The Method
The six members of The 16 Deadly Improvs have been playing music under various guises for over twenty years. The beginning of their story is a familiar one to many musical artists. The usual unsigned band’s dreams to “make it big” in the music industry leads to years of recording demos in local recording studios and performing in local bars and clubs. As the years pass a feeling of disillusionment with the business side of music grows, or perhaps a rupture of some sort is opened up among band members. Whatever the dilemma, the integrity of the musical unit becomes compromised and it either dies or is reborn again. It was at these crossroads that the six members of what would become The 16 Deadly Improvs took their usual aspiring artist challenges and replaced them with a second attention – this one focused solely on creating music for music’s sake.
After years of using conventional approachs to composing, arranging and recording their music, the members discovered and adopted, to them, a new method of songwriting. This led to a long road of self discovery into the recording process and concurrently into the creative process resulting in what would become The 16 Deadly Improvs sound.
Band members systematically learned and unlearned the recording process while the band as a whole experimented ceaselessly with improvisation and developing core rhythm tactics. After several years of working with these experiments on and off, the unit finally committed itself to taking a fully concentrated approach to recording the music of each band member based as purely upon individual artistic expression and freedom as possible. This meant placing zero emphasis on commercialization, genre trappings or editoralization of performances and instead stressing full, uncensored expression in individual and group performances, however the execution may be of the final musical passages. By recording an improvisation to use as the basis of a piece and learning to live within the confines of that piece, The 16 Deadly Improvs found the possibilities to create something that could never be created in the more conventional songwriting approaches. Within this framework, the band found the ability to record a previously unavailable synergy – the synergy of a group of musicians creating in real-time, immediately and “on the spot”.
Music played by bands and ensembles relies essentially on focused nonverbal communication and split second decision making by the members. Through musical and personal relationships forged over twenty years, the 16DI have developed a unique and cohesive compositional and recording sound that will make an exciting, satisfying and addictive addition to a fan of music’s playlist.