Shaped By The Sound Around Us: Furthering an Ecological Dynamics Approach to Developing Instrumental Improvisational Skills

Abstract

This practice-led project investigates the development of improvisational skills for an advanced improviser through the application of ecological dynamics, a contemporary framework of learning and development from the fields of sports and human movement science. Ecological dynamics encourages the emergence of new, goal-orientated skills through the strategic application of constraints on the learner, task, or environment. The framework conceptualises skill development as an adaptive response where learners explore and eventually exploit the constraints and affordances (opportunities for action) within their performance environment. For this project, an experimental practice was undertaken wherein various audio and video materials featuring speech (obtained from publicly available online sources) were employed as a novel sonic constraint during a five-month period of daily spontaneous trumpet improvisations. Subsequently, a creative work was recorded, capturing the deployment of the newly embodied skills in their applicable context: an improvised ensemble performance. The research outputs of the project are presented as an (i) autoethnographic report of the practice experiment, (ii) taxonomy of techniques, approaches, and materials, as well as the (iii) resultant creative work. Following from Slater (2020) and Rapp (2023), this study aims to further the application of ecological dynamics to instrumental improvisation.