This item is not in the library — it is a part of: C. Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Intuitive Music: A Mini Handbook.
(previously: Big Parameter Exercise)
This may be done as an alternative to the parameter exercises focusing on one parameter at a time, or as a supplement to them.
Participants improvise according to the instruction of varying as much as possible in a given time period, e.g., one minute. That which the group does is to sound as varied as possible thus demanding collective responsibility for the outcome. (A discussion about here-and-now in music may be engaged in first.) After listening to a recording, the teacher points out what did not become varied. This is repeated with sensitivity for what is going on in the group's working process. At a suitable point, the teacher asks which parameters and dimensions can be varied, with a dimension being that which is variable as to one characteristic. A short explanation about the acoustic nature of music and pitch, timbre, intensity and durations as fundamental properties may be offered here, but a long discussion should not be engaged in immediately before or after the improvisation. A good idea is to make a list on a blackboard of proposed parameters that should be copied by all. Refer to (PAR) Parameter Exercises (↑) for a list of parameters and propositions how to work with them.
This exercise should be taken as far as is reasonable according to the situation and can either sensitively lead to other activities or just settle into the participants. Here is a quotation from a student: "Much has happened in music in this lesson." (Although the playing lasted only 5 x 1 minute, however intensely!) You may end by listening to all of the improvisations focusing on the development in them.
Here is a true story about the pre-history of this exercise: At a concert with the Group for Intuitive Music in Ghent 1977 I asked the lighting man at the rehearsal to vary the light as much as possible. He faded the various lights up and down with regular intervals. "No, I mean in all parameters," I said to him. "Oh, in all parameters," he replied. Because he was trained in new music and improvisation he was then able to immediately do as I desired.
The wording above is by Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, as written in Intuitive Music: A Mini-Handbook, licensed CC BY-NC 4.0 (Bergstrøm-Nielsen 2009, 17)
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