Today's improvisation (conclusion)

[ted]

I have been recording dozens of them lately, all between an hour and ninety minutes long, but haven't posted anything for a while. I had one of those days when my finger technique couldn't go wrong. The trouble is that the result is usually a colossal romantic splurge of double notes. Then again, why not I suppose, safe is boring.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

You're definitely a more 'abstract' improviser than I am. There were points where I felt it veered over into noodling, but also some points of genuine interest, particularly one about two-thirds(?) through. (I was listening via the flash player, so no precise time was apparent.) Not especially my scene, but it would be a dull world if everyone's ideas were the same, and in truth your different perspective and comments regarding my improvisations  have provided useful food for thought.

[ted]

Thanks for listening and commenting, Andrew. You are quite right, of course, I have no feeling for a priori structure at all, cannot understand it, or why people desire it over surprise, and do not hesitate to use haptic reflex (presumably what people mean by "noodling", although I've never been certain) as a means of idea generation. In the end, we have to be completely ourselves in art though, or else we end up living other people's dreams, and for me at least, that would negate the whole point of music.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

In the end, we have to be completely ourselves in art though, or else we end up living other people's dreams, and for me at least, that would negate the whole point of music.

Yes, I completely agree.

It seems to me there is a fundamentally difference in our approaches to improvisation. I view it as often a precursor to composition, and try to engage with issues like structure (I'm not sure this is always a conscious process either). You seem to view it as a "let's see what's out there?" type of process and an end in itself, which is a less constrained approach, possibly a truer form of improvisation. I have no doubt both approaches are valid, particularly if it's true that we have differing end goals.

[ted]

It seems to me there is a fundamentally difference in our approaches to improvisation. I view it as often a precursor to composition, and try to engage with issues like structure (I'm not sure this is always a conscious process either). You seem to view it as a "let's see what's out there?" type of process and an end in itself, which is a less constrained approach, possibly a truer form of improvisation. I have no doubt both approaches are valid, particularly if it's true that we have differing end goals.

I too used improvisation as a compositional tool for many years. Pieces used to crystallise out of it over time, frequently but not always a long time. My teacher, and later friend and mentor, in my youth, was possibly the foremost professional musician in this country and he had me create in many structured forms. A simple example is classical ragtime, it doesn't come much more structured than that, yet I love it, it is a lifelong infatuation, and I have written many rags.

So I am not averse to structure per se in music, that would be silly and remove the greater part of my pleasure in other people's compositions. At  about fifty-five, however, I came to realise that improvisation to emulate  compositional structures had severe limitations in expressing the musical sounds which moved me at the deepest level. The most obvious one concerned rhythm. Most intuitive rhythms cannot be written at all except in very crude approximation, and when I improvised to a notated end product it imposed restriction I found intolerable.

Form, it seems to me, is a much deeper notion than structure. The latter is like a cathedral while the former is like DNA and evolving organisms; the latter concerns data while the former is about the instruction which produces data; the latter is static and the former dynamic. I still wanted form in this dynamic sense, especially in the spontaneous process, so I have spent the last thirteen years or so developing modes of instruction in my personal improvisation. Sometimes listeners like the resulting data, sometimes not. That aspect doesn't bother me much because I earned my living in other satisfying fields and create more or less to please myself.

A old chap I used to work on the waterfront with almost half a century ago made a remark which I have never forgotten. "The trouble is that with a few exceptions, we only know people as they are at one particular time of their lives and of ours."  The Ted back then would be unrecognisable on this forum, and so would his music.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I suppose my position broadly is that structure is an implement which can be used to facilitate coherence and, ultimately, comprehension by the listener. Whilst it can be this, it should also not be a straitjacket to restrict the improviser or composer's creativity (e.g. "I've had my AB now, so I had better return to the A [section]").

Personally, I'm disinclined to improvise very lengthy works, because I feel they often lack in coherence (and for that matter, often dramatic "sense") but that feeling is also because I don't think I'm compositionally or improvisationally sufficiently skilled to do e.g. an hour on one or two thematic motifs, and I do like to interconnect motifs within the overall superstructure.

Again, however, that's very much a matter of personal aesthetic choice. I must say I thoroughly agree with your comments regarding the limitations of rhythmic notation in relation to improvised figuration (when I make the effort to write out such stuff, I often have to compromise it to an approximate notation and mark it a piacere or tempo rubato. I think playing written-out improvisations from the score can be horrendously difficult interpretatively as the score has often emasculated the subtleties of the original improvisation.