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Improvisation Workshop Week 9 – 05/10/2006

Improvisation Workshop Week 9 – 05/10/2006:

Tyson Hopprich aka; Dj Tr!p:

Way back in the nineties I had the pleasure of studying alongside DJ Tr!p at the now defunct Flinders St School of Music. Whilst I had my reservations about his sometimes eccentric behavior at first (I was still a practicing narrow minded bogan in those days – minus the mullet; baby steps now), I soon found his limitless enthusiasm and energy infectious. I think he may have had a significant indirect influence in building my confidence as a composer. I certainly don’t think I’m an accomplished composer now, nor have I been in the past, but seeing Tyson really going for it, and consistently putting himself out there, encouraged me to do the same. Now if only I wasn’t so afraid of dancing…

There were many highpoints of today’s session. The first was achieved before most people showed up and some of the improv’ group had a laid back jam with Tr!p to warm up. Isn’t it funny how you always play your best chops at the sound check? Curse my mortal non electro-bionic body parts.

The second was definitely Tyson’s short game-boy set, in which he introduced the uninitiated to his world of composing through restrictive mediums. Interesting, an electronic musician who is adverse to embracing new technology if avoidable, yet who is still successful – there may be hope for me yet…

Thirdly, I was impressed the second time we jammed together as a group for the audience. The laid back trip-hop groove set down by Tyson gave me just the tempo I needed to sneak in some syrupy blues wah-wah licks on occasion, while kicking back with the rhythm section in others. I took note of Tr!p’s advice to remain aware of the audience, and tried not to cut through the mix too often (apologies to the undoubtedly disappointed J D Delaney for my restraint, but the performance was not all mine).

The following session seemed to be the big crowd pleaser (well it would have been if we had a big crowd). Tr!p inquired of the group as to whether or not a rise in tempo was the order of the day. The answer was yes and his timing couldn’t be better. The tight punchy rhythm dragged me kicking and screaming out of bluesman mode and forced some good old fashioned hard rock riffage, the likes of which AC/DC’s Malcolm Young would be proud.

Throughout the sessions, the waterfall of some wonderfully tasteful piano scale runs decorated the melodies and sound effects on offer, courtesy of Matt Mazzone. Dragos Nastasie kept the sustained harmonies flowing from the mighty Juno 2. Ben Probert provided some notably tentative vocal textures due to the failure of his security pedal which, in hindsight were probably more appropriate than the “raise your hands in the air like you just don’t care” material that we all know he had secretly planned to inflict upon the occasion. Jacob Morris kept things interesting with some serious sample mashing in Ableton Live. Most restrained of the group were Albert Webster, whose contribution was too obscured in the mix from where I was placed for me to be able to offer comment on, and Adrian Reid. Adrian was manipulating a signal from a microphone placed in front of my guitar amp. He deserves full credit for his contribution, although it was severely restricted to those moments when I was playing at a significant volume (which were uncharacteristically few). There were occasions when I could hear the output of my amp blending brilliantly with the Supercollided enhancement from Adrian’s Laptop.

All in all, another great afternoon at EMU, but don’t take my word for it listen for yourself:

Tr!p-tendo jam - DJ Tr!p only (8.5 Mb Mp3)

Tr!p-hop jam – Whole group 2nd time (15.3 Mb Mp3)

Tr!p-rock jam – Whole group 3rd time (11 Mb Mp3)

My apologies for the large size of these sound files, but they are six, eleven and eight minutes long respectively.
Anyone who wants a copy can see me, as I will keep them on my hard drive.

These files were recorded at high resolution by Ben Probert with a microphone linked to studio one, so the audio quality is substantially better than the voice recorder files I usually blog.


Reference:

Tyson Hopprich. “Improvisation Workshop”. Lecture presented at EMU Space, 5th Floor, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide. 05 October 2006.

posted by David J Dowling @ 10:55 PM