Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age (review)

General

According to the publisher's introduction on the book's dustcover, Sync or Swarm is a "study of musical improvisation, using theories from cultural and cognitive studies and the emerging science of chaos and complexity . . . including perspectives from the study of embodied cognition, nonlinear dynamics, self-organizing systems, social networks, and situated and distributed learning." In investigating both solo and group improvisation through the theoretical constructs of complexity science, cognition, networking, and so on, Mr. Borgo brings new tools to bear on the study of a long-standing, though comparatively little-theorized, field of creative endeavor.

An audio CD of music examples is included with the text. Tracks by both well-known (Evan Parker, Sam Rivers, George Lewis) and lesser-known (the author's own ensemble Surrealestate) improvisers are offered up as examples that are to varying degrees analyzed within the text itself. This is a welcome addition, as the ideas and concepts broached in the text are often rather abstract in nature (no pun intended). The music examples make the connections the author wishes to draw much clearer than they might be otherwise.

Organization and Overview

The first chapter, "The Sound and Science of Surprise," lays out the general terrain, providing a general introduction to the topics the book will cover and then laying out a chapter by chapter synopsis. Over the course of the book, an effort is made to balance the extra-musical ideas and concepts with specific applications and/or examples from the musical literature. After a survey of the contemporary improvisation scene and "the growing body of scholarship on the subject," the book in turn tackles concepts and ideas from fields as varied as cognitive linguistics, embodiment, and general systems theory in relation to the solo improviser (in this case, Evan Parker); nonlinear dynamical systems, state space transitions, and "phase space" applied to improvising ensemble dynamics (the Sam Rivers Trio with George Lewis); and chaos, complexity science, and analyses of "fractal correlation dimension" in a number of solo and ensemble improvisation recordings. Network theory, physical coupling, biological entrainment, emergent behavior, self-organizing systems, "scale-free" networks, and basic concepts of statistical distributions are all discussed in relation to the complex dynamics of ensemble improvisation. A final chapter, "Harnessing Complexity," examines "the ways in which learning and cognition are situated within and distributed across physical and social settings" (p. 11). The chapter culminates in a number of observations and propositions regarding current music pedagogy and the efficacy of integrating improvisation into the music classroom.

Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the major strengths of the book is Mr. Borgo's ability to summarize the issues and insights of dynamical systems theory and other recent developments in cognitive, biological, and computer sciences for the scientific layperson. Clear and concise explanations with just enough detail to flesh out the concepts make for a reasonable understanding of the significance of the theory in question and serve as entry into the author's application of it to the field of improvised music. Another positive aspect of the book is the degree to which examples of specific pieces of music—some of which are included on the accompanying CD—are integrated into the explanations and explorations. He subjects a recorded performance of the piece Hues of Melanin by the Sam Rivers Tri, to an extensive "phenomenological analysis" and charts out in detail the prominent musical transitions during the course of the 33-plus-minute work. In another chapter, visual displays of "fractal correlation dimension" analyses and correlograms (plots of periodicities in the spectrograms of the recordings) of recorded excerpts by Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzman, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, as well as the aforementioned...