OK, everyone, we are exploring community-based improvised music making with our co-led drum circle and, today, quite a bit of babbling.
Babbling is a surprisingly rich source of creativity, and there's something special that happens when you move your body, especially wiggling your fingers, when you babble. There are two relevant tracks in "The Darling Conversations" which you can access at https://audio.depauw.edu. The tracks are Babbling and Articulation.
So listen to them, and do some babbling experimentation on your own. Move beyond it being just silly, and discover how inventive and creative you can be. The examples in the recording can help trigger your own imagination.
As far as the drum circle goes, the leadership techniques I'm passing on to you are ones that for the most part I learned from Arthur Hull, who is generally recognized as the person who started the facilitated drum circle movement.
Listen to Part I of an interview with Arthur at http://experiencedrums.com/hull_pt1.html. And also read his short informal essay What Is a "Community Drum Circle"?
What does Arthur say his purpose is in leading drum circles?
What are the three kinds of drum circles he distinguishes?
What are the different aspects of Arthur's career?
In the interview, Arthur discusses the Babatunde Olatunji album Drums of Passion, which is also available in the audio reserves for this course. You'll be listening to it, and reading about "Baba" for Monday, so feel free to start listening.
For Friday:
Listen to the Babbling and Articulation tracks in "The Darling Conversations."
Spend 10-15 minutes at least one experimenting with vocal and instrumental babbling/articulation.
Listen to the interview with Arthur.
Then write a comment below about what you got out of these experiences.
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ReplyDeleteI babbled for ten minutes this afternoon with Caleb. The "Darling Conversations" mention that purposeful babbling can often express just as much as language can, and I certainly experienced that today. Several people stopped by while we were babbling, and we conveyed everything we wanted to say through babbling and body language without ever using a single real word. On the other hand, several minutes before the end of the ten minutes we ran out of things to say (and babbling was no longer awkward), and our babbling lost its purpose and energy and fell into the background; I think that attests to how important staying in the moment truly is. When I read the assignment to babble, I first thought about how awkward babbling for so long would be, then I realized I could babble with someone, and the thought of that made me feel a lot more comfortable and able to enjoy the silliness of babbling. The value of companionship and babbling as a means of communication and expression (why express when there's no one say things to?) drove home that music is a fundamentally social activity (we learned this in Eurythmics).
ReplyDeleteI think babbling is just as good as a language. The "Darling Conversations" talked about how babies babble but my first thought was the Sims computer game. even though it's a game and not real life, the characters communicate through babbling.
ReplyDeleteI really like the concept of babbling because it is so accessible. People always talk about music being a universal language and I think babbling is a really pure form of that. It's such a natural activity. In "The Darling Conversations", the speakers discussed how they pulled from different languages to create their own unique babble. I think that's pretty beautiful because it shows the intercultural abilities of babbling.
ReplyDeleteBabbling is a cool tool for unlocking a lot of internal struggle with finding music at more of an internal level. I found that once I started going it was easy to just keep going and just let things flow. Instead of really focusing on what I was saying, it was much easier to focus on intent and ride on those kinds of waves. Its an interesting technique for developing improvisation skills as well as communication as well. I also loved the dialogue about language and articulation, as its easy to speak a language if you aren't actively think about what you are saying. Rhythm and phrasing become easier when a complete thought is formed intuitively and executed with the fluency of, say, a language, and all of that is made incredibly easy when thinking in a language other than your own, especially if you don't know anything about that language. It seems counterintuitive, but it can work very well if done right it seems.
ReplyDeleteI spent part of yesterday afternoon babbling in front of the mirror in my room. At first I felt silly babbling, especially to myself, but as I continued experimenting with different vowels, ways to use my tongue, and adding movement along with it I began to have a very interesting realization about how incredibly musical babbling is. The track of the Darling Conversation entitled babbling goes into the musicality and merits of babbling. Babbling is used by conductors all the time to describe articulation..... Wow I never thought of that before. I think babbling is a lot like music. You are able to convey emotion and intent through length, vocal inflection, and also movement, all with out using words. Babbling would be a very interesting way to begin to compose a piece... hmmm I might try that.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the babbling podcast. The idea that random noises someone makes when not even thinking about it can be musical is really cool for me to think about. It reminds me of the piece 4'33" where the sounds of the audience ARE the music. It's cool to think about the fact that, in a way, music is just noise. It doesn't need to be organized or have a melody to be music. I tried babbling by myself earlier and, I'll be honest, I felt pretty silly. But after a while you just let go of the feeling awkward and silly feelings and have fun with it. I enjoyed the experience.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of babbling being natural has a lot of other concepts within it. In studying the techniques of aikido, a Japanese peaceful martial art, the foundation of their technique relies on the natural movement to overcome strength. So babbling is indeed organic and brings us closer to our natural voice. I babbled and articulated and was constantly reminded of how I play jazz. It also changed my perspective on how to articulate and babble through my horn naturally. In jazz improve, I always have a problem with the climactic points of a solo because I couldn’t naturally create a lick. It was because I was not natural. Babbling helps clarify and connect oneself with the natural feeling of creating improve. I love Hulls idea of “sharing your spirit” in a drum circle. I enjoy Hull’s perspective, and can see how it applies to my experiences with the drum circle.
ReplyDeleteI was honored with a lovely babbling session with Emily Chen yesterday and one thing I noticed was an "inverted bell curve" (so to speak) of creative expression. We started off strong with some really interesting patterns and noises. But as time progressed, these patterns were repeated or there were extended periods of silence as we considered what to come up with next. I parallel this with a concept covered in the "Babbling" episode of The Darling Conversations, where creative flow was discussed. While I hold that babbling is the simplest, most natural way of communicating in a musical sense, I have to wonder how we push the boundary of this communication. Is this form something that can be practiced, like improvisation on our instruments? The babbling "conversation" example on the track was proof that it's free flowing and doesn't require a ton of thought, but I'm still curious as to how experience can tie into this aspect as well.
ReplyDeleteI babbled to myself in a mirror in the bathroom of the library. Because it was on the third floor and it was 2 AM, I was fairly confident that people wouldn't walk in. However I was still very conscious of weird noises I was making. Scats and babbles are interesting, but the act of translating everyday sounds and noises (dripping of the faucet into the sink, the breeze on the windows) into music was an essential part of babbling. After all, where do we draw our inspiration for music? As early neanderthals, we probably enjoyed pulses and drum beats, but maybe because it worked as a cohesive in a community context. The meaning "music" varies across cultural and social context, and as 20th century composer John Cage put it "There is no noise, only sound", in reference to the idea that any sound can be music. And babbling speaks directly to that very human drive to create, imitate and communicate with sounds, and therefore, music.
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ReplyDeleteI think babbling is a very interesting concept and you can tell a lot about a person by the way they choose to "babble" from the sounds they make to the amount of pauses and lulls they incorporate into their babbling. I also thought it was very interesting how they compared it to jazz scatting and thought it was a great comparison. It helped me understand how babbling can be considered more "musical" than one can think.
ReplyDeleteBabbling is something we do every day! When we get tongue tied or mix up our words, a lot of us sometimes babble for a moment to regain our line of thought. It is something we are born with the knowledge of doing, and therefore is kind of apart of who we are.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the babbling podcast and agreed with a lot of what it said. The concept that any noise that a person can make, including silence, can be interpreted as music is something that I find very interesting. I believe that babbling can be just as expressive, if not more so, than actual words. Even though the sounds that you may make don’t have a definition, people can still tell what you are trying to say. To illustrate this point, I’ll point to the old Peanuts cartoons. All the adult figures in the cartoons never spoke in words, but that didn’t stop us from being able to understand what they were saying. Even though that this isn’t music, the idea is still the same. Music doesn’t need words for it to have meaning. Any sound can be music and all music has meaning.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a really funny/interesting subject. I don't often just sit and babble to myself and doing so was a really cool experience. After a few minutes I really got into the groove of it was babbling was steaming out of my mouth without me even thinking. It was like speaking in a normal conversation but with babbling. I like how we are "musical" from the begging of our lives when we babble as babies. It is so interesting to think that we are really that in sync with musicality but we just don't think about it that way and as we grow up we because more self conscious and I feel like a lot of time that pure musicality can fade away unless you practice it and keep it a part of your every day life!
ReplyDeleteBabbling and soloing in jazz are very similar, you want them both to tell a story. Since i wanted my babbling to tell a story, I took a soloistic approach to it and it got a lot better.
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