Today is Tuesday, May 26th, and in this twenty-first episode I’d like to share with you some reflections I’ve been having about my energy levels in these days.
I am well, and I am in a very creative phase.
But I feel the need to take care of myself every day — a little more each day — as if my batteries were beginning to show signs of wear.
A bit like when your phone no longer makes it to the evening on the charge from the night before.
Does that happen to you too?
I notice that I am easily irritable.
It bothers me to see all this traffic coming back, eating up the streets where, before, we could walk in complete silence.
Noise tires me.
Or is it just me who was doing well when things were worse?
I am doing a few things.
Very early in the morning, when almost everyone is still asleep, I go out again and enjoy the sound of the sun rising.
And since, between the movement of my arms, my breathing, and the sound of my feet, everything is rhythm, I have fun improvising.
It is a game in which I create, there and then, a melodic line with my voice.
Just whispered.
I sing very simple phrases, which by chance fall on accents in two, in three, in five, in four.
Try to imagine that your body in movement is a child with a rhythmic stereotypy, always repeating itself in the same way, and that your voice is the music therapy practitioner trying to improvise by playing empathically.
I can assure you, it is great fun.
And above all, it keeps you ready for when you can start again.
Imitating.
Synchronising.
Incorporating.
Keeping pace.
Mirroring.
Amplifying.
With just these six techniques, you have ideas and inspiration until the end of the summer.
But if some of you are quick and super fit, there is no need to worry, because the six techniques I have just named, and that I am practising myself, are only the first group of the nine groups described by Kenneth Bruscia in his book Improvisational Models of Music Therapy.
Since I am not at all fit when it comes to running, every now and then I need my breath.
And in order “not to die”, I go back to simply breathing, without singing.
At that point, still continuing to play with music, I shift my workout onto a more harmonic level.
I take a note — either from the external environment, or simply one I imagine — without worrying about what note it actually is.
I do not have perfect pitch, so even if I wanted to identify it, I wouldn’t be able to.
And on that note, mentally, I build arpeggios: first major, then minor, using that note as the root, the third, or the fifth.
Then I begin with the extensions: ninths, elevenths, thirteenths.
This mental exercise without the instrument tires me quite a bit.
So after a couple of minutes I start humming again, because I enjoy it more.
And at that point, words enter the game.
But not real words.
They are non-words: combinations of syllables without any coded meaning, but full of suprasegmental elements.
It is all prosody.
And at that point, creativity takes over in its purest state.
Grammelot, gibberish, mixed with an unconscious kind of Konnakol.
And immersed in this wonderful salad of vowels and consonants, I make my way home, greeting the few people I meet with new sounds and rhythms.
And what about you?
What do you do to keep from getting rusty in improvisation?
I’ll stop here.
We’ll meet again on Tuesday, June 2nd, with a new episode of A Light-Hearted Journey Through Music Therapy.