Rising Phoenix (conclusion)

[ted]

As I approached the hour, the change Db to C aug took on a strange significance and I kept coming back to it. This is the fun of pure improvisation, you start out in one direction into a familiar landscape but the feedback loop of sound can push you in an instant along unpredictable and sometimes disturbing byways into eldritch territory.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I'll try to give this a proper listen tonight.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Definitely a lot more abstract than one of mine! I feel improvisations such as this live very much in the absolute immediate present and are much more prone to going in a not readily discernable direction at any given time.

[ted]

Thanks for listening Andrew. You are right, of course, and I realise your preference lies with discernible pattern. My private guess, which I cannot substantiate, is that much of what we call structure might have arisen from the tyranny of written notation itself. I am not helpless at improvising and composing in traditional ways, it was how I was taught and how I worked until I was about fifty-five, when I realised that spontaneous, pure improvisation reflected my psyche better and enabled me to channel the colossal stream of ideas I seem to be lumbered with. More than that, it makes me unconditionally happy, and that is not a bad thing considering what goes on these days.

Thanks to modern, cheap, high quality recording devices, these recordings can now be considered lasting art, a situation which has previously never existed. I have many hundreds of such long recordings now and, while their generating process certainly lay in the immediate present, I have found they generally retain and even intensify their interest over time. It sounds very solipsistic, and it probably is, but then again isn't all music so, in large measure, for its creators and listeners ?

Another problem I had with creating in orthodox ways was that my music always ended up sounding like that of the composers I admired most. Spontaneous playing, at least for me, somehow short circuits this tendency and lets my own voice out exclusively. A number of people really like the results, one or two detest them, and most are, in some degree, politely puzzled. As I have no interest in perpetuity, fame, money or the usual social channels of music it doesn't matter very much. I dare say when I peg out my son will probably toss them in the jumbo bin when he clears the house.   

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I'm not sure that structure arises from obligations towards formal notation tbh; to a certain extent I think I see the point in that a regular rhythmic pulse is a factor in both. However, I feel that structure in the greater quasi-architectural sense is something which, compositionally, is musically innate. I don't mean facets like question and answer phrase, I'm talking about overarching matters of form. Large-scale structure is difficult to do in improvisation, imo, and not always beneficial to the end result. I've rarely gone past basic elements like bringing back introductory motifs at the end. I suppose I'm talking about the difference between sitting down for an impromptu meal in which we broadly accept that x will follow y, but not going out of one's way to make sure that all the cutlery etc is arranged by geometrical aesthetics...

Not sure that makes as much sense as I'd like it to.

[ted]

Thanks for your thoughts on the matter, the analogy makes perfect sense. My teacher frequently lamented my inability to appreciate, even perceive, form and fitness in music, along with using harmony to produce them. He gave up on the functional harmony part but until his death kept going on about how things should be “rounded off”, using his own works as illustrations. I understood at the purely intellectual level but could never align it with the sounds I enjoyed most. I would be creating just to prove I could do something in the eyes of another person, and life is too short to create for that reason.