Two improvisations from a decade ago

[ted]

Somebody had better keep the free improvisation board alive. Rather than post segments of my recent stuff, which is becoming longer and more highly individual by the day, I shall post these two small ones from ten years ago. The first is an improvised study of the sort I do most days but don't bother recording, and the second seems to be a little romantic piece which, unusually for me, ends as it begins. The recording quality is poor because I used my old tape arrangement back then.

[rachfan]

Hi Ted,

Re 17_1:  I very much enjoyed your improvisation.  The opening has an oriental feel to it, very beautiful, and the harmonies are amazing.  Next there is some "bridging" there taking the listener to the elaborate final section. This music is gorgeous -- lush late romantic!  There are places that make demands on the pianist that are quite difficult -- rippling scalar passages, voicing of the chordal passages, and toward the ending, echos of the oriental. This improvisation is very stylish and effective.  Thanks for posting it!

It's late here but tomorrow I'll listen to the companion improvisation.

David   

[ted]

Hi David,
               Thank you for listening and commenting. I would love to say that all the effects you mention were calculated as a result of musical expertise, that I knew what was going to happen in every detail, as the thousands of experts and improvisation tutorials on the internet assert should be the case. Unfortunately, as we have discussed many times, all that stuff is nonsense and I haven't a clue what I shall play or where I am going, even less about specific harmonies or playing forms. In fact, approaching seventy, I seem to have close to no idea at all about anything musical I am doing.

Nonetheless, I think it important to post one or two of these things, old or new, every couple of months, to make the younger players aware of the immense personal rewards improvisation will provide if persisted with over a lifetime.

Thanks again for listening, and I am pleased you found it of interest. It means a lot coming from a player of your ability.

Ted.
  

[rachfan]

Hi Ted,

If anyone can preserve the notion of the improvisation, it will be you!

In your 1_16 piece I was amazed by the very rapid animation sustained thruout the piece. Alas! For me, that would be a very tough performance. 

Looking way back (I'm 72) in my very early piano endeavors, I noticed two types of young students: -- 1. lyrical pianists and 2. speed demons.  There was only a very small group 3 -- those who could play both types of piano music. They were very gifted then and still are. Back in the day Czerny's Book of Velocity did nothing for me. Hanon was no help either.  I had better results simply playing all the scales with both hands in major and minor, four octaves up and down. Solving problems in music scores was perhaps the best training. None the less I'm still a lyrical pianist!

Thanks for posting your two pieces.  It was a pleasure hearing them. 

P.S. up until 2007, my recordings were like yours -- all on tape.

David

[ted]

Hi David,
                Thanks for listening to both these pieces. I cannot recall ever having been a speed demon per se, probably because the desire to impress listeners has never been one of my musical drivers. I do use a great deal of extremely rapid finger work in some parts of my improvisation, but in my case it has specific musical purposes, that of generating orchestral effect and, much more importantly, providing haphazard internal accents which lead to new phrases and ideas. Truth to tell, I find glassy smooth passages very difficult and mostly uninteresting. Some of it might sound smooth, but that is all a conjuring trick because I tend to avoid continuity. Hard to explain how, but I can do so if you wish. Luckily, continuity holds scant musical interest for me, so I get away with it, at least in my own mind.

My technical background was bizarrely different, as you know, but there's little point in my trying to change matters now. Thanks again for your shrewd observations.

Ted.

[quantum]

Ted,

I've been listening to these for a few days now.  16_3 sounds intrinsically "Ted" to me, a rich palette, articulate passage work that flows with ease, and a lyrical lines.  The first thing that popped into mind was piano music by Sibelius. I think this piece may also work well if you decide to write it out.

17_1 feels like a journey to me. Like one is hiking through scenic countryside and taking in the landscape.  The return of the opening oriental (as Rachfan described it) material near the end is like viewing something anew after learning from one's experiences on the journey.

The recording is also well done.  What did you use?


Thanks for sharing these.

[ted]

Thanks for your lengthy listening and interesting comments, quantum. You have applied the analogy of a journey to previous recordings of mine and the comparison strikes me as a good one. I think you likened my Croaghaun Triptych to the changing panorama seen through the window of a railway carriage; I took note of that. I suppose that any improvisation not directly attempting to imitate a predefined static form is always a journey in the abstract sense. The interest comes in just how one idea leads to the next in the act of spontaneous creation, precisely how the musical data of one cell can suggest and influence the content of following cells. This fertile process, for which I coined the name "cellular transition", is what I have been working on for the last ten years. I believe the ideal state comprises chaotic (in the mathematical sense of that word, not disorder) feedback loops of many types. There are loops between the sounds we hear and the sounds we play, loops between the conscious and the unconscious, loops between the haptic and the aural, the remembered and the new, dozens more. There are hundreds of these feedback loops going on in the mind during a good improvisation. What I have tried to do is cultivate a few dynamic principles at the conscious level which guarantee fairly rapid "taking off" regardless of actual musical data or idiom. I am much better at it than I was twenty years ago, but it isn't something you ever reach a conclusion with.

My old recording setup was very crude. I used to use one stereo microphone, suspended on its lead through the brass hasp on the underside of the open lid, hanging about six inches above the strings. The tape recorder, admittedly, was a high end Pioneer, still going strong now after twenty-five years, should I care to use it.