Improvisation by Peter Ewers (Rhodes Mk I Suitcase from 1975)

"Visualize a cloth or texture. There are always points where threads in different directions interlace with each other and form tiny nodes; threads of different thicknesses, colours and perhaps even delicateness.
All parameters describe in their own way just this quality of texture. For the improviser, an understanding of his work's texture has great advantages, because it refines his sense of all possible textures and opens up his own perception considerably.
Look into your surroundings: Perhaps you hear conversations in a café, a tram pulling away, a telephone is ringing somewhere and you just write down a stunning melody. All of this is texture. The combination of voice and organ music, for example, is such a texture.

Density
Where threads in different directions overlap, the density of the cloth is necessarily higher.
The density of a musical texture increases, if, for example, a second tone is added to a sustained tone or a chord is entwined with a melody, or a surprising use of pedals joins a fileuse as a starting point for a sensational toccata.
The five parameters introduced here; rhythm, melodics, harmony, tone colour and dynamics, can contribute in their own way to the density of a texture. At first, one can always observe a quantitative change in density. This change describes the moment.
What a surprise, when suddenly two staccato-clusters in the tutti of the organ follow a rhythmical motor activity of both hands with quiet registration (e.g. Flûtes 8'). What is shocking to one listener may be boring for the next. Each listener of an improvisation has thus his own texture of perception and attentiveness.
Nevertheless, there are conditions for the increase of density; by means of the coherence of the material, that is the internal organisation of each tone particle (in place and time) -- and last but not least, by the organisation of our own attention.

Direction and relation
„Just play! An invitation to improvisation" will return to these two central concepts again and again. Without direction and relation, each of the presented parameters will only develop insufficiently. A change of a texture's density according to amount can be downright boring. What makes an improvisation stirring and exciting? I am convinced you will find the answer through direction and relation!"

(Excerpt from "Just play! An invitation to improvisation" is coming soon! The German version "Einfach spielen! Anstiftung zur Improvisation", is online http://peter-ewers.eu/flipbooks/ewers_einfach-spielen/ewers_einfach-spielen/e...) for free.

more informations at www.vpe-web.de/Improvisation/improvisation.html

The Rhodes Mk I Suitcase from 1975 is distributed as a sample-library on the Clavia Nord Electro 3 which i used here with only a little panning, phasing, twin emulation and the reverb of this instrument. Photos and movie taken by Fuji X100.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• La
• Madeleine
• Paris
• Improvisation
• organ
• Ewers
• Cavaille-Coll
• Orgel
• Cochereau
• Clavia
• Nord
• Electro
• Rhodes
• Fuji
• X100