Hey Ted! How do YOU improvise?

[Bob]

Classical, new age, jazz, fugues, Romantic..... what do you improvise?  How do you go about doing that?  How did you learn it?   Have you posted any recordings on the Audition Room page?

[ted]

So far I have only posted an old recording of a romantic piece I wrote years ago. I shall get around to posting more, including improvisation, once I have become thoroughly used to my new piano. I had my Weinbach completely overhauled last month. It's very beautiful but overwhelmingly different and I still haven't come down to earth with it.

I did once post how my teacher started me off on improvising but I can't remember where it is. One way, not necessarily the only way, was to invent little phrases within the notes of a scale - in one hand first and then bring in the other hand using sequences, phrase and answer and as many tricks as you can think of. My teacher was somewhat different in that he had me work from a position of freedom toward a position of form - most people seem to go the other way around.

The whole thing is pretty personal, you understand, and certainly not everybody's idea of what music should be. As to the "what" - I don't really know - anything, I suppose. I can play in those styles but most of the time each session constitutes its own style. How do I go about doing it ? I'm somewhat at a loss to answer that. Well, I guess I just sit down and give my unconscious free rein - which answer is useless, I know.

[bernhard]

The question now becomes: How do we acquire Ted’s unconscious!

[ted]

But if you did that you would also acquire the revolting mass of perverse archetypes, peccadillos, inappropriate associations and irrelevant memories of what I had for breakfast in 1954 and the night uncle Jack burned a hole in the house with a Roman candle. Your dreams would bring you face to face with my creatures of the night and, worse, my grandmother's bottle of Lanes emulsion. You might suddenly become morbidly interested in blue cheese and marmite and uncontrollably desirous of a whole host of women you had never set eyes upon.

It's much the same situation as when somebody asks me, "Wouldn't you like to be Ashkenazy and play as he does ?" No, not really. How do I know what he feels ? I don't ! What say I made the swap and found he got less pleasure out of hours of his impeccable playing than I did from a few minutes of my comparatively inept fumblings ?  It's not only possible but distinctly probable.

[Dazzer]

The question now becomes: How do we acquire Ted’s unconscious!

unconscious? i think you meant subconscious... lol.

[mound]

The question now becomes: How do we acquire Ted’s unconscious!

We don't! We go read

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch

so that we can realize how we've already got all the tools we need packed away in our own unconscious, eagerly awaiting recognition.

[bernhard]

we've already got all the tools we need packed away in our own unconscious, eagerly awaiting recognition.

Does that include:

Ted

uncontrollably desirous of a whole host of women you had never set eyes upon