Derek Bailey
Derek Bailey
Derek Baileywas an English avant-garde guitarist and leading figure in the free improvisation movement...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth29 January 1930
play listening records
If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you’d have to bring into the listening.
player methodology adapted
But that methodology where players are pitted against other unfamiliar players has been so widely adapted now that anybody plays with everybody.
music degrees intimacy
Undeniably, the audience for improvisation, good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music that is not achieved in any other situation.
player young middle
Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.
song duos
I like duos with percussionists. I like the songs that percussionists sing.
people kind sometimes
Even if it is difficult playing with other people - sometimes it's great, sometimes it isn't, but that is kind of the point of it. It loses its point playing solo.
murder concerts solo
Solo concerts are murder, I find; I don't like doing them.
studios
Nowadays, I really like playing in studios.
research
I don't research anything.
kind found areas
Personally, I've found that the kind of thing that I like is going into somebody else's area and not playing their music but doing whatever I do in their area.
way company stills
For me, Company is still the best way for me to work.
music children skills
Free improvisation, in addition to being a highly skilled musical craft, is open to use by almost anyone-beginners, children, and non-musicians. The skill and intellect required is whatever is available. Its accessibility to the performer is, in fact, something which appears to offend both its supporters and detractors....And as regards method, the improvisor employs the oldest in music-making...Mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation.
english-musician except familiar internal method shock
I don't think it is any different from what it was, except that the method is now familiar so you can't set up some internal shock situation.
moving people way
Personally, I've found one of the more stimulating ways of playing in recent times has been to kind of move outside the free improvised area and work with people who are probably improvisers but they have a particular way of working.