Singing the bass: Vocality, technique, physicality and imagination in a double bass improviser praxis
Abstract
This practice-based multi-media study presents procedural knowledge that is integral to double bass improvisational preparation. The content of the thesis is a detailed participant-observer study of research as preparation for creative output, since the knowledge gained by improvising is concerned with process-in-action and is itself the priority of the research. Knowledge gleaned from inside this preparation, connects directly to my improvisations, heard in two contrasting recordings, one freely improvised and one based on compositions. I identify three intersecting aspects of melodic improvisational preparation on the double bass: the physical, the imaginative and the aural. These aspects are detected intersecting with audiation and vocality. This contributes to knowledge about the way preparations used in my double bass creative practice allow me to improvise from a type of voluntary, melodic un-plannedness.