Improvisation 101, "Jacky's Dream" - final few minutes

[ted]

After the hundredth CD I have stopped that way of numbering them. Most of mine now go on well over the hour, and with modern recording equipment duration is unlimited, rendering the CD an unsuitable unit.

[quantum]

There are parts of the intertwining arpeggios that sound reminiscent to César Franck.  Other parts hint at fleeting moments and images that come as quickly as they disappear.  A dream of pleasant thoughts I gather?  Nonetheless enjoyable as always to listen to.  I'm on my second listen.

I've moved to mostly hard drive archiving for my own recordings.  It is much easier to organize and search for a past recording on a hard drive.  They also do not split up media into many small physical units.   Back up is also far less cumbersome with the assistance of synchronization software.  

[ted]

There are parts of the intertwining arpeggios that sound reminiscent to César Franck.  

I shall take your word for that as you know much more about it than I do.

Other parts hint at fleeting moments and images that come as quickly as they disappear.  

That was indeed my intention, as it often is lately. I have never in my life  experienced a shortage of ideas, and do not hesitate to let them all out.

A dream of pleasant thoughts I gather?

Yes and no. The day before recording I discovered that my first really close childhood friend for a decade, Jack, had been dead a year. I have always viewed with aversion the use of a creative process as a catharsis, but in this case it did me more good than having a drink or moping about it. In a sense, I have learned a lot about the art of using a priori imagery from you and your playing. The whole trick, of course, is to infuse the feeling of something while scrupulously avoiding trite imitation. If we can do that, then the results will more likely stand as a valid piece of music to others even without knowledge of the generating programme.

I've moved to mostly hard drive archiving for my own recordings.  It is much easier to organize and search for a past recording on a hard drive.  They also do not split up media into many small physical units.   Back up is also far less cumbersome with the assistance of synchronization software.  

I do that, and CDs, DVDs and memory sticks too. Not much chance of my losing anything !

 Nonetheless enjoyable as always to listen to.  I'm on my second listen.

Thanks. That is a compliment from a player of your calibre.

[lostinidlewonder]

Some parts of this sound really good like a very passionate romantic piece. I have many improvisations which to me have glimmers of nice and then bits which are like smudge marks I like those smudge marks and have grown accustom to hear them but on first listening they are always a little interrupting. I use to record improvs through midi and it was real fun going back and cutting out the bits which were no good. I am sure many composers simply improvise and used the good bits as part of a composition for inspiration, there's many parts you could take from this recording.

[ted]

I am sure many composers simply improvise and used the good bits as part of a composition for inspiration, there's many parts you could take from this recording.

That is exactly how I used to form the large number of pieces I wrote out in earlier years. For piano music at least, I am sure you are right, and that many of the best piano pieces had their origins in improvisation. The fact that famous composers of piano music, old and modern, almost without exception, were fluent and habitual improvisers reinforces this hypothesis.

Some parts of this sound really good like a very passionate romantic piece. I have many improvisations which to me have glimmers of nice and then bits which are like smudge marks I like those smudge marks and have grown accustom to hear them but on first listening they are always a little interrupting. I use to record improvs through midi and it was real fun going back and cutting out the bits which were no good.

My problem, one of them anyway, is that what I think is good or bad is impossibly unstable. One day I listen to a recording and think, "Those bits are very poor, perhaps I shall delete the whole file." Then the next day the same bits make me think, "That's good, how on earth did I play that ? Was I really going to erase it ? I must have been mad." I couldn't possibly trust a first listening, and certainly not within a day after recording. There are peculiar distortions which take place with me. It seems like five minutes, but I have been playing an hour and am utterly exhausted.

Another, possibly deeper obstacle to crystallising compositions out of them is that I cannot notate most of the rhythms I play which move me most deeply. Indeed, over the years I have concluded that only a small fraction of perceptible, spontaneous rhythm of any complexity can be written unambiguously at all. Whether this is a general truth, or just a reflection of my own lack of training, of course is not for me to say. Thirty years ago, I studied composition with a very prominent local composer. He told me my rhythms were simply out of time, my harmonies were wrong, and that I must start to create my music in terms of notation. I made a sincere effort for some months but couldn't do it. Despite all effort, I still preferred those wrong rhythms and harmonies to his right ones.

A third reason is time. It takes me an hour or more to write out even a poor resemblance of a few seconds of most of the stuff I play. I really hate the act of writing music, it makes me very grumpy. I used to carry a completed piece, even a simple one, around in my head for months sometimes because I couldn't bring myself to the task.

I am not helpless at some types of notated composition, as you know, particularly ragtime, stride, swing and some romantic forms. I have a large heap of it from earlier decades. However, for the reasons mentioned, and one or two more, I feel my sort of brain was somehow built for improvising. My teacher in my youth told me as much, but of course you never take any notice of anyone when you are young.

Anyway, thanks for listening, I always pay attention to what you say.


   

[ronde_des_sylphes]

There are parts of the intertwining arpeggios that sound reminiscent to César Franck.  

Curiously, I thought that too! There was one section where I suddenly found myself reminded of the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue (though I can't remember where in the Franck).

I rather liked the harmonic change around the 3.30 mark. There are some good moments in this, and inevitably some which are probably superfluous. Pruning might however be counterproductive.

I'm on my second listen now; trying to listen once abstractly and once analytically.

I get the impression that you improvise in a very pure sense, in that the improvisation per se is the sole goal of the process and it is totally free; whereas I improvise in a defined manner where I'm looking to make structural connections. Of course I could be wrong and it's that my ear isn't good enough to pick up structure from two listens. I think both approaches are valid: I'm approaching it from the perspective of trying to formulate compositions and from your most recent comments I doubt that is your ultimate raison d'etre. I mention these points because I wanted to address your anecdote about the local composer.

His advice seems to be directed at creating within certain confines of convention, be they rhythmic, harmonic, or otherwise. I think you're wise to not focus too much on creating notated compositions, because it seems to me that in doing so you would be trying to force something whose characteristics and qualities are somewhat amorphous (possibly ambimorphous would be a better term) into a predestined box form, and this would ultimately be an inadvisable form of retrospective music creation where you end up editing what you played in order to make it fit the notational constraints. Notation is of necessity imperfect and an approximation when it comes to writing out improvisation and in this case I think it would be even more so.

[ted]

Thanks, Andrew, for taking time to listen and comment so perceptively. I think you have summed up my aesthetic accurately and eloquently. I just don't much like a priori structure or any sort of static jelly mould into which musical matter must be shovelled. Form is a deeper and more elusive notion altogether, but for me it is a consequence of instruction rather than data, and is dynamic in both means and end. Surprise and delight (not shock or iconoclasm) are of the essence.

I was steered toward spontaneous creation by two other external and fortuitous events - the astonishing advances in easy, high quality home recording equipment and hearing Jarrett's solo concerts. Although I mostly do not care for his jazz dominated data and vocabulary, I think his promotion of improvisation as a valid medium across all keyboard languages constituted a very important liberation of Western piano music from the historical magisteria of classical and jazz.

Ten years ago, when I started along this path, I feared it would prove a self-perpetuating solipsism which would rapidly run out of steam. It has been a wonderful reward of late middle age to discover these fears were completely unfounded.