Violet Sky

[nickc]

This for my closest and dearest friend. The harmonies are inspired by traditional Japanese harmonies.

Nicholas

[ted]

A lot of people produce improvisation which might be described as Oriental new age. I find most of it pleasant enough but lacking in dynamic phrasing. Yours, like the best guzheng music, has a much stronger coherence of phrase which makes all the difference. Of course, I could be missing the bus entirely in this regard, and planting my own half-baked Western notions onto what is meant to be a static, meditative tradition. We cannot be other than the product of our own experience. The harmony, in terms of semitone steps (4,2,5,1), is a very attractive chord and I like using it myself, although I have long since ceased to think in terms of chord labels. Most jazz pianists seem to think of little else but chord names, a tendency which has successfully put me off most of that genre.

[nickc]

Meditation is exactly right... no thought to chords, harmonies, melodies... just emotion. Music is such a beautiful mental space which exists in it's own realm... (Some of us just happen to be able to peak through the doorway every now and then)  In essence, music is a symbiotic life form which needs humans to survive as much as we need it. Music is one of the last truly free things in our world that is beyond human control (funny enough, we have control over nothing anyways. we just think we do..) although we sure do try and take control, don't we? Categories, styles, institutions, techniques etc... such a shame. If people spent more time trying to move inwards instead of outwards with music, we'd be so much farther along. Instead we are spread so so far.... 7 billion different people should equal 7 billion different musical voices no?

Nicholas

[ted]

... 7 billion different people should equal 7 billion different musical voices no?

Nicholas

Yes, or to put it another way, the common man has the right to be his own Beethoven. The notion that an elite magisterium of dead traditions and rules decides which notes I can play on my own instrument in my own house, and even sillier, presumes to know which sounds ought to move me,  I find farcical and insulting to say the least.

[nickc]

That being said though, just because we can speak our native language fluently, doesn't make us all poets. However, music seems to be above these restrictions in a unique way although society and the media has had (and is having) an enormous impact on musical development across the world. Those who control the media (and institutions, and textbooks, and devices etc...) control the mind. Only very few are able to break free and swim to the surface. And when they do, they are greeted by a world of isolation filled with many predators and very few friends. Such a shame.

[ted]

...society and the media has had (and is having) an enormous impact on musical development across the world.

Possibly, but I do have the option of ignoring most of it, and thank goodness for that privilege !

Those who control the media (and institutions, and textbooks, and devices etc...) control the mind.

They don't control mine, well at least not that I am aware of, but influence can be subtle I suppose.

Only very few are able to break free and swim to the surface. And when they do, they are greeted by a world of isolation filled with many predators and very few friends. Such a shame.

Curiously, at seventy, I am a good deal happier and more optimistic in my music than I was when young. One advantage of approaching old age is that nobody has expectations of me any longer. I suspect most of the people around here (where I live, not the forum) see my obsession with music as a harmless, if somewhat irritating and irrelevant old man's hobby, and by and large, I am content to let them think thus.


One of the reasons I have stayed on forums is the appalling unhappiness and angst I see in young, talented people, for whom music seems to be a deadly, competitive battle for breath, rather than the lifelong, transporting comfort and joy it can be. I have been able to help the odd one or two out over the last fifteen years, and that has been good enough reason to remain, if only in the background, and by posting the odd improvisation. Although others tell me the contrary, I am actually not at all an iconoclast per se, that is far too negative. I enjoy all sorts of conventional music and probably always will. But I absorb it, it does not absorb me, that is the difference.

[nickc]

Humbling, thanks Ted... lot's to think about as I begin my work day today. Take care,

Nicholas