bodies in sync with a jump rope before jumping in. Anyone who’s done that knows how easy it is to jump in at the wrong time and get tangled in the rope. These variations are meant to work the same way: follow the movement and make a very intentional jump with the new motif. To be clear I will explain it again:

Keep playing the repeated material without losing the beat or dropping any notes while preparing the next move; you can even count the final reps if it helps .,.. like 4..3..2..1.. CHANGE! The idea is to be really prepared for the change. You can even try visualizing the notes and fingers that you’ll be using for the variation.

c/ Once you make the change definitively, you immediately try to maintain the new variation for at least four repetitions, just to make sure that it’s stabilized. Then another variation can be considered, prepared, and executed.

Every so often, instead of making a new change, see if you can return to the motive that you just played. It’s important not to forget the past material because making a sensible form depends partly on your memory of the whole path, that is, how you got to where you are.

If you get lost, you can try to continue the line by simplifying it, even to the extent of a single note. Continuity is an essential element of good composition or improvisation so it’s important to keep going even when things fall apart.

This is a very disciplined way to practice variations; it emphasizes memory, continuity, control and variety. Later on, of course, each musician finds their own material, their own pace of change, and their own sense of variation. Once you have the degree of control you feel you need, there are other suggestions on the website for how to let go of this excessively tight control and allow it to serve a wide open freedom of creative choice and authentic personal expression. In closing, I’ll repeat that, most of the time, composed and improvised variation tends to change in more than one parameter at a time. This exercise is very artificial in that respect. For example, when we change pitches in the melody, we often also change the harmony or texture or phrasing, articulation, dynamics, pedalling, etc. That is very natural because it is a very musical response. However, this study suggests working in a slightly unnatural way by limiting each change to a single parameter: dynamics, or modality, or phrase length, etc.—one change at a time. Thus, the name, “Incremental Variations.” First of all, this develops clarity about the process. And if you are able to remember each small variation, you will be able to retreat from a difficult artistic cul-de-sac, if you need. But for this exercise I suggest that, when you make a move that you don’t like, try to stay with it for a few more repetitions. It might be jarring because you simply did not expect it to sound that way and after a few more repetitions you may realize that it’s pretty good.

Incremental Variations

Before I end this post I’d like to give some suggestions about how to practice this exercise. Too often our teachers only see/hear our results but not our process. So here are some tips about practicing this exercise.

When preparing to make a change, try to visualize the notes that you’ll be moving to before you make a move to play them. This is already more than some younger musicians can manage, but it’s particularly difficult to do while you are continuing to repeat the phrases you are playing. It’s not so much a matter of practicing more but slowly developing your attention over the coming weeks and months. The necessary expansion of attention is a bit like practicing peripheral vision, that is, seeing what is all around the thing you’re looking at. Peripheral attention is something that can be developed with practice. You have to remember to try.

If you cannot visualize the whole motif and the fingers you’ll need, at least try to visualize the pitch set your hands will have to cover, or you can at least look ahead to the next position of the right-hand thumb (or the L.H. 5th finger) so you can be in the right place—the correct hand position. Most important though, is to experiment with the division of attention. And contrary to what our instinct often tells us, keep your attention grounded in what is NOT changing; that is, resist the temptation to throw all your attention to the hand that’s going to change. Of course you need to broaden your attention across the two hands, but ‘ground’ it in the hand that is not going to change. Just as you can have an intense conversation at a party while your attention is “glued” to the door from which you’re expecting to see a much anticipated person, you can be in touch with both hands but centre it on the stable hand … and then open up the scope of attention, analogous to becoming more aware of your peripheral vision. It’s difficult to give advice like this over the internet, but give it a few tries and see if the results are very different.