How we change !

[ted]

Having nothing better to do tonight I listened to some of the dozens of old tapes lying around and these fragments from 1983 took my fancy. I wasn't always the mad improviser I am now and back then I mostly just improvised around my own melodies. The second one must have been an improvisation which actually generated a melody as it wanders about a bit. Interesting for me, I thought I had lost most of this sort of stuff.

[quantum]

So delightful!  In the first I detect some Art Tatum, and the second some Liszt. 

What recording equipment were you using for this?

Glad you shared these.  I am listening again and again.  Do you have an organization system for your older recordings?

[ted]

You are too kind Neil but thanks for listening. Of course it isn’t a matter of either/or, I can still play like that if I put my mind to it and bits of it sometimes pop up in my improvisation. My teacher in my youth had a professional style very like that of the first one and he was obsessed with Liszt, so your comments are pretty sharp. There were some mighty players in the early twentieth century whose music went out of fashion but was supremely accomplished - the likes of Charlie Kunz, Billy Mayerl and Raymond Turner.

I used to use a Pioneer tape system with one stereo microphone hung through the hasp of the open piano lid. Alas no, while there is no danger I might lose any of them they are very numerous and scattered in various places. It is an exercise I really should carry out.

I have since found words I must have written to some of the first melody.

"Take me to that Cuckoo land,
Take me far away.
That's the place I understand,
That's the place I wanna stay.

Take me to that Cuckoo land,
I'm gonna be so free.
I'm gonna be such a great big boss,
Lots and lots of money for me."

When I was about forty I took private lessons in composition from a very prominent composer. (More fool me !) He told me the melody and harmonies were "very wrong". I took no notice of him. I recall the second one came to me after reading Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia". I think it too has words lying around somewhere.

[quantum]

Like many fine musicians, a teacher's instructions do not imprint a carbon copy on the student, but rather the student blends the teacher's lessons with the student's own voice. 

I thought the recorded sound was particularly sweet, with detailed articulation. 

Thanks for sharing those words, Ted.  Did you come up with the ideas before you started playing, or did the  words come after the recording?

[ted]

That’s a hard one to answer, a bit of both as I recall. The piece was a humorous reaction to what I perceived as the noxious materialism of my work environment and its morally blind executives. This underlying spirit drove the musical creation but the specific words were superimposed afterwards, in pretty much the same way as I allow my brain to attach meanings to my improvisations after the creative event, which is essentially abstract. There are exceptions though, of course, rules are for fools.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I particularly enjoyed the first one. It seemed reminiscent of jazzy type stuff being played in a 40s Hollywood bordello!

[ted]

Like many fine musicians, a teacher's instructions do not imprint a carbon copy on the student, but rather the student blends the teacher's lessons with the student's own voice. 

That is a very deep principle which, it strikes me, hardly any musical minds have the courage to embrace. External magisteria, knowledge systems and conventions, no matter how famous or established, are absorbed into and subordinated to the individual artistic worldview and used only inasmuch as they serve the creator's own direction. 

[ted]

I particularly enjoyed the first one. It seemed reminiscent of jazzy type stuff being played in a 40s Hollywood bordello!

Ha ha ! I once stayed at the Playboy Club of Manila, which was in fact a bordello under the surface, and that has been my one and only experience of such places. My travel agent booked me there as a joke I expect. I was so naive I didn't realise what was actually going on until months afterwards when I thought, "Good grief, so THAT'S what they were doing ! So THAT'S what she meant ! So THAT'S why all those people kept ringing me up and hanging about !"

Some of those Hollywood pianists were outstanding though, particularly Raymond Turner. 

[ted]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqCtAHcIzAc

I could only find one by Raymond Turner on Youtube, a duet, but I have a much better collection on a CD from Shellwood Studios. According to the liner notes he was probably heard more than any other pianist by the general public because he did the playing in the sound track of so many films. Classical or jazz, it was all the same to him and he was known as "One Take Turner" through his ability to read and play difficult pieces almost immediately.

I just found I have that Folkways LP, possibly a reminder I ought to spend some money on a turntable. The notes say that Perella and Turner recorded it in London while Turner was touring with the Paul Whiteman orchestra.

[quantum]

That’s a hard one to answer, a bit of both as I recall. The piece was a humorous reaction to what I perceived as the noxious materialism of my work environment and its morally blind executives. This underlying spirit drove the musical creation but the specific words were superimposed afterwards, in pretty much the same way as I allow my brain to attach meanings to my improvisations after the creative event, which is essentially abstract. There are exceptions though, of course, rules are for fools.

In such a case that would seem a natural progression of ideas. 

Interesting to note, that in composed vocal music, vocal teachers I have worked with frequently make reference to the majority of compositions that start with words and follow with music.