The World's Best Surprise Bag

This is my progress report on my piece The World’s Best Surprise Bag.  I am very excited about this composition.

            The first question that I always get about this piece is “What’s with the title?”  One day on my way up to Saddleback to do some snowboarding I stopped at Jack’s Trading Post for some food.  While waiting in line I saw this delightfully eye catching package…a surprise bag, which was only about a dollar.  Immediately I knew that I must write a song about this ridiculous product.  See Picture 1.

            When I opened it up I found out that it truly was the GREATEST surprise bag ever!!, I guess…Inside it held a lollipop, a photocopied coloring book, one sticker, a foam airplane, gum, and a photocopied piece of paper with a crossword on one side and Mr. Surprise’s story on the other.  Let me tell you Mr. Surprise’s story:

            “When I was just a little baggie, I lived in the cupboard.  Every day, a kind old woman would give me a yummy piece of candy and a treasured toy.  Before long I grew to become a big bag filled with surprises.

            One day the old woman opened the cupboard door, carefully brought me down from the shelf, and asked a little boy to reach into my bag.  You should have seen the wonderful smile on his face when he pulled out his surprises.

            From that moment on I knew I had to leave my cupboard and surprise children all over the world.  So I packed my bags with candy and toys, gave the kind old woman a peppermint kiss, and began my adventure.  Now, as my travels take me to far away places, I find great candy and toys and send them home to Surprise Bag Land, where they go into my surprise bags for you to enjoy.”

            So now you can see why I am so excited about this piece.

            At the time that I purchased this bag (winter 2005-’06) I was in a band called The Pond Duck Trio.  We had bass, drums, and guitar.  Initially I had planned to do this piece with that group.  Unfortunately in 2006 we decided to learn all of The Beatles’ Abbey Road instead, so that took up the majority of our time (I am just joking about it being unfortunate, learning Abbey Road was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done).  The World’s Best Surprise Bag ended up on the back burner.  When I pulled it out the second time I decided to re think the instrumentation.  I have always been a sucker for a good piano trio, especially those by Schubert and Beethoven.  I decided that a piano trio would be a great lineup for this piece.  Of course this piece would need lyrics though, so I decided to add two voices to the mix.  One of these vocalists will also play some simple percussion in the piece, consisting of a single cymbal and wind chimes.

            See Picture 2 for my initial mock up of the piece.  I didn’t know the order of all of the sections at first, and sometimes I would stick in new parts in between sections I had already written.  So as I wrote the sections, I cut them up and re pasted them onto a new piece of paper in the order that I wanted them.  Of course this is a very rough mock up though.

            The next step I took was to neaten it up, see Picture 3.  Since I didn’t have any music notation software on my computer, but I did have Adobe Illustrator, I decided to create my own sort of notation software within Illustrator.  I created a grid that would be accurate down to a sixteenth note, and then made it so that all shapes in Illustrator would snap to the grid.  I made it so that this grid would not print too, but only be visible when I was working in the program.  This was a very effective method of creating lead sheet type scores.  In this first draft using this method I only had slashes in most bars, acting as placeholders.  There is very little in the way of distinct rhythms or chord voicings.

            In the third draft, Picture 4, I decided to get more specific with rhythms and voicings.  I created a grand staff for this.  I created all of my note heads, stems, beams, ledger lines, flags, etc., from scratch in Adobe Illustrator.  Then I copied and pasted those items as needed.  This allowed me to have total control over the look of the score, much like writing sheet music by hand.  

Here is the latest draft I have been working on, Picture 5.  This I did in the program Sibelius.  Sibelius is music notation software, and is the industry standard.  It is essentially the Microsoft Word of sheet music.  It is an extremely powerful program, sometimes too powerful.  I have only been using this program for a couple months, and I am getting much faster at using this program, but at first it was very slow going.  In fact it took me an hour and a half just to enter the seventeen bars of the tenor line.

            Sibelius has many great features that help me along the way.  For instance if I try to put a note in that is too high or low for the range of the viola, cello, soprano, or tenor it will shade that note red in order to warn me.  If I try to enter a piano chord that would be impossible for an average pianist to stretch their hands into, it will shade that chord red.  It also has a feature called “flexi-time” input where it will play a metronome, and I can use a MIDI piano to play the notes directly into the program.  When I’m all done it will also extract the individual parts for each performer, and print them out individually.

            A feature that I particularly like is that Sibelius will play back the audio of my piece.  Granted it sounds really cheesy (think old school Nintendo sounds, but a little better), but it helps because if I make a mistake that I am neglecting to visually notice, I can check my work and see if I notice it aurally.  The playback also understands all standard markings, so that if I add a slur, a staccato, an accent, a dynamic marking, an ornament, a special bowing, etc, I will hear that reflected in the audio.

            So that is my process thus far regarding the notation.  Now I would like to talk about the vision of my piece.

            When composing the first thing I always think of is the overall vision.  This is not something that I can convey easily in words though, it is essentially what I want to get out of my imagination and into the air.  Without the vision for the composition, there is no composition, so that is why I must think of this first.

            The second thing I think about is the performer’s role.  Without performers to perform the composition, then there is a composition, but no one can hear it.  I must consider many things for the performers.  For instance I cannot write a double stop (a double stop is when a string performer plays two notes simultaneously) that would require the cellist to stretch his or her index finger and pinky a distance of twelve inches.  Well unless I could convince Yao Ming to play cello in my piece.  I also have to consider how enjoyable it is for the performers.  If their part only plays for a very small duration of the piece, they will be very bored during the rest of the piece.  I also have to consider the skill level of the performers.  Fortunately the potential performers I have lined up for this piece are very skilled, and could probably play anything I threw at them.  But I am considering that I also want to have this piece performed in the future, and I may not have that luxury then.

            My third and final consideration is the audience.  There will likely be composers and performers in the audience.  So I want the piece to be interesting to them, at multiple levels.  I want to challenge them to think when they are listening.  But there will also be people who don’t know anything at all about music.  So the piece has to be accessible to them.  It can’t be so complicated that it only appeals to the musicians in the audience, and sounds like total dissonance and chaos to the non-musicians.

                        In the compositional process I will be applying knowledge I have gained from Piano 1, 2, and 3, Music Theory 1, 2, and 3, Orchestration, and Cello lessons.  Although it may sound not so creative, a technique I am going to use for my own practice is to take my music theory book and go through it and try to use as many of the techniques described in it as possible.  For instance I will use secondary functions, non-chord tones, sequences, typical harmonic progression, common-chord modulation, common-tone modulation, direct modulation, mode mixture, Neapolitan chords, augmented sixth chords, enharmonic modulation, and many more techniques that I have in my music composition toolbox.

            The performers for this piece are going to be Phil Carlsen on cello, Amy LeBlanc on viola, Dan Woodward singing tenor, either Lily Funahashi or Steve Pane on piano, and the soprano is to be announced.

            I will be creating a giant four foot by seven foot Surprise Bag for the performance.  This summer I am taking 2D design, and I will use that knowledge to create the design for my own rendition of a surprise bag.  I am going to make a giant lollipop, a giant foam airplane, a giant sticker, and a giant piece of gum for this.

Art's Night

What an exciting Michael D. Wilson Art's Night this year.  It's amazing to think that a whole year has passed since the first Art's Night.  It seems like yesterday.

This year's event went off without a hitch.  As far as I could tell there were no technical difficulties or anything of that nature.  I don't think it was as well attended as last year's event, but that is okay.  We'll have to think about what we can do differently for next year to change that.

The improv concert at noon was great.  When I showed up and we tried out the large group playing, I had some real reservations.  I really thought it did not sound good.  When it comes to volume levels I can get really worked up.  Just like all music it takes a lot of practice to learn how to have good levels in a live concert, especially without a sound person.  The Pond Duck Trio had a lot of experience with this playing a lot of shows that had either no sound person, or someone who could care less about the levels and did a terrible job.  So we got really good at having really good levels between ourselves on stage, then all the sound person would have to do is turn the all of the sliders to about the same level.  With such a large group at the improv class we did not all have this experience, not to mention that we had a little larger group than a trio.  The idea to have Ben be a conductor worked fabulously though.  I think that the version we did at the actual performance was the best of all of our trials.

The Car Afterlife piece went really well too, especially the second version.  The piece has a lot of aspects of improv, especially for the conductors.  Some parts of the composition called for the conductors to approximate the tempo of their flag waves for instance.  Leaving things to chance in a composition can be a good thing.  Of course it is impossible to write a musical composition that accounts for everything, and to realize that as a composer is important.  Some composers try to write out every dynamic, even specifying exactly what decibels things should be.  I think this is a little pretentious, and can in fact take away the "feeling" from the piece.

The marching drum group that I wrote and directed went very well.  I had a series of eight two-bar drum patterns, with hand signals to conduct them.  Pattern number five was simply "free improvise" and that was what we spent the most time on.  Without a ton of rehearsal time we were getting lost a little bit, but that was good and actually what I had hoped for.  The beauty of percussion is that it can be non-pitched, so harmonic dissonance is impossible.  The most important thing was that we all kept tempo together, which we did.  I was happy with the participation of people who weren't in the core group, and were trying out the various percussion instruments that Margaret Wescott lent us.

The event in Nordica was a lot of fun too.  I was very impressed with my fellow composition majors Seth Fogg and Josh Case.  Their trios sounded excellent.  The next day Lily Funahashi had an interesting point that the three of us have very different compositional styles.  I like thinking about what we do the same and what we do differently.  I think that Seth is definitely further on the melodic side of things than Josh.  I know that I tend to stick to more melodic techniques, specifically diatonic melodies, but I'm not sure if I do that more so or less than Seth.

The solo guitar improvisation was very interesting too.  It takes a lot of courage to get up in front of a crowd to perform a solo piece, especially one that is improvised on the spot.  I would be afraid that I would have a brain cramp.  He let himself go though, which I think is exactly the best thing that one can do in improv.  Rather than thinking consciously about the conunterpoint he just let the notes come to him.

The final piece of Guitar Trio that Meg Dzyak brought to us from New York went very well.  I was happy to play drums, I always love to do so.  I don't consider myself an especially great drummer, but I think I held my own.  When I mess up with drums it is always when I try to do some sort of fill that is just too fast.  Since western music has so much to do with even numbers, I have come to the conclusion that I mess up fills when I try to double my speed.  For instance quarter notes and eighth notes are always fine.  Triplets and sextuplets are always fine.  When I then try to double again to sixteenth notes, it is usually fine, unless it is especially syncopated or I try to use a combination of drums that causes my hands to stumble over each other.  When I go to thirty-second notes I often get in trouble.  I think what happens is sometimes I try to fit in thirty-one or thirty-three notes into a bar, and then I get lost.  In the moment I never know if I am right or if I messed up.  

I remember in one rehearsal of Guitar Trio trying thirty-second notes, and then thinking I might have messed up.  I looked at Phil Carlsen to see what he thought, but I had no idea how to read his face.  Then if I did mess up, all of us would have to come to consensus on whether to go with the mistake or ignore me and keep the correct beat.  All of this without talking.  And all of this happening within an instant.  I still don't know what happened.

Giant Steps

Tonight Ben Prentiss, Shea Ellis, Graham Duval and I are scheduled to have rehearsal for a performance in class tomorrow.  We had a rehearsal on Friday, but we didn't seem to be getting into the groove, so we called it early.  At that practice we were working on 12-bar blues.  Perhaps it was mostly me who wasn't getting into the groove on that one.

I feel that 12-bar blues are about the most simple and boring music to perform (perhaps that presents a challenge in itself...how to make it interesting, but we won't go there).  I have been playing 12-bar blues since I was five.  In fact just the other day I visited my friend, and his young son had just taken up guitar lessons.  The first chords the teacher showed him were E, A, and D.  I showed him how that easily translated to a 12-bar blues (especially on guitar, because one can use the open strings), and he was quite excited to know that he could now play a song after only one lesson.  It just goes to show that 12-bar blues are one of the simplest things that can be played though.

I feel limited by only three chords, and solos consisting primarily of either a seven note diatonic scale, or even worse simply a minor pentatonic scale.  I was having a feeling like that in practice last friday, so I suggested we regroup after the weekend, and I would bring in some jazz charts that were essentially 12-bar blues, but "jazzed" up a little.

In my search for 12-bar jazz I went through all of my Fake Books and Real Books.  Boy did that bring back the memories.  When I first started guitar lessons my teacher and I used these extensively (he had just graduated from UMA's Jazz program, so naturally he would choose that route).  By the time I started perusing these books I had strayed very far from 12-bar anything.  In fact I ended up at John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."

In attempting to warm up on the chart, I was doing okay.  All of the chords are either major, minor, major seventh, minor seventh, or dominant seventh chords.  Nothing too tricky there.  The tempo is really quick, something like 280 beats per minute, but I was doing okay with it.  I had to put the chart down to go to Dr. Carlsen's theory class.  When I arrived I asked him whether jazz, such as Giant Steps, would be analyzed in the methods of tonal harmony, or twentieth century harmony.  Before I knew it we had spent an hour discussing this piece!  Boy did I learn a lot.  Giant Steps has so much depth to it.  There are sequences galore, and once we got to analyzing Coltrane's solo (which I had a transcription of) I found that Coltrane is quite a genius.  The way his solo arpeggiates and flies through scales show that he had a very deep understanding of music theory.

Before theory class my thought had been that we could play Giant Steps, and whoever was soloing could just play random notes as fast as they could the whole time, and it would sound fine.  In analyzing the piece I have now decided that I might feel embarrassed to show up to class and do such a thing (although to the untrained ear it would work, since the solo is moving at eighth notes...560 notes a minute!, it would be hard to try and judge the quality of the solo).  I also realized I might be embarrassed by how I was voicing the chords.

Like on a piano, one can play the same chord in many ways on a guitar.  With my rusty jazz chord vocabulary I was all over the place in my first attempt at Giant Steps.  My left hand was literally sliding up and down the neck between every chord.  Although I was playing the right chords, it would look very ridiculous to play this way on stage.  I could definitely sit down and figure out how to voice the chords so that they were all in first position for instance.  But these shapes would not be in my muscle memory at all, and haven't been since I played jazz in high school.  I am afraid that this piece may be too much to bite off for only one rehearsal the night before class.

So we will see what we show up to in class tomrrow.  I do want to do something more structured than just 12-bar in E though.  A theme that has been rolling around my head all semester has been, "How does one balance improv with structure?"  I am a believer that structure can lead to even greater depth in improv.  Dr. Pane quoted his wife Dr. Funahashi as mentioning something about how even classical pianists improvise.  I believe what she meant was that with a structured score, the improv gets even more exciting because the performers can improvise between the notes, or use rubato, or many other techniques.  No composition is so complete that it leaves nothing up to the performer.  Perhaps then the age old battle has been between performers and composers...the composers are trying to get the performers to stop improvising, and realize the vision of the composition completely.  And the performers are trying to stick their own improvisation in, in order to create a sense of individualism.

In closing, please check out this amazing YouTube video of Coltrane's Giant Steps.  It is an animation of the score, in which the notes fall into place as the piece goes along.

Jambands Lights

Tomrrow I have to present on "Jambands and Lights."  I'm really glad that I was given this opportunity to present on lights in a music class, even though they stimulate the eyes and not the ears.

I think I am going to start with the 1960's.  Concert lighting really came into its own at this point.  Much of what it utilized was stolen from theatrical lighting.  However concert lighting is also responsible for many innovations.  For instance before concert lighting there were not many options for portable rigging and trussing.  Since theatrical lighting designers are afforded a longer time in the venue, and if it is a touring theatre production then the venue most likely already has rigging built in, theatrical lighting didn't need to put an emphasis on portability.  During the advent of concerts with world tours the lighting designers quickly realized that bands play in very different venues than theatre.  Sometimes the venue will be a theatre, but very often it might be a civic center or outdoors, and so the bands had to bring their own lights.

In the 1960's the mecca of lighting was San Francisco.  Some of the original Jam Bands (such asa the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, etc.) cam from SF.  I found a great book by James Moody that has a nice history of concert lighting.  There would be "happenings" that truly broke any sort of categorization into any one art form.  There would be video, music, non-musical audio, and lights.  Most people at these events would take LSD and try to just take it all in.  Very often the Grateful Dead would play at these events.  Many people did experiments in lighting that have led to what we know today as concert lighting (a side note: many people also did experiments with surround sound at these events too).

In the 60's concert lighting was defined very differently than theatrical lighting.  The point wasn't neccesarily to make it easy to see the band.  It was for the overall effect.  Now someone in the nosebleed seats wouldn't have to try and squint at the band, but could look at the giant light shows instead.  In the 60's the preferred method of lighting effects was to use a typical overhead projector with petri dishes on it.  Then oil, water, and food coloring would be added (oil and water don't mix, but rather swirl around each other).  The heat from the projector would cause the mixture to make very interesting patterns.

Throughout the 1970's concert lighting continued to expand.  The overhead projector was seen less and less, and giant rigs with par cans (basically a concert lighting fixture that is a coffee can with a light bulb, and a colored filter on it) were seen more and more.  Unfortunately microprocessors were still unheard of, so the method of controlling these was very archaic.

In the 1980's computers started to be incorporated into lighting.  This was the first time that programmable lighting boards were seen, and also the first time that lights that could move via control from the computer were seen.  These new lights were fantastic.  Inside the light they had a color wheel that could be controlled remotely, and they were mounted on yokes that could allow them to move in 360 degrees on the X, Y, or Z axis, also controllable remotely.

In the 1990's these movable fixtures became the norm, and one band to utilize them greatly was another Jamband: Phish.  Many people call Phish's light designer, Chris Kuroda, the fifth member of the band.  His instrument was the light rig.  He would have to learn all of the changes in the songs, just like the members of the band.  During improvisation sections of songs the band and he would be in the pocket together too.  The band would look to the lights above them for inspiration, just as Chris was listening to the music for inspiration.  

Last Week's Class Performance

Well last week I performed in two groups.  The John Fox Company performed to catch up from the week before, and The Pond Duck Trio had a surprise reunion.

I thought that the John Fox Co. went very well.  We had rehearsed the song "Crazy Bus," and it came out fine, aside from some issues with levels.  Ben came up with the lyrics, which reflected on a time when he heard WTOS broadcasting live from a fair in Maine.  The DJ was advocating that people come down, and ride the crazy bus there.  The DJ also said they had a guy there who could sing any song that anyone named.  It was a good prompt for lyrics.

The levels were a little iffy, but that is part of what comes with technology.  The Kaoss Pad has so many settings, that without any time to refresh my memory that day, I was getting a little lost in the circuits of the machine.  As unfortunate as that was, it also brought a fresh new sound to our song.  In fact the rendition of Crazy Bus that we performed sounded nothing like the one we rehearsed.  That is okay with the John Fox Company though.

We also did our experiment with the Chromatic Memory Game.  Quite a coincidence that that day we studied John Zorn, who also developed music performance/improv games.  I thought that the game worked out alright, but it was tough to make the transitions sound good.  I think if I used that game again, I would have the players play the game until the end, write the order of notes that they came up with on the board, and then improvise from those after the game was done.  Then we could spend more time on each note, and have someone call out when it was time to move to the next note.

The Pond Duck Trio performance was interesting anyway.  It was odd to play in that group again.  The three of us hadn't played together since December when we did Abbey Road (other than the night before to practice for class).  I think that since we were a little rusty, and our band intercommunication was rusty, it was hard to be satisfied.  Human nature allows me to remember only the best times, and I sort of just expected that our performance would be as good or better than those times we played together in the past.  It also didn't help that it was so early in the morning, and I was running on very little sleep.

Kaoss Memory

The John Fox Company strikes again.  This week we tried a new electronic setup.  Using two electric guitars and the mini '80s Casio keyboard we ran our instruments through the Korg Kaoss pad that is in the EA lab, then that into Ben's sampling pedal.

This worked very well.  There are three inputs on the Kaoss pad (although only one can be played simultaneously, Ben's sampling pedal can still create textures by sampling one at a time), so it effectively acted as a mixer.  We inputted one guitar, a microphone, and the Casio.

Then the sampling pedal has two inputs, so we plugged the second guitar into that.  Now we had four sources of sound, all able to be quite effected.

For most of the time during our practice we just did free form layering, getting familiar with this new setup.  The sampling pedal was placed at Dan and Ben's feet, and I put the Kaoss pad on my knee.  Dan and Ben each took an electric guitar, I took the Casio, and we began.

The Kaoss pad can act as either a sampler, an effects module, a synthesizer, or a drum machine.  To start our layers I played the drum machine off of my Casio.  Then I hit the BPM button on the Kaoss to be the same as the Casio.  Pressing the tactile pad, I could signal various drum beats samples to play to the BPM of the Casio.  This created a very nice drum texture for our first layer, since the modern Korg drum beat contrasted so much with the Casio's drum beat.

So we continued to add layers.  Eventually I brought up an idea I had a few weeks ago to create more interaction with the class as we improvised.  I suggested that we create a deck of twenty-four cards in pairs of twelve colors.  Then put every note of the chromatic scale on each of those twelve pairs, and presto...we have Chromatic Memory game (I'm still waiting to hear back from Parker Brothers).

The game is a two player game, ages 6 and up.  The deck is strewn across a table, face down, and each player takes turns flipping any two cards.  When s/he gets a pair, that goes into his/her hand.  At that time it will be indicated to the band which note of the chromatic scale was on the pair, and the band will proceed to modulate so as to tonicize that new note.  The player goes again.  Whichever player gets the most notes by the end of the game wins!

We shall see how this works out on Tuesday.  I think there perhaps should be a third person who indicates on a piece of paper to the band what the note is.  Then it can also be looked at after the game is done to see what the order of notes was.  Wouldn't it be wild to play and coincidentally turns out to be the circle of fifths?

In closing I will leave a link to a piece of technology that I have heard of that reminded me of the Kaoss pad.  It is a tangible music device.  Bjork uses it.  Need I say more? Reactable on YouTube.

Get Out of My Bubble!

When performing in any ensemble that ventures into the world of improvisation, the issue of personal space always comes up.  The best performers seem to have extra sensory perception to guide them, but is this something that is learned or intrinsic?

The first step to create space for performers is instrument selection.  For instance, generally one wouldn't want bass, drums, and eight guitars in a jazz group.  If left to fend for themselves the guitarists would be stepping all over each other's toes.  It could work though too; for instance recall the jazz video of trumpets that Dan Allen presented in class.  There were three or four instrumentalists trading solos, and they had a very good awareness of personal space.  With musicians it seems there is a natural desire to be heard though (my amp goes up to 11...), and it would be hard to play in a group year after year with four trumpeters.

Here is my story to bring in my personal experience.  Throughout high school I was in a band that would most likely be classified a "jam band."  We had a drummer (Graham), myself on electric guitar, an electric bass player, and another guitarist.  Most of the time our policy was that whoever wrote the song could choose which guitarist got the solo.  Once I got to college a new band was formed within days of my arrival, Simple Academy, again a jamband.  We were together for two years, and adopted the same policy that I had in my previous band.  It seemed to work well, because it encouraged Shea and I to write more music (in order to score more solos).  For many reasons the band eventually broke up.  However, one reason that actually may have been at the foundation of our demise was our personal space in the music.

Simple Academy was a group of two type A personalities, and two non-A personalities.  I would say that myself and the drummer were type-A, and Shea and the bass player were more passive.  This wasn't good though.  The drummer and I were constantly telling the other what to do (Nate: "I wrote the damn song, so you will play the drum beat I tell you" Adam: "I am the drummer, so I can play whatever I want as long as I keep the rhythm"......or, Nate: "You totally lost the beat in that last song Adam"  Adam: "Well even if I did, you have to follow me because I am the drummer and play the rhythm, therefore whatever I play, right or wrong, by default becomes the correct rhythm").  On top of that Shea and I were getting tired (not mad at each other though, like Adam and I) of just playing the same chords over and over while the other soloed, even if we knew that we could take a solo on the next song.

So that is what the Pond Duck Trio came out of.  Shea and I left Simple Academy, and I picked up the bass.  Graham came back, met Shea, hit it off fantastically, and joined as our drummer.  Now as a trio on three different instruments we had our space (and I was on a rhythm instrument so no one could tell me I had no say in the rhythm, but that didn't matter anyway because Graham never seems to lose the beat.  He may lose the count, but he still keeps ticking like a metronome.)  The space we each had was now enormous.  For instance, while Shea was soloing, I could do the same on the bass, and it sounded great!  It was just a fantastic walking bass line to accompany Shea.  Or Graham could start playing rediculous beats all over the place, but I would just keep the rhythm for him so he could make sure to grab back on once he was done.  Shea could do everything and more that he had been able to do before.  And sometimes we would have two guitars and drums, if the song called for it.  

So, I would say observation of personal space in improvisation is something that can be learned, but also must be in the performers naturally.  Over the course of three bands we all learned a lot about personal space...what works and what doesn't.  But some of us naturally acclimated better to it.  Graham had always been better at it than Adam, even earlier in our lives (although Graham may have grown up listening to improv music more than Adam, so that also has a degree of nurture to it).  Well anyway I will close with this statement that I agree with: good improvisers can find zen in their music.