Well, 2 more improvs :)

[pianowolfi]

Okay, i admit I post a lot these days. I also admit that I like it because I wasn't able to play things like that for months before. These are two of the many improvs I did during the last days. Very contrasting. The first one is from today: Butterflies. This one I dedicate to one of my little students who was so fascinated by the butterflies which appeared in her garden this fall. The second one is from last Friday: Floating. Have you ever watched a dark red sunset and wished you could float away, following the sun to a place far away? That is the mood of this piece. I hope you enjoy them!

[ted]

"Floating" is more straightfowardly atmospheric, while "Butterflies" embodies the interesting idea of alternating busy cells with sparse cells, and I think the overall balance is the better for it. In general, I have found with my own playing that two, perhaps three contrasting cells make spontaneous development easier and more fertile. There is effective use of the partition 4,2,5,1 - starting on Gb that would be Gb,Bb,C,F - the chord probably has a name but I ceased to care about names years ago. It has an embedded fourth, fifth and tritone, giving a pleasing, somewhat bare, Oriental effect, although still lying within a major scale. You used it at the beginning and brought it back toward the end, but perhaps you were not aware of doing so.

[pianowolfi]

Thanks for your comment, ted! I am currently listening to some of your improvs, also to get an idea of your concept of "cells" and "partitions". Well, the concept of cells sounds interesting, I did not see it like that yet. I am trying to figure out what chord you mean as well, are these numbers fingerings?

Thanks

Pianowolfi

[ted]

The numbers are semitone jumps. Every chord type, reduced to the compass of an octave can be represented by a partition of twelve (the number of semitone steps in an octave). In fact, the whole keyboard can be thought of as one big cyclic group of order twelve. I found this unorthodox but quite handy way of decribing chords many years ago in response to somebody asking me how many chord types exist on the piano (352 including a silence).

So major harmony can be represented as 4,3,5  start on any note, jump 4 semitones, then 3, then 5 to complete the octave. Minor chords would be 3,4,5. Diminshed 3,3,3,3 . Major scales are 2,2,1,2,2,2,1. The numbers always total 12.

It is just a pleasing way of viewing keyboard harmony. Although I am capable of understanding traditional musical theory, I cannot see any purpose in it aside from the descriptively analytical ,which view, for the spontaneous creator, is all but useless.

A "cell" is just my term for a dynamic unit of improvisational form. I have long held the opinion that improvisation, being a totally dynamic process, is not well served by attempting to imitate traditional forms. These latter appear to be essentially static in nature. Improvisation is much more like an organic, evolving life form than a piece of beautiful architecture.

The most dynamic component of music is rhythm and the most static is harmony, being by definition almost completely vertical. Therefore it is only logical that the former is more important in improvisation and the latter in static composition. This is indeed the case. However, it seems to me that form is a deeper concept than both and that the whole notion of dynamic form, with its implicit dependence on rhythmic transformation, has been almost completely ignored in Western music. Jazz, by and large, is hidebound by the static, old-fashioned harmonic ideas implied by a four-square melodic line. The only one who could be said to use dynamic form of any sort is Jarrett, but he doesn't, to my mind, go anywhere near far enough.

These things do not comprise the whole picture, but after many years of trying and failing to see any creative point whatsoever in traditional Western musical concepts I was forced to invent my own or flag music away. I suppose that is what it boils down to.