What is a GRID Session?

(Total copout!) but I'll start off by saying you really need to experience one. There is playing and then there is talking about playing… despite best intentions these are obviously not the same thing.

Anyway, one of the really important things to me in improvisation is communication - listening to each other, passing ideas, responding, dialogue etc. If you're in a room full of say twenty people, all playing at the same time it can be hard to be heard, and it can be hard to hear other people. Some people love this noisy, chaotic, busy environment. However for CBS, after a period of having these sort of sessions, for me it was lacking in a a number of ways - certainly I wanted to emphasise the communication much more.

In my teaching and music practice I've worked with different systems of leading and shaping improvisation, most obvious is the time I spent with Phil Morton, his 50-50 system and its chess clocks. Although I liked some elements of this system (critically brought home the importance of not playing/'tacet') personally I found having to work the clocks distracted me from what was going on on an ongoing basis in the sound.

When to play, not what to play...

So, using what I'd picked up from other systems (including those of Anthony Donovan) I decided to try a slightly different approach. In monthly sessions, I introduced what was basically a very open score or 'GRID': Nothing new but something functional: Everybody gets a sheet and allocated a number. The sheet gives time periods and which numbers are playing in those time periods. You can play when your number is on etc. We tried this and it was instantly successful. The sheet didn't tell you what to play so there was still a large element of freedom. The ten minute time periods were long enough to let something develop. The GRID also meant that people weren't habitually playing in the same combinations, which had become a bit of a problem for us - same people, same interactions etc. It also meant if somebody new showed up, due to its simple nature, they could quickly pick up on the system and join in with the session. All good.

Having run GRIDs with different players at a number of sessions in the last couple of years it does have some disadvantages e.g. You sometimes get awkward movements between one section and another. Also there are times when as a player sat listening you're hearing something that you'd really like to join in with but you can't because your number isn't 'in play'. Similarly there are times where you think 'this it's really good I would like it to carry on' but the players have to stop because their time is up...

It's still a work in progress. Hope to hear you on GRID soon.