improvised piano & "natural" music

and abstract ways to think about music composition

Before we begin…
I have news to share soon about a paid subscription launch for my writings and art that will be in an upcoming newsletter. Stay tuned!

I will also be at the War Eagle Craft fair in Rogers, AR in a couple of weeks. If you’re out that way, stop by and say hello! My booth will be in the Arendel Artisan tent by the old Blackburn Homestead.

piano sketches

Alright, here we go!

Here are some “piano sketches” I recorded several years ago. I daily stepped into my office, set up my computer and piano, and recorded. Nothing prewritten - they just started and ended however they happened.

I’m sharing a link to the music here, and below I’ll share some ways I think about composing music.

I often plan the music I perform or compose - either in Western musical notation or with chord charts, lead sheets, letters or numbers. Sometimes just structured in Ableton Live.

When composing a large idea for a group of musicians, I’m obviously writing something out so everyone’s on the same page. However, I really enjoy bringing in more elements of chance to musical performances.

I plan to share several more writings in the coming months on the individual piano sketches I recorded; but for now, I’ll give an overview of my perspective on this freer, improvised style of writing (keep reading below).

natural forms of music

At university, I studied music composition and was intrigued by non-traditional forms of music writing.

Composers like Steve Reich and John Cage drew me in. Performers using traditional instruments alongside virtual instruments in Ableton live (watch here - very interesting violin, percussion, and computer performance) inspired me to write for electronics and percussion.

The heading of this section stems from John Cage’s idea of the emancipation of noise.

I always liked the thought of “natural” sounds, which aren’t usually considered musical (e.g. a car horn, footsteps on a sidewalk), being freed to take on a musical nature. Though I doubt I’m as disruptive in my philosophy of music as Cage was, I do feel the idea of “organizing sound” is another way to think of “composing music”.

to the piano

Can this shift to freeing noise or sound (or silence) be applied to using an instrument that’s one of the more traditional musical instruments, not just a cactus?

One option would be the prepared piano (demonstrated here). I used a version of this idea in Sketch No. 7 (Two by Two). More on this in a future writing.

Another option would be to let the musical ideas be performed closer in time to the moments of their conception.

Rather than taking apart an idea, mulling it over, and then notating it on paper in its best form with the appropriate accompaniment and structure of dynamics, themes, repeats, etc., an improvised piano performance at its inception might be its purest form.

Sadly, we can’t hear the improvisations of Haydn, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and other composers/performers of music history. We have transcriptions of the musical ideas they compiled on paper, but I wonder what it would have been like to sit in a room beside them as they stumbled onto new ideas.

It may have been more moving to hear those musical sketches than anything we could try to emulate today from the finished forms we are left with.

It leads me to ponder the humanness of idolized/iconized historical figures.

And an amazing part of technology today is we can record the first time a musical idea is brought to life.

my sketches

I’m not a classically trained pianist (at best I might be called a percussionist), but I’ve done most of my writing at a piano/keyboard. These “sketches” are my attempt at capturing the natural conception of some musical ideas in real time.

I walked into my office every morning for a couple of weeks, played for a few minutes while recording, and made sure the recording sounded clean.

You’ll notice my piano sketch numbers are listed on the tracks. Since the sketches would often mirror my state of mind at recording time, some were so disorganized they were difficult to listen to, so not all the sketches are on the album. But I imagine for most composers, every idea that comes while at the instrument is not fully realized.

I also named the pieces with the feeling that came from the music that day.

Again, here’s the link to the album if you’d like to listen:

final notes

I love hearing/seeing an incredibly technical and emotional performance by talented and hardworking musicians. It’s beautiful when prepared musicians execute a practiced piece.

I love a well-crafted song with meaning and purpose. When lyrical structure and musical composition land together in harmony, songs can change lives.

But I also love to organize sounds freely on the go, remove some pressure, and enjoy the music happening around us in everyday situations.

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I would love your thoughts if you want to comment below. Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed reading this or listening to the piano sketches, please share with someone else who might be interested! And subscribe below for more writings, art, and music.

Shalom

-Durgan