More unromantic stuff

[ted]

Improvisations are getting far too numerous and long to post since I have had the Zoom H2. There is now no practical recording time limit so I just go on until I am interrupted or tire and keel over. This one is very short comparatively.

[pianowolfi]

Thank you for posting this! A real Ted improv I love it's playfulness and originality!

[ted]

Glad you like it Wolfi. I suspect that my more recent styles of personal improvisation will not elicit the same enthusiasm as my more traditional keyboard language, but that's all right and in the nature of things. When I was young I wished only to be able to improvise in late romantic, baroque, blues, ragtime, stride and swing. But of course two decades later, when I could do these things I found it was not enough. (The exception is classical ragtime - I still cannot improvise that - for some reason it's very difficult) I always seem to be in a state of becoming and never one of being. In a certain sense every improvisation defines its own style and stretches the boundaries of our capability or else we would not grow. And of course it is not necessary to abandon earlier idioms - revisiting familiar regions of our musical landscape is one of the profound joys of improvisation.

[lostinidlewonder]

Rhythmically rich, I like it very much you can certainly hear your "jazz" roots flow through. Some places I liked, 5:13-5:50 is cool. 6:03 Rh downward patterns fit so well, melody following that is so cheeky, awesome. 6:07 that LH interaction is really awesome it would have been nice to hear that for much more. 14:39-15:15 is brilliant that RH fill work is fantastic and the Lh is supporting very well.

[ted]

lostinidlewonder:

Thank you for taking the trouble to listen and for your generous comments. I have always felt that rhythm, including its subset of phrasing, is intuitively the most important aspect of music. Or to put it another way, the absence of a feeling for rhythm is the omission I find myself least able to understand or accommodate in a pianist, classical, jazz or otherwise. And yet the combination occurs so often: brilliant technique, wonderful memory, perhaps an incredible ear for other things, but without the slightest feeling for rhythm on any deep level. I can only conjecture that it is because, unlike harmony for instance, rhythm cannot be analysed, or at least what limited analysis can be done imparts no feeling for it. Secondly, and again in contrast to harmony, notation is a poor approximation to all but the very simplest rhythms.

It is an ongoing mystery to me why discussion among jazz pianists focuses almost exclusively on arguing about various successions of complicated chords. It isn't as noticeable on this forum, but on Pianoworld such analytical threads, sometimes very heated and tedious, can go on for pages. This is why I have never claimed to be a "jazz pianist", having clearly missed the bus altogether in this respect. I am as fond of fine harmony as the next man but to improvise with nothing else in mind ? I don't think so !

Now the points you draw attention to regarding what the left and right hands are doing are really interesting, far from simple, and contain a little enigma I have not yet solved. In recent years I tend to "think", if that's the right word, through both hands at once. Either hand does duty anywhere on the keyboard as required on impulse, not hesitating to cross both ways for as long as necessary. So except for obvious extremes perhaps, I am never sure when listening to my own playing exactly which hand is doing what. Moreover, at special moments, not I think in this particular example though, I get a wonderful illusion that three, sometimes four event streams - I don't just mean contrapuntal melodies - are progressing simultaneously. I dearly wish I knew how I produce this orchestral effect as I like it very much. But because I forget my improvisation very quickly, never mind the convoluted physical processes going on, it is still a mystery to me.



   

     

 

[pianowolfi]

I am just revisiting this, it has made a lasting impression on me.
It's like you actually play rhythms that are not possible to notate. And this is, the longer the more, a very interesting subject to me! Not as an objective but as a result of a creative state of mind, where the mind is enlarged to something like omnipresence or so. Difficult to word.

It speaks truth.

[ted]

Thanks for your interest Wolfi. Yes, you have a mind of unusual perception to have realised that - hardly anybody does, you know. You are absolutely right - rhythms which defy even approximate notation, but which at the same time are clearly and simply felt and communicable at an intuitive level. This dilemma worried me incessantly for years - about three decades to be exact. Like most students of music,  I emerged from this colossal Western tradition of notation. There is nothing wrong with that in itself of course; it has given rise to magnificent expression of human thought and none of us would want to be without the music of the masters, old and modern.

For ages I tried to make these rhythmic thoughts "fit in" to compositional and notational tradition. Different musicians I discussed it with usually fell into two camps. The first told me it could probably be notated and that I was simply lazy.  The second asserted that it didn't matter, as improvisation, spontaneous creation, was not "proper" or "serious" music anyway. A smaller group told me I was just a rather poor jazz pianist and that I should learn to play jazz "properly". I now wish I had ignored all these people, but some of them were highly respected and accomplished professionals bordering on the famous, and when you are young you take more heed of these qualities. The fact is that profound thought can be expressed by rhythmic means as well as harmonic and melodic, and through spontaneous processes lying totally outside both the Western notated tradition and the jazz tradition.

It wasn't until I reached middle-age that I gathered the courage to just go my own way completely and play the sounds which moved me. In the last five or six years particularly I have recorded about sixty CDs and feel no weakening of the drive.

I don't know why it took until I was fifty-five for all this to come out. If there is a lesson to be learned it is that we must be ourselves completely when we create music. Living other people's dreams, other people's traditions through our music is, in the end, a sad waste of the short and precious time allocated to us.

 

[pianowolfi]

I think it is also because of the fact that "we" can get really "better" during the years. I am not fond of that prodigy syndrome that determines a lot of our musical culture since Mozart's time. Mozart himself has even suffered from the consequences of it in his later years (in a different way than in his childhood). Of course I am all for developing and supporting young talents! But a "voice" of an artist can become more distinct and much more meaningful in the later years, as so many examples have shown. So, there you are, unmistakably you, with your own voice! This is wonderful!

[ted]

All in all, I am humbly grateful for the way things have turned out in that particular respect. So many events seem to shape our lives, in retrospect, by nothing more than pure chance. Had I had a teacher who refused to encourage my eccentricity, a different social influence, parents who didn't care, a wife who was intolerant of my music, the conclusion might have been very different. It is natural to want to ascribe progress simply to the huge amount of work we do, and of course this is important, but I sometimes wonder if we are inclined to unconsciously downplay the value of chance and other people on our music.