Honestly, to this day, I think this is one of my favorites. Bliggidy Blam was a weird project that happened during a time where I got into comic books and this quirky form that seemed to be present. The score for the abcd(x) pieces grew out of this form. And the form is basically all that is notated. No melodies, no harmonies, no rhythms, no notes….just the form. The title of this record speaks to that: formal i. Or formal improvisation. The pieces became like games: we had to improvise, change what we were improvising at a certain point, and then try to remember what we did before so we could come back to it. On and on. Some of the movements became complicated and funny. I like the fact that this record highlights our mistakes in memory almost more than anything we played. But what this band played was funny.
Brian McWhorter, Nate Wooley – trumpets
Mat Fieldes, Tim Kiah – electric basses
Matt Aiken – drums
Recorded in my NYC apartment with a futon mattress separating the trumpets from the drums. It was a sweaty mess as I recall. And it was winter.
The score for the abcd(x) pieces is below – it’s a game piece – a memory game. The idea was that the improvisers would play something (A), then play something else (B), and then have to come back to the first thing (A). At times, the results are hilarious. And, if you take a look at the score, you’ll notice that each line is basically its own piece – AND the first 5 lines are visually represented in a different way on the cover of the album.
[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/brianmcwhorter/files/2005/02/abcdx.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]
Recently, I got asked about Counting – an important track for me and something that was quite different from the abcd(x) pieces on the record. Counting started out as an electronic piece of mine – from my early days in NYC. I wanted to make an electronica track using only samples from my trumpet and voice. Here is the original track:
Link to purchase the Bliggidy Blam record: