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  • Antecedents of Digital Reproduction in Jazz Improvisation
  • Scott J. Simon (bio)

For music to be re-produced, it must first be produced (the prefix re signifying to do again). Digital reproduction is thus a "doing-again" or reworking of production proper. Traditionally, those who produce music are musicians. In producing music, musicians employ techniques (methods or procedures used to achieve a specific purpose) utilizing technologies known as instruments. Do emerging digital technologies such as MP3s, iPods and iTunes impact this fundamental production of music? The short answer is absolutely. Do they make obsolete or irrelevant the production of music? Absolutely not. In fact, they depend on it for their very existence. Without the initial performance of music (artists "live" onstage, in the studio, on a laptop or on a DJ's turntables), reproduction, digital or otherwise, is simply not possible; and music is still music regardless of the format. Reversing McLuhan's famous dictum in this context, the message is the medium.

The relationship between production/ reproduction is not entirely exclusive. Digital reproductions can and are utilized to produce music with techniques such as sampling, beat matching, phrasing and slip-cueing. These apparently newfound techniques are the work of the electronic or digital DJ. But is this technique really new? Throughout its history, jazz artists have employed a real-time reproduction technique known as improvisation. Improvisation is a reproduction of music in forms such as reinterpretations of compositions, quotations of jazz melodies and stylistic emulations of other jazz artists. The spontaneous reproduction of music formed out of the fragments of previously produced music is a process inherent in jazz improvisation. [End Page 41]

Jazz Improvisation

Music performance and the improvisational skills of the performer play a critical role in all styles of jazz. In fact, it would not exist without it. According to Berliner [1], improvisation in jazz is said to involve:

Reworking precomposed material and design in relation to unanticipated ideas conceived, shaped, and transformed under the special conditions of performance, thereby adding unique features to every creation.

Although improvising has been compared to "real-time composing" [2], it should be noted that the two differ in significant ways [3]. Composition refers to "the discontinuous process of creation and iteration (usually through notation) of musical ideas" [4], whereas improvisation is a continuous and serial process. Composing involves distributing musical elements (such as notes) over a score that is to be played serially: The composer may add to, delete or edit any part of the composition at any time before its performance. Performance of a composition involves interpreting and articulating a written or memorized score, whereas performance of an improvisation involves conceiving, articulating and remembering an unwritten, evolving score [5]. While a misplaced note in a composition can be erased and rewritten, a misplayed note in improvisation cannot. Errors in improvisation therefore "must be accepted as part of the irrevocable chain of acoustical events, and contextually justified after the fact by reinforcement or development" [6]. As Pressing characterizes it, "If erasing, painting over, or non-real-time editing exist, improvisation does not" [7]. The production of new ideas is fundamental to improvisation, since it is not enough for improvisers to produce music that has already been composed: They must produce something that, at least to them, introduces novelty. For jazz artists, improvisation is re-production, not in the form of a copy, but something new formed out of fragments of prior production.

As outlined above, improvisation is a reproduction that is fundamental to a jazz performance; keeping the improvisational process in mind, one might ask what is new about digital reproduction. Certainly not reproduction. Also, many jazz artists have assimilated digital reproduction with DJs and laptop-based musicians using real-time digital loops and samples. Digital reproduction is the assimilation of prior transformations; such are the antecedents in jazz improvisation.

Scott J. Simon
School of Library and Information Science, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, CIS1040, Tampa, FL 33620-7800, U.S.A. E-mail: <ssimon@cas.usf.edu>.
Scott J. Simon

Scott J. Simon is an Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at University of South Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in...

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