Part 1

Name: Lisa Cameron
Nationality: American
Occupation: Percussionist, drummer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser
Current release: Lisa Cameron's Ghosts of the JA, a collaboration with Ernesto Diaz-Infante, is out now via Loma Editions.

If you enjoyed this Lisa Cameron  interview, and would like to find out more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.

Over the course of her career, Lisa Cameron has worked with a wide range of artists, including Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Claire Rousay.

[Read our Ingebrigt Håker Flaten interview]
[Read our Claire Rousay interview]



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?

I became interested in improvisation at a very early age, when I was a small child in Kansas in the ‘60s. My earliest memory of improvisation was when I was probably 5 or 6 and I found that it was fun to talk or sing through an electric fan. I just liked how it sounded and how nothing else really sounded like that.

The town I lived in was small, and there were no record stores to speak of, but records were available in very small quantities in a variety store that I used to go to. I didn't know this then, but apparently that store would stock records mostly from the Verve label.

Verve was a label known for mostly jazz, but I also found two particular records that looked very interesting to me: We're Only In It For the Money by the Mothers of Invention …



... and White Light/ White Heat by The Velvet Underground. I bought those records solely based on the way the covers looked. Very unusual as compared to the other records that I had, such as the Doors or the Beatles or even Jimi Hendrix.



Somehow I noticed that the Mothers of Invention were playing very specific types of sounds, and that the Velvet Underground, especially on the tracks “I Heard Her Call My Name” and “Sister Ray,” seemed to be doing something very different. It didn't seem as specific, and it was very interesting to me.

The sounds by the Mothers of Invention were also alien to me, but I could tell even then that their songs were compositions and not improvisation. I had also heard In A Silent Way by Miles Davis and that really opened up my ears.



I didn't know what improvisation was yet, but I knew that I liked it. I also heard things by Hendrix such as “EXP” …



… and “The End” by The Doors, which had a similar feeling.



The mid-60s was an incredible time to hear so much diversity going on that was even accessible on the radio.

Flash forward to high school, where I had already become a record collector and spent many weekends going to big box stores like Target or Kmart where you could buy records for 30 cents a piece in huge cutout bins.

I would go from store to store on the weekends looking for records, and for 30 cents, I would find Sun Ra, Can, Brian Jones and the Pipes of Pan, the Stooges, dub reggae—just an incredible selection of records, some of them I still own.



I would spend about $20 and just bring a big pile home and then listen to them all and then just throw them out if I didn't like them. I think that all of this different musical input had a huge effect on my musical abilities.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

My understanding of what improvisation is and isn't has changed over the years.

When I was first exposed to it, I assumed that improvisation was anything that didn't follow a typical chord progression, such as bebop or other types of jazz, 20th-century classical music, gamelan, psychedelic rock, etc.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

After discovering free improvisation and jazz when I went to college, I realized that I was not interested in musical structure. I had enrolled in music theory classes in Denton, Texas, and realized that I couldn't pass my piano barrier because I wasn't trained at all to read music. So I flunked out and became an English major and also did a lot of jamming with like-minded people.

We would listen to Sun Ra, Can, Hawkwind, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and others and try to approximate our own versions. Rather than have someone come in with compositions, we just created the music at the moment, and I felt that we were being very democratic about it. Our community was built on making the sounds and not following a musical framework.



At the same time, however, I was playing drums in bands making a living and also knew that improvisation was not about that. I suppose that I made a mistake not studying composition, but that was my choice, and it worked for me to a certain extent.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

My approach to improvisation is to define certain simple parameters with my instrumentation and then create something that is never defined.

I was very influenced in college by composers such as John Cage and Alvin Lucier and their approaches to sound. I began using contact mics in the late ’70s , and I still use them in almost every performance. I feel that I have progressed with them to a level of using them as instruments rather than using them on instruments to amplify them.



Also finding resonant frequencies in rooms and using them as sound sources is very important to me.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

When I first began using contact mics on snare drums regularly in public, it was a very primitive process. I had come across a CD that came out in the early 2000s that included recordings made in the early ’60s by John Cale and Sterling Morrison. They were using feedback through guitar amps using guitars, violins, etc., and I decided to do something similar—something that simple using percussion.



I was using an amplifier and a contact mic attached to a snare drum and creating feedback drones with no other processing except for the 60-cycle hum of the amp.

It was a breakthrough to me, and I began making records under the name Venison Whirled. I noticed that I would get different frequencies of feedback in different rooms and began to be able to define how rooms made with materials such as wood, carpet, or concrete would react to this. I often tried to push the sound to very loud levels and noticed that there was a barrier where the sound would just become a squeal, and I would try to find that barrier and push it as far to that limit as I could.

That was certainly a learning experience, and it took quite a while for me to be able to find these barriers, and sometimes I would be playing a noise show in a concrete basement and have real problems trying to control them. However, my performance parameters were very simple and always indeterminate. Sometimes those problems became fantastic performances in their own right.

Another learning curve that I had to learn involved how to make these noises sound interesting and create something from them that people would want to hear.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

My instruments are basically drums and cymbals, Tibetan bowls, salad bowls—anything that makes a sound that I like. The tools are just things that I find in everyday life that I can use to vibrate drum heads, wooden surfaces, glass, and other materials. I pay a lot of attention to how they can combine or make sounds on their own.

For example, I’ll set several objects on a drum head, put the contact mic on it, and just let them move around in whatever direction they choose to go in. I don't really direct the action so much as let it happen. But I do have to initiate something.

I'm always amazed at the sounds that can come out of very subtle movements. In the last 10 years or so, I have been making sound sculptures out of different materials and then learning how to play them after they're made.