Sesame Street

We've been talking about touring festivals next year. I'm interested in the kind of vocal jams we get going in workshops, and about the new creative challenge of how you get that kind of thing going in a looser jam rather than a workshop.

I like this.

So I've experienced two kinds of jams. Actually they're not jams, it's a jam and a session.

Sessions are performance led. People jump in with a piece to perform. Everyone else either listens or joins in. When they join in they either join in because they know the piece, or they make it up.

With a jam, someone starts a chord sequence or a rhythm and then other people build stuff on top of that. Diva moments ripple around chaordically.

I'm over-clarifying. Jams often become session-like and sessions often become jam-like, but technically there are two different things going on.

So McFerrin's approach to creating a vocal jam in an informal session might be to do a performance that he's the leader of, which involves getting everybody singing playfully, to begin with by call and response.

So how do you get people into whale song without words? In an informal jam?

Ooo now there's a challenge.

Todd did it at Dance camp. We were doing biodanzer and we'd all ended in a very very big close knot of people standing so close we didn't have to hold ourselves up. He started a loud hum and everyone joined in with different notes that then harmonized chaordically in that wonderful way for about five minutes and it was golden. Golden!

So the dance camp crowd are well trained. There's a difference between long ooommms, and higher risk contributions like melodies, rhythms and silly noises.

Maybe you have part of the crowd primed. If I kicked something off when Loose was there, she'd start playing all over it and other people would follow her lead.

Humm. Something to play with.

Looks like there are two ways to do what Bobby did: 1) write it; 2) make it up on the spot.