My first recorded improvisation

[richbatsford]

Hi Folks

Ive been improvising for a while at home, but recently had the courage of my convictions for the first time and decided to record one.  

Please let me know what you think

thanks

Rich

[Derek]

Hi Rich,

I enjoyed this, it is very melodic and expressive. To better respond to "please tell me what you think" it may be good to get an idea of what your musical goals are. Do you wish to continue developing the style you've already established for yourself? Do you wish to try new styles? If the former, I'd say you're doing a very good job. I think this sub forum has long suffered from ill defined guidelines for discussion...I'll create a new thread about this. 

[richbatsford]

Hi Derek

many thanks for your feedback, Im glad you found the improv melodic and expressive - my feeling is also that these are probly its stronger suits, I was pretty pleased with the strength and coherence of the melody lines. 

For me, harmonically its pretty unchallenging but it was my first go at recording an improvisation and I wanted to come out of it with something worth listening to - keeping to fairly simple chord progressions made it easier to keep it coherent and listenable.

Thanks for your questions about musical goals it was thought provoking of you to ask.

As I progress as an improvisor I hope to be able to develop a more interesting harmonic language and be able to go to more adventurous places without overly compromising levels of coherence and listenability.

I think my aims are to develop my own personal improvisation style which enables me to improvise freely, ever exploring and developing and progressing and in the future, I plan to start introducing some improvisation when I play live (if the context seems right).

Of course, any further feedback, advice, encouragement or criticism from you or others along the way would be gratefully received.

best wishes

Rich   

[Derek]

You said:
"As I progress as an improvisor I hope to be able to develop a more interesting harmonic language and be able to go to more adventurous places without overly compromising levels of coherence and listenability."

I understand where you're coming from on the coherence and listenability front. This was a concern of mine several years ago when I began exploring more modern harmonies (to the point of actually feeling combative towards musicians who really enjoy that sort of music). However, I found it didn't really hurt my ability to play coherent or listenable music to experiment with really strange stuff. I have the ability to play highly chromatic, "atonal" music if I wish, but I've found despite having explored that I just don't have a strong taste for it. I am strongly drawn to traditional tonality as you seem to be as well.

Exploring strange things one is uncomfortable with doesn't only include harmony it can include melody and rhythm as well. One of the best bits of advice I received (from Ted, friend and fellow member of piano street), was to try experimenting with a wider variety of tempi, phrases, and rhythms, even if it might feel funny or weird at first. It's like before Ted said that I felt like I wasn't allowed to experiment. Strange, but true.

It can also include texture. I remember originally thinking in terms of left hand = accompaniment and right hand = melody. But there's no reason why the left hand can't play just as strong a role as the right hand in playing melodies. This is of particular interest to me recently as I explore the baroque style.

That's another interesting topic---the question of whether or not to constrain oneself to a style. Some strongly value developing their own personal voice, others value emulating a style, and still others would like to do a bit of both. I think most effective improvisers do a bit of both.

[richbatsford]

yes I guess youre right - if ever theres a suitable place for experimentation, then improvising must be it.

I can also have something of an averse reaction to music that seems to be wilfully difficult or even  to have abandoned any attempt to seduce the ear of the listener at all - but maybe thats my prejudice!

Your breakdown of different areas in which to experiement is good food for thought, thanks. 

I tend to keep things on a pretty instinctual level in terms of going with my emotional state at the time and responding to whatever my fingers produce when it turns out not to be quite what I was expecting!   

That makes me wonder how much other improvisors know what they are playing as they are playing it or whether like me, sometimes at least, what comes out is as much a surprise to me as anyone.

cheers

Rich
 

[Derek]

For me the surprise of not knowing what is coming is what makes improvisation so fun. It is really fun when something "takes flight" and it feels like something/someone else is in control. I used to think this was restricted to particularly loud or climactic passages, but as I've grown as a musician I've found this "taking flight" feeling to happen in almost any poignant musical situations, centered around a crescendo, diminuendo, counterpoint in multiple voices, some sort of rhythmic thing, an interesting sequence of chords, or any number of infinite combinations of any of those situations (and dozens I haven't mentioned). When you become fully aware of just how infinite the possibilities are, it is like a whole world opens up. Of course, as musicians we vary widely in degrees of wanderlust, we may enjoy the island we presently occupy...nothing wrong with that.

[ted]

Interesting discussion. I no longer improvise to imitate established forms of composition. Doing so is very clever and it is the way I was first taught, but it can lead to thinking that improvisation is a sort of poor man's composition. Form is still very important to me but improvisation, owing to its spontaneous nature, can have forms which are dynamic and organic, with their source in instruction rather than data. This is in contrast to composition, where the form is frequently an architectural jelly mould into which musical matter is stuffed.

Wishing to avoid the extremes of randomness and a priori imposed structure I try to develop means of producing unpredictable but fully determined chaotic sequences (in the mathematical sense of the word) each of which contains the DNA, the instruction as it were, of the next. The idiom of the musical content, the notes, doesn't matter; any style can be treated in this spontaneous manner. Or more frequently perhaps, the process results in something entirely new, which keeps me thinking for months afterwards.

That makes me wonder how much other improvisors know what they are playing as they are playing it or whether like me, sometimes at least, what comes out is as much a surprise to me as anyone.

Some do know everything they are doing; my old teacher was like that. At the other end you have those who know nothing they are doing. I aim for a critical middle state wherein the conscious and the unconscious form a feedback loop. Improvisation without surprise and delight doesn't interest me in the sense that I cannot see its point, even though I respect its mental arithmetic. I can understand some folk entering a type of therapeutic state with random noodling ( I don't particularly like that word as it is usually used pejoratively but I can't think of a better one) but as I can get the same effect by sitting in my garden and contemplating, that approach won't quite do either.

I want much more from my improvisation than either of these unsatisfactory extremes.

If that is the first recording you have made, Rich, it's a very good start. Once the habit is established it's terribly compulsive. I think I've recorded almost seventy CDs since I retired two years ago and the rate is increasing.




  

[m1469]

Hi Rich, I enjoyed your improvisation very much and thank you for your contribution to this part of the forum .  My impression of your improvisation is something like you giving us a defined glimpse of considering a certain point in life, and the different shades that can have, and how that can be very beautiful!  Thank you .  I think that perhaps soon, I'll re-enter the scene, but that's not the point here.  Perhaps in terms of your own sense of progression, it's good to think on whether or not you were satisfied with what you did or not, and what it is that you either are satisfied with or not.

I tend to keep things on a pretty instinctual level in terms of going with my emotional state at the time and responding to whatever my fingers produce when it turns out not to be quite what I was expecting!  

That makes me wonder how much other improvisors know what they are playing as they are playing it or whether like me, sometimes at least, what comes out is as much a surprise to me as anyone.

cheers

Rich

I do not disagree with your first part here, but I wanted to comment about it.  I have just come from the composing thread in the "Anything But..." board, so my thoughts are linked to my response to you and to other thoughts there.  What I currently wish for my own improvising is to get past a kind of rigidness that I feel regarding stepping "out of bounds" at the piano.  I want to get to a place of feeling as though there isn't some kind of precipice on various sides of me, and a sense of really knowing what would happen if I went there ... or there ... or there.  I believe that to have a deeper knowledge of the tones and their organizations on the piano, how they all fit together, gives me actually far greater instinctual options because I feel more free to "bounce" all about, not worrying about falling off a cliff or so.  I think that our minds are instinctually looking for patterns, too, and it's those patterns which form a composition, I think.

[richbatsford]

For me the surprise of not knowing what is coming is what makes improvisation so fun ... as a musician I've found this "taking flight" feeling to happen in almost any poignant musical situations, centered around a crescendo, diminuendo, counterpoint in multiple voices, some sort of rhythmic thing, an interesting sequence of chords, or any number of infinite combinations of any of those situations (and dozens I haven't mentioned). When you become fully aware of just how infinite the possibilities are, it is like a whole world opens up.

Yes I think I see where youre coming from - altho judging from your comments and some of Ted's below I think you guys seem able to think through what youre doing in rather more detail than me.  Perhaps because your playing is based on a more solid foundation of classical learning than mine.

[richbatsford]

Interesting discussion. I no longer improvise to imitate established forms of composition. Doing so is very clever and it is the way I was first taught, but it can lead to thinking that improvisation is a sort of poor man's composition. Form is still very important to me but improvisation, owing to its spontaneous nature, can have forms which are dynamic and organic, with their source in instruction rather than data. This is in contrast to composition, where the form is frequently an architectural jelly mould into which musical matter is stuffed.

Personally I compose at the piano and through improvisation, so the form tends to arise out of the material rather than the material being entered into the form.  I use quite a bit of repetition (having been influenced by Steve Reich and more recently Philip Glass) and find that thru repetition and development a fairly fluid, organic form tends to arise.  That said, once building blocks are in place, I do lately find my self thinking more consciously in terms of suitable strucuture - ABBA or ABABC or so on.

As I mentioned above, I dont think I am as conscious of much of the process as you are, which makes me rather jealous and I wonder if that will limit my growth, but perhaps in time ..

Wishing to avoid the extremes of randomness and a priori imposed structure I try to develop means of producing unpredictable but fully determined chaotic sequences (in the mathematical sense of the word) each of which contains the DNA, the instruction as it were, of the next. The idiom of the musical content, the notes, doesn't matter; any style can be treated in this spontaneous manner.

I think youre articulating something here which I dont fully understand, but would like to.  I have a sense that if I did, it could move my improvising forwards, tho Im not sure its a method Im capable of employing due to my instinctive (uneducated) approach.

If that is the first recording you have made, Rich, it's a very good start. Once the habit is established it's terribly compulsive. I think I've recorded almost seventy CDs since I retired two years ago and the rate is increasing.

Many thanks for the kind words and the persepctive check!  70 Cds is certainly something to aim for.  Its my first recorded improvisation, but Ive released an ablum of my pieces at www.richbatsford.com

cheers

Rich




  

[richbatsford]

Hi Marla

thanks for your kind words 

My impression of your improvisation is something like you giving us a defined glimpse of considering a certain point in life, and the different shades that can have, and how that can be very beautiful!

interesting thought - I dont think consciously that way but Im great believed in music's ability to communicate in a more direct and literal way than words can (I believe all language is only metaphor) - so from that standpoint, you could well be right, its certainly one of my goals in life to be able to appreciate all aspects of my experience, stop pushing away what I dont immediately enjoy and grasping after what seems pleansant and instead see the beauty that each unique moment contains.

I believe that to have a deeper knowledge of the tones and their organizations on the piano, how they all fit together, gives me actually far greater instinctual options because I feel more free to "bounce" all about, not worrying about falling off a cliff or so.  I think that our minds are instinctually looking for patterns, too, and it's those patterns which form a composition, I think.

Yes I think this sounds very wise.  Do you mean to get the deeper knowledge of the tones and their organizations via study or is this something you can achieve through playing?

cheers

Rich

[m1469]

Do you mean to get the deeper knowledge of the tones and their organizations via study or is this something you can achieve through playing?

I don't believe it's actually a matter of either/or, but includes both and "eventually" all as one.

[richbatsford]

I don't believe it's actually a matter of either/or, but includes both and "eventually" all as one.

Marla, what sort of methods do you use for the study side of things?

Rich

[m1469]

Marla, what sort of methods do you use for the study side of things?

Rich

Well, part of my "problem" while I'm playing is that I'm also constantly studying what I'm doing at the same time, or studying how things work.  So, in one sense, playing itself can be a study, which is something of what I meant.  But, of course I'm studying a bit of repertoire at the time, as well as doing bits of research on the Classic style, and I always wish to get a better, deeper, understanding of theory, and then I consider my fudamentals routine in the morning to be a kind of study, too, of shapes and sounds and how the piano is organized by tone.  I don't know if that counts in your opinion or if that's what you had in mind, but that's what I do for now.  And, lately, listening to others here on the forum.  I would like to get WAY better at being able to play common and not so common chord progressions as I choose, at the piano, in any key.  Honestly, that is a huge hole in my ability, and it's things like these that have sometimes severely affected my confidence at the instrument (I'm getting better about all of it). 

[richbatsford]

Hi m1469

thanks, I read your reply a couple of days ago and its been very thought-provoking. 

I agree that playing can be a study and practicing scales and arpeggios definitely helps me familiarise myself with the various patterns which can then make up a composition.

I was asking more after your study methods in terms of how you look at other repertoire and research theory.

cheers

Rich

[Derek]

Yes I think I see where youre coming from - altho judging from your comments and some of Ted's below I think you guys seem able to think through what youre doing in rather more detail than me.  Perhaps because your playing is based on a more solid foundation of classical learning than mine.

I started with improvisation and only later had classical lessons. But I don't think these classical lessons really helped my improvisation at all, if anything it helped my technique and facility with reading music/playing pieces. But the improv I'd say came almost entirely from experimentation, encouragement from Ted and others, and listening to music that I love. To the extent that I "think through" what I'm doing, I'd say sometimes I take a peek in a theory book or sometimes I might pick out some chord change from a piece I like. But when I'm actually improvising, I find the less I think the better. The more experience I gain, the more useless I find study of theory. Well, I wouldn't say I don't think at all, but it is a different sort of thinking from "ah, I shall use such and such a chord voicing because it makes sense based on some logical reasoning I learned from such and such a book."

I listened to your improv again, you should post a few more!

[richbatsford]

I started with improvisation and only later had classical lessons. But I don't think these classical lessons really helped my improvisation at all, if anything it helped my technique and facility with reading music/playing pieces. But the improv I'd say came almost entirely from experimentation, encouragement from Ted and others, and listening to music that I love. To the extent that I "think through" what I'm doing, I'd say sometimes I take a peek in a theory book or sometimes I might pick out some chord change from a piece I like. But when I'm actually improvising, I find the less I think the better. The more experience I gain, the more useless I find study of theory. Well, I wouldn't say I don't think at all, but it is a different sort of thinking from "ah, I shall use such and such a chord voicing because it makes sense based on some logical reasoning I learned from such and such a book."

I listened to your improv again, you should post a few more!

Hi Derek

that chimes with how Ive done most of my compostion so far.  I found my days studying classical music fairly unrewarding - tho I always enjoyed playing and singing.  That said, my study was some time ago (teenaged mostly) so perhaps now I'm mature enough to come back to it.   As you say tho, I think the way forward is to absorb what I can (Im also thinking that I will take up more piano study with a view to doing more teaching in the future) and then let what Ive absorbed come naturally in the form of improvisations and my compositions (which I create in a fairly improvised way).

thanks for your encouragement - Ive done some more improvs since the first one - I'll pop one up now.  cheers

Rich

[m1469]

Hi m1469

I was asking more after your study methods in terms of how you look at other repertoire and research theory.

cheers

Rich

Well, I've currently got a bit of repertoire that I'm studying.  If you are asking how I try to conceptualize that, or so, I am looking at it from various angles.  Form, harmony, different combinations of passage parts ... but, somehow I don't think that's what you're asking and I also don't quite understand what else you would be asking!  So, I'm sorry, if that's not what you mean, I guess I need a different question  .  Ideally, I would be spending at least 10-30 mins. a day just studying a book that I have, and doing the workbook and listening to examples, as well as keeping up on sightreading projects ... but, that hasn't been happening lately.  I've also got some study in on Classic sonata form, which kind of blew my mind and I'm not quite able to put that stuff into words yet, but it's somehow all related.  Sorry, I don't know if I actually answered your questions!

[furtwaengler]

I found this to be very relaxing, and just perfect for this late hour.