CD87 Conclusion

[ted]

Let's follow m1469's example and stir the improvisation board up a bit. Now that my technique is improving I usually play for about an hour; but that is too long to post, so here is the final few minutes of today's effort. I hate endings but fortunately a little group of four notes sprang up at the right time.

[furtwaengler]

I recall a remark Keith Jarrett made about his left hand telling him things he didn't know it knew, or I should have been listening to my left hand...something like that. There is true finger independence, or hand independence of individual ideas, and then there is the union of the hands which then has them collaborating together, singing to the same tune, and I hear your improvisation migrating in and out of these two states.  And then a real culmination and climax and resolution...I thought you didn't like endings? Ah, maybe just that the journey has ended.

[ted]

Thanks for listening, Dave. Yes, Jarrett's remark has always puzzled me a little. I had taken it to mean that, at a relatively late age, he had begun to consciously think through his left hand. Very few jazz pianists, and Jarrett is primarily a jazz pianist, are able to truly think through their left hands, which are mostly viewed as generators of harmonic and rhythmic background. Of course he could have meant something entirely different.

My personal ideal during improvisation, the state most likely to produce interesting results, is the sensation that I am using one large hand with ten fingers, any of which can do duty anywhere on impulse. Physically, we might irrevocably be split in two, and some older jazz styles, indeed most classical music, tend to embed this in the music one way or another. I was brought up musically this way, we probably all were, but once I got rid of its influence and stopped thinking in terms of left and right, I began to hear effects in my recordings impossible to generate previously.

This may or may not have connection with Jarrett's remark and frankly, I tend to listen to his music and ignore most of what he says, which is nearly always about himself rather than his musical process.

I don't like concluding improvisations, it is true; firstly because I never want to stop the enjoyable flow of ideas; my music is more like a river than a lake; and secondly because I consider I am not very good at effective endings. Conventional endings are few in number: the big bang, the fade out, the resolution, loud or quiet or various combinations of them. Really effective, organically original endings are actually rare in composed music, never mind improvisation.

...I hear your improvisation migrating in and out of these two states...

That is a very shrewd observation, which I shall ponder most seriously.

I forgot to mention that during the climax of this one, I remember that left and right hands were crossing and uncrossing furiously all over the place. It is happening to me very often lately, a consequence of the "ten finger" approach.

    

 

[furtwaengler]

Yeah your interpretation of Jarrett's thoughts are probably what he meant...he just said it in a weird way. One large hand with ten fingers makes sense conceptually, but in reality there is the scale from one organic whole down to the independence, and therefore possibilities for multilayered complexity, of each individual finger, though it too may make up an organic whole. It is like a multiple vortex tornado, where the main rotation (the 10 fingers) has other rotating vortexes appearing, disappearing, spiraling and dancing around, all within the main center of rotation (the two hands, the individual fingers). It seems there can be a real impressionism where you really don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. 

[goldentone]

I'm glad to hear your technique is improving, Ted.  I believe I hear a marked difference.  It will only give you greater freedom.  Your and Dave's thoughts on the left hand and freedom and independence of the hands and fingers are very close to mine.  That is, I believe the left hand needs to be an independent and aware musical entity apart from the right hand, and I would like to hear a classical pianist that does this.  I'm not saying there aren't any--I haven't searched it out yet.  The independence I'm looking for stems from an expanded consciousness, and gives the music a multidimensionality.  Yes, that may not be the easiest thing to achieve.  While the musical material is divided into two units, I believe only the hand with the melodic or dominant material is the one that touches us, which means the pianist is thinking and expressing through one hand at a time.  It seems such independence and awareness creates another dimension, while simultaneously creating a unity that before was of less relief on the musical plane.

So, I'll have to listen more here to what your hands are doing.  Loved your ending.

[ted]

Thanks for listening, goldentone, and for your perceptive comments. My technical problem was never very noticeable to listeners, either visually or aurally. That made it a real nuisance because I couldn't explain to people how uncomfortable I felt. Reading internet articles about RSI, dystonias and so on certainly didn't help so I just resolved to fix it in my own way. I am sure now that it was a long-term consequence of an old sporting injury, aggravated by weeks of unwisely heavy and fast playing of repeated stretches (tenths), mostly in pieces by Waller. I do have minor relapses if I am tired and play too heavily, but it is thankfully on the way out.

The connections between haptic and aural events are extremely complicated, for me anyway. Sometimes, when listening to old improvisation, I can hear three or four distinct ideas marching on independently. It is still a mystery to me how I produce this startling effect because I do not remember conscious haptic events - hands, fingers, grips, positions - which might have generated it.

That is, I believe the left hand needs to be an independent and aware musical entity apart from the right hand, and I would like to hear a classical pianist that does this.  

Unless I imagine it - and the listening mind can indeed impose perceptions of its own - Angela Hewitt does it sometimes in her Bach playing, but not so much in her Ravel. The distinction is really striking in ragtime, where not one player in dozens imparts the rhythmic and melodic contrapuntal unity of the hands, and makes the left hand anything more than a harmonic and rhythmic backdrop. It is actually, I believe, the most vital feature of a really good ragtime player, but one so seldom hears it.

So, I'll have to listen more here to what your hands are doing.  Loved your ending.

My hands became so mixed up crossing and uncrossing towards the end of that piece that I cannot analyse it myself.

Yes, about one time in twenty I play an ending I think is any good. That was one of them.