Improvisations on The Ledge

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckw6kzm991rm90878rsjk4zli?m=comment The moment a theme is stated, it wants to do something. What? Like all lifeforms, it wants to replicate, mutate, transform…become something. That something is musical structure. How we get from a single note to a theme (motif), to a full-blown musical structure (song, free improvisation, symphony) is seemingly a mystery. And yet it's not. Due to a naturally occurring acoustical phenomenon known as the overtone series, one note is not actually one note—there are in fact many notes vibrating above the single note (the fundamental) we think we're hearing exclusively. But consciously or not, we have an innate awareness of those other notes, the overtones that ring out from the fundamental. And that awareness, at some point in human history, led us to pluck those notes out of the air, string them together into themes. And then what did we do? We repeated those motifs, and they become something larger. First simple melodies. Then, as we repeated, we varied: shifted a pitch here, altered the rhythm there, played the motivic idea from another starting point in the scale. In no time (though nobody knows how many centuries or millennia "no time" took to unfold) we had the beginnings of musical structure. Music exists in time, evolves in time. As soon as you repeat something over time, and then vary it, you are effectively creating an incipient structure—whether you intend to or not. At some point in musical history, humans began to mean it—to order notes intentionally. But that intention always leads back to one note which has within it the potential to become all notes—themes, melodies, songs, and larger structures. Follow Podcast Homepage Donate Leave a Voicemail Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Powered by Firstory Hosting

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckvk002b34j0c0938go4chdbo?m=comment Musical themes seem to emerge from the sonic abyss almost by their own volition. But where do they come from? Are they elusive attempts to describe the moment? State of musical mind? Emotion translated into sound? Or are they just, as I discussed in the previous episode, a form of musical memory (and forgetting.) After working through this episode, I must admit that while the provenance of musical themes seems to be some combination of all of the above, in the end, they remain somewhat elusive. Melodic ghosts in the machine of our minds. What I do know is that musical themes want to emerge from the sonic abyss. Like everything else in the universe, order wants to emerge from chaos. This is how life happens. And music. Which leads me to my next episode: how do musical structures naturally emerge from themes? Music Performed or Referenced: Que Sera, Sera Fly Me to Moon Follow Podcast Homepage Donate Leave a Voicemail Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Powered by Firstory Hosting

"The Many Layers of Musical Memory—and Forgetting" is an episode about how listening to music, and performing it, are really acts of thematic memory—and forgetting. And sometimes the forgetting is part of the creative process. Or maybe it's just forgetting. In any case, I take a deep dive into the many layers of musical memory that go into improvising or composing. But also into the listener's experience of any given piece of music. There is the short-term memory of what happened earlier in a piece of music, but also the long-term, cultural memory that informs every performing/listening experience. And whether short or long term, there is plenty of forgetting involved... Follow Podcast Homepage Donate Leave a Voicemail Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Powered by Firstory Hosting

After an extended layoff, I've decided to get back to Improvisations On the Ledge by sticking to the theme—literally. The entire season—including this episode—is devoted to musical theme: how we create, perceive it, and make music out of it. In the pilot episode for season three, I randomly stumble upon a couple of themes, including "My Funny Valentine" and "Money, Money, Money", then proceed to create a show out of them. Along the way, I delve into what a "theme" is in musical terms. Is it like the theme of a story? Yes and no. In music, themes, as I discover in this episode, are far more fungible than their literary or dramatic counterpoints. They can magically transform into other themes; themes can generate new themes; musical elements that don't seem on the surface to be thematic can become so by their repeated use. In short, just about any sonic event can become thematic. This is what makes music special. As we'll find out in season three! Music Mentioned My Funny Valentine Money, Money, Money, Money Follow Donate Podcast Home Page Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

Remember the ThemeUsing jazz educator David Bloom's metaphor, musicians need to look in the rearview mirror and remember the theme if they wish to move forward. But when you look back, you are not just remembering what you played at the beginning of an improvisation—you're remembering all of that music that got you to the point of even being able to look back in the first place.FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

Planned ChanceMy intent was to dive into Part 2 of my “End of Melody Episode,“ but by planned chance, I rolled the dice and came up with something completely different. Unplanned, but fated to be this way? Possibly.Almost all improvisation is built upon a kind of planned chance. You set up the parameters—this theme, these scales, those chords, etc.—then...go. Does this make it ultimately...deterministic, fated to be more or less a certain way? Yes, more or less.But also no.Composers and musicians have for years experimented with various approaches to leaving parts or all of a given piece of music to chance. Why? You could make the argument that it’s simply the only way to make music in realtime. At least for humans. If computers are doing the work, then you can certainly get the same exact performance of a piece of music.And of course, when we listen to any recorded piece of music, it’s pretty much the same every time—though even here there are variables related to the equipment you’re using for playback, the space you’re in, and, of course, you state of mind. Not to mention the fact that no two people hear the same piece of music exactly the same way.Recorded Music Will Always Be an Improvisational Listening ExperienceIn that case, every music listening experience, even if you’ve heard the piece a thousand times, is a new improvisation. You man know where the music is going, but you don’t necessarily know how it will affect you, how you’ll experience it. This is because time only moves forward and no moment is the same as any other moment.Big deal, you say. But the point is, improvisation is the natural state of experiencing music for both the musician and the listener. And it doesn't matter if the music is completely written, entirely left to chance, or the kind of planned chance that I play with in this episode.It all does and doesn't work out in the end.Music Performed:Completely Unplanned Improv 1Partially planned Improv 2, with two stipulated parametersSlightly more planned Improv 3, with more stipulated parametersImprov 4, combining Improv 2 and 3Music MentionedWiltold Lutoslawski, I recommend symphony 3 and Symphony #4Peter Saltzman and the Revolution Ensemble: Indeterminacy is, in fact, the title of this track and it provides an excellent example of what I talk about in the episode: planned chance, wherein within a larger design many elements are left to the discretion of the player (and that includes me, the composer.)In reference to the above, and question of the difference between improvisation and composition,  please check out my track of the day blog post about another piece of music that incorporates both.FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

Melody. As a creative musician, you’re either born with it or not. Or maybe everybody is born with it but some choose to suppress it. Why would anybody do that?Whatever the reason, non-melodic music almost always lacks narrative. This is true whether it’s a song with lyrics or instrumental music. Melody is the thing that drives musical stories.In this podcast, part one of two, I focus on the move away from melody in classical music. Ironically, it began, I posit, with Richard Wagner’s operas. Ironic because Wagner believed that by dispensing with the aria (song) he was creating a kind of “endless melody.” (His term.) But, as I demonstrate, using primarily themes from his opera Tristan und Isolde, the logical conclusion of endless melody is…then end of melody!Stay tuned for part 2 of the End of Melody, in which I explore how American music (jazz, pop, rock, hip-hop, etc.) has undergone the same (unfortunate) evolution.Music Performed:Prelude to Tristan und IsoldeImprovisations on Tristan themesOther improvisationsMusic MentionedTristan und Isolde, Richard WagnerBlue Train, John ColtraneBessie's Blues, John ColtraneFollow Me:Peter Saltzman WebsiteBandcamp PagePodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsPatreon PageTwitterFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

When you study music—learn an instrument, how to compose, improvise, etc.—you are essentially learning a kind of mathematical language of sound moving through time. It’s a system of ratios, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.We musicians may not think about this consciously, but on some level, we’re always processing the act of music-making through logical and mathematical principles. 5/8 time? We think 3+2 or 2+3. F7#9? We think of a chord based on a series of intervals that, when put together, “add” up to that chord. The chord itself can be derived from one or more scales that themselves consist of a series of intervals, which are in turn derived from acoustical ratios that make those scales (usually five or seven notes) add up. Even the way we figure out which fingers to use when playing the piano—a complex calculus that balances the physical layout of the keyboard, the relative strength and weakness of each finger, and the requirements of the music itself—involves high-level mathematical decision making.Is this too much cold, hard math for you, dear listener? Will this ruin your experience of, say, Sweet Caroline (in a way, I mean, that the overplaying of that Neil Diamond classic hasn’t already?) **Well, here’s the cold, hard truth: you also process music this way. You may not know you’re hearing 5/8 time or an F7#9, but a part of your brain is devoted to breaking down those sonic phenomena into to the very ratios that make them pleasing (or stressful, or sad, or elusive.)The point is, the emotional experience of music is fundamentally based on these ratios. To be sure, there are other factors—cultural, sentiment, memory—that contribute to our experience of music. But the underlying reality of music, like everything else in the universe, is a kind of math.That doesn't render the emotional experience of listening to music a dull exercise in logic. But it does remind us that there's a lot of "data" contributing to our experience. Some of the data we can come to understand through study. The deepest levels, like the ultimate nature of reality itself, however, will always remain elusive.Music Performed:Original ImprovisationImprovisation combining "Something" & Beethoven's 5th ThemesImprovisation combining "Knocking at Heaven's Door" & Beethoven's 5th ThemesImprov on Beethoven's 4th, ála ColtraneMusic MentionedSinatra cover of "Something": https://youtu.be/eI7HxkbY-9ABeethoven's 5th Symphony, Leonard BernsteinKnocking at Heaven's Door: https://youtu.be/rm9coqlk8fYGlenn Gould Bach: https://music.apple.com/us/album/bach-english-suites-bwv-806-811-french-suites-bwv-812/557250210FollowPeter Saltzman WebsitePodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

In this episode, I do battle with Philip Glass and, by extension, the entire genre of minimalism. To my surprise,  though, I found that even while I reject the aesthetic as a whole, there’s plenty I can take from it creatively—but only by adapting some of its techniques in ways never intended by its practitioners.Original Music In This Episode:(see "Breaking Glass" album for complete tracks and more.On The Possibility of SongFast ScalesEndlessly MelodyBreaking Glass 4Breaking Glass 2Breaking Glass 3Mimimally BluesyMusic Discussed in This Episode:Beethoven's 7th Sympony (Movement 1)Philip Glass, Einstein on the BeachJohn Coltrane, TunjiFollow Me:Peter Saltzman WebsiteBandcamp PagePodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsPatreon PageTwitterFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com 

After I finished recording this episode, I remembered that I had already done one early laster season on the same subject. Thus the "again". I didn't go back and listen to that because I gotta believe this one's completely different. Or is it? Follow Me:Peter Saltzman WebsiteBandcamp PagePodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsPatreon PageTwitterFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

I was watching Jerry Seinfeld's new standup release on Netflix the other night and it put me in the mind of nothing. Specifically, how we build music out of essentially meaningless sound events that end up adding up to...something?FollowPeter Saltzman WebsiteBandcamp PagePodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsPatreon PageTwitterFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

Season Two is finally here but it’s not at all was I was planning. Befitting the title of the podcast, Improvisations on the Ledge, in fact, resists any serious planning. And yet, for this premiere episode of season two, I can’t avoid the elephant in the world-sized room: CoVid-19. The central theme of this episode, then, is how the crisis changes the way we go about making art—if at all.Music:CoVid Improvisation #1CoVid 19 SuitePreludeLock-InThe Wrong Kind of TimelessnessPostlude

It's been a LONG wait, but season two is just about ready to launch. With an exciting new format and several new features, it will be well worth the wait! Coming April 15th...or thereabouts.

Like the Sonata Allegro form I discussed in episode #26, the Theme and Variations form has a long history—and not just in classical music. In fact, having a theme, then varying it, is fundamental to the music-making process itself. And like the sonata-allegro form, the Theme and Variations form is, in some ways a primary way of creating music in larger structures.State a theme (usually, but not always in some song form)Improvise or compose multiple discrete variations on that theme By discrete, I mean that you, the listener, should be able to easily discern where one variation begins and ends. Each variation is, in a sense, its own little self-contained piece of music, and each will normally have a particular characteristic or characteristics that easily distinguishes it from the others. The attributes can include:TempoKey center and mode (major or minor)Groove and time signatureHarmonic styleAnd moreEnd with a variation that acts as a fitting conclusionOf course, how all of this unfolds depends on the era, the composer, and the context of the theme and variations itself. Often, as in the case of some Beethoven sonatas and symphonies (see the final movement of the Eroica), the form is used as a movement in a multi-movement piece.In my case, at least for IOTL, the theme and variations are improvised. That is the part of the context for how these variations unfold. The other part is that I decided to relate each variation to something that was going on in my day. Or perhaps to describe my day in the form of improvised musical notes. It doesn’t matter in the end: the music works or doesn’t work on its own merits.

Show Notes:In this episode, the amazing pianist-composer Jean-Michel Pilc and I cover a wide range of topics connected to the improvisational process. How does it happen? Do we control it? Should we even try? Is there any real difference between improvisation and composition? Should there be? The podcast includes a segment with both of us improvising (at Jean-Michel’s request) with just two fingers, and concludes with selections from improvised sonatas.FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PageJean-Michel Pilc WebsitePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

As I mentioned in episode 22 (“Improvising Classical Music: Is That a Thing?”), I’ve long been fascinated by the improvisational wizardry of great composers like Bach and Beethoven. I also spoke about how their approaches to improvisation (though, of course, we have no direct evidence) inspired me in my own approach to improvisation.What I didn’t mention in that episode was that somewhere along the line, I decided that I should be able to improvise a full four-movement piano sonata like my hero, Beethoven. Crazy? Yes. Misguided? Absolutely!But crazy and misguided ideas can lead to something beautiful and cool. So with that in mind, I am launching the “Improvised Sonata Project” right here on Improvisations on the Ledge. I’ll release the actual improvised sonatas every so often in streaming digital music platforms. In the meantime, episode 26 is the first effort in this project and includes some background why I’m doing it, what a sonata even is, and why the form can still be relevant today.Enjoy!FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

In the interests of busting yet another musical myth, I improvise a nocturne in the afternoon. At least it’s relatively dark in its sweetness.FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

A random musical thought occurs while  parking the car, which circuitously leads me to a final chord at precisely the moment when a plane lfies by in the same exact key. I don’t make this stuff up. And yet I do.

Yes, that’s right, improvisations with sports-style play-by-play analysis—including instant replay!It may seem like a sacrilege of sorts to do an analysis of my own improvisations—robbing you of some supposedly idealize pure, unfettered musical bliss (e.g., blissful ignorance.) But a) I have no doubt that understanding something of what you’re listening to can only enhance the experience, and b) now you’ll know what it’s like to be in my head when I’m performing these free improvisations. Contrary to what you might imagine, the process is far from blissful, and invovles plenty of mundane and impure thoughts. Yay to that!---FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

I have a bad habit (for my health, but good for my art) of taking on challenges laid down by the greatest composers of all time. In this case, it's J.S. Bach, and his ability to write and improvise beautiful music with just two intertwining melodies. He called them Two-Part Inventions. I call them a problem. Bach laid down the gauntlet; I took him on, mostly because I don't know any better.FollowPodcast HomepageSubscribe on Apple PodcastsBandcamp PagePatreon PageTwitterPeter Saltzman WebsiteFacebookContact: info@petersaltzman.com

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This one, at least, contains a hint of what's to come in the next main episode. But only barely.

There are a lot of spectacularly accurate musicians out there—probably more than ever. These are the ones, regardless of genre, who play or sing everything to perfection. The next great classical child prodigy...the 13-year-old jazz whiz...the 9-year-old singing perfect renditions of Taylor Swift songs. Almost none of these wunderkinds will come up with an original note of music in their lives for a very simple reason. If you’re in the business of playing everything flawlessly, you probably aren’t in the business of creating something new. In this episode, I explore the difference between those two worlds. And as always, with a lot of music. Improvised music. Orignal improvised music! Follow Podcast Homepage Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

When I was 17 and still in the throes of my love affair with jazz, I came upon a passage in a biography about J.S. Bach that really messed with my head. I read that, on-demand—from emperors, dukes, church officials and whoever else made demands of musicians in the 18th century— Bach could brilliantly improvise multi-voice fugues on the keyboard that rivaled or even surpassed his written works in that form. When I was 18, I read a biography about Beethoven, in which I learned that he could improvise multi-movement piano sonatas that rivaled or surpassed his written works in that form. Fugues. Sonatas. Fugues! These are among the most complex musical forms to craft, and you’re telling me these dudes could just make them up on the spot? Somewhere deep down, I decided that I wanted to be able to do that. Or something like it. Impressions As an impressionable young pianist/composer/jazzer/songwriter, I read the biographies of great musicians the way a religious fanatic reads the bible—absorbing everything, and worrying about how all of it applied to me. If I read that Charlie Parker, the great bebop saxophonist, was addicted to heroine, I wondered if my lack of drug use would be a problem in being a jazz musician. (Never got further than pot and booze.) I worried extensively about being a white kid playing black music. (Every white kid playing black music worries about that at some point.) Most of all, I worried about whether or not I’d ever be worthy of my heroes. Many of the musicians I jammed with, often twice my age, let me know in no uncertain terms that I would never reach those heights, that I should just settle for musical competency—like them. But even though what I read in these biographies worried me, it also inspired me in two important ways. One, unless they were hagiographies, they humanized my heroes—brought them down from the pedestals that insecure and mediocre artists and critics put them on in their need to make what they masters did unattainable. By making them flawed, showing how they struggled to scale the heights, I gradually came to understand that there was a path towards musical greatness, one that involved many tough choices along the way. Too often, with the greats, we assume they were just born that way. Not so. Quite the opposite. The truly great artists fight for every note for the simple reason that they’re not the notes everyone else is playing—that everyone else assumes are the notes you should be playing. Improvisation as Proof of Concept The other thing I learned was the importance of improvisation itself throughout musical history. Improvisation was not just a thing jazz musicians did, but a vital part of the creative process in all great musical traditions. In effect, what the great jazz improvisers did was bring it back—remind us that it was an integral part of the compositional process and that if your musical language couldn’t be improvised, then there was a problem. And there was a problem in the Western Art Music tradition when I was young. We were still under the sway of advanced serialism, a musical language so convoluted that it could only be appreciated by the “experts”—meaning the composers who meticulously created it and the small cadre of musicians who played it. In its purest (puritanical) form, It certainly could not be improvised by human musicians. You’d need a pretty powerful computer for that. (Interestingly, a significant advance in the musicality of serialism came when composers like Witold Lutoslawski figured out how to use it in an improvisational setting, what is called aleatoric, or chance, music.) All of which proves two things: one, improvisation is vital to the creative health of any musical tradition. And two, there is no one way or approach to improvising. For a long time, jazz musicians improvised around the tune, the chord changes of popular or jazz tunes. Many still do this in various forms. But there are other ways, including free improvisation (which itself has many subsets.) And then there are the ways I learned from reading about Bach and Beethoven’s improvisations mastery. A Third Way Bach, with his ability to improvise fugues, and Beethoven with his ability to improvise sonatas. What did this tell me? That there was a third or fourth way: not purely free improvisation, but not wholly married to a tune like in most jazz. You could improvise on themes—freely, but with the aim being some kind of structure that added up to a story. That’s what I wanted to do. Follow Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

Yet another mini-bonus episode, which can only mean one thing: I'm working on a BIG episode. Until then...Enjoy! Nothing to see here but a free improvisation followed by a non-rant followed by an improvisation on the free improvisation.

To get right to the point... **To get right to the point...** To get right to the point... I never much cared for the style of music | music | music | music | | ----- | ----- | ----- | | musi | mus | mu | called minimalism (minimalisminimalisminimalisminimalisminimalisminimalism) Until I almost [ALMOST aLmOsT] did[id.] Follow Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

Have you ever listened to a piece of music that impressed you on its technical merits but left you cold? This happens to me all the time, particularly with young jazz or classical wunderkinds, where I'll have an immediate superficial reaction along the lines of "wow impressive chops," followed almost by profound boredom and, in some cases, dismay the so many notes are being spewed out to so little effect. This, to be clear, is not how I feel when I listen to John Coltrane's iconic recording of his tune *Giant Steps.*Coltrane was never a superficial wunderkind: he pretty much always had a deeply personal sound, even when he was trying not to. The great ones are always, in some intangible way, original. Still, there is something missing in his recorded performance of *Giant Steps.*It's certainly technically impressive: the profoundly original and challenging harmonic structure (though at least in part derived from Richard Rodger's Have You Met Miss Jones) requires an advanced virtuosity that can't be dismissed. And Coltrane still sounds like Coltrane, full of passion and intelligence. What's missing, as my friend David Bloom astutely noted in a recent newsletter, is an actual musical story—a sonic narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it feels like chorus after chorus of fast 8th notes interrupted only by the occasional signature Coltrane long note which serves as both a breather (for him and us) and a reminder that you're dealing with a profoundly great man here, not some conservatory-trained technician. But when it's done, you're kind of glad it's over with and you don't feel like you been taken on a particularly meaningful musical adventure. It's impressive but kind of flat. Symmetry is a Trap... Coltrane woodshedded the tune for months before recording it, and it shows. But the chord changes, which bedeviled Tommy Flanagan, the pianist on the session who had no time to practice, and many other since, presented a serious musical problem. They are so symmetrical in their arrangement that they force the player, if they are not careful, into a kind of mechanical trap. You spend some much mental energy trying to negotiate the harmonic progression—what we call the changes—that you fail to notice that you are followingthe chords rather than creating a musical through-line with them. They become not so much a means for melodic invention as they do a maze to simply get through musically alive. And by following the maze, you are following preset a kind of musical pattern, one that is, again, highly symmetrical. You become a hamster on a mechanical musical wheel following, rather than leading, performing tricks with patterns rather than telling a story. ...But Symmetry is the Goal And yet there is something profoundly beautiful about these chord changes. Symmetry isbeautiful, and something we—as composers, songwriters, novelist, screenwriters, and painters—are forever striving for as a means to create artistic sense. Not just because of the logic, but the cohesiveness, where the smallest parts are reflected in the whole, and vice versa. Symmetry helps tie things together. Think of just about any episode of Breaking Bad(which is about the most perfectly written TV show of all time): small details that are introduced in the teaser, come back, are built on, and usually have a reflection with deeper meaning in the end. These symmetries—in the form of visuals, words, expressions in that show—help tie the themes of any given episode, and larger units (seasons, the entire series) together. They also provide a sense of order amid the chaos that happens in the main body of each episode. The main body (Acts one, two and three) are equivalent of the statement of the theme(s) in music (act 1), the development or solos section (act 2) and the recapitulation (return of the themes) in act 3. (In this analogy, an intro would be like the teaser, and a vamp at the end would be akin to the tag.) Breaking Good then Breaking Bad Coltrane got act one right; it's practically a perfect tune. It's in act two, where he develops his themes, where things start to get messy. Or, really, they don't get quite messy enough. Continuing with the Breaking Badanalogy, if Vince Gilligan had made everything neat, cleanly connected, symmetrical throughout an entire episode it would feel false, and mechanical. For example, say Walter White is shown cooking meth with Jesse Pinkman who turns up the heat to high and cause a near catastrophe as the formula boils over. Walt screams at Jesse. Then, in the next scene, we see Walt's wife Skylar cooking stew for dinner in their house with the help of their son, Walt Jr. Similarly, Walt Jr. turns up the heat to high and the stew boils over. Skylar screams at him. If Breaking Badhad actually been written this way, you would have turned it off. It's too damn cute, to clean, too symmetrical. Instead, the narratives develop organically, usually climaxing in a literal mess of violence, followed in act three or the tag with something (the cliffhanger) that sets us up for the next episode, and often reflects back to the start. But that mess in the middle, particularly in act 2 where themes are developing, conflicting, bashing against each other, etc., is where the meat of the episode happens. And without all that mess, the symmetry that does exist just feels too clean—like Coltrane's solo, an endless stream of precision without a story. Asymmetry as the Way out of the Maze So it would seem that the only way out of this mess—this maze weaving streams of notes around these perfect chord changes—is to embrace the mess, to let the harmony trip us up, force us down unpredictable paths, allow for some imperfection so that a real story with pathos, an arc, and meaning can unfold. To not follow the chords, but lead them in some way. Coltrane, of course, was a master storyteller whose music is filled with so much drama that he can simply overwhelm you. But he was, after all, a master technician, and it seems that, obsessive practicer that he was, he focused solely on getting throughthe changes rather than saying something with them. I would like to believe that had he lived longer (he died in 1967 at the age of 42) he would have eventually come back to the tune and made an important musical statement with it. Or, maybe in a roundabout way he did: you can hear elements of the techniques he developed for this tune in his modal and avant-garde statements. But for Giant Stepsanyway, the job is left to the rest of us. For me, the essence of the tune is too beautiful to ignore. So I decided a long time ago that I had to try to make music out of this perfection—to make a mess out of it. I'm still working on it. Follow Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

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Several years ago, I had this Wordpress blog called "Piano Diaries" in which I recorded almost daily, mostly short improvisations, then posted them along with some text and an image. It was a piano blog. It never really went anywhere. But as I sit here and edit my next "big" episode, it occured to me that it would be nice to bring that idea back with what I'm calling "IOTL Shorts." These will appear, basically whenever I feel like it, in between the main episodes. To be honest, they're my break from producing the main episodes. Enjoy, and let me know what you think of the idea.

Since free improvisation is the primary theme of Improvisations on the Ledge, it probably makes sense to address the elephant in the room (my studio) where my free improvisations are taking place: are free improvisations really free and to what degree does free will play in this? Maybe you were expecting some other elephant, like, for instance, are these improvisations at all? Where's the proof? My podcasts are not live, after all; it could be all edited together. I could, in other words, be making the whole thing up! Well, yeah, I ammaking the whole thing up. That's the point. Some day, possibly when I get a haircut, I'm going to do a live broadcast of this podcast on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, and you'll have your proof. Even then, though, there's always the possibility that I prepared everything in advance, so in the end, you'll just have to trust me. Or not. In the end, it doesn't really matter, because I doprepare everything in advance: I've been practicing, studying, reading, composing, talking, thinking, succeeding, failing, rising, falling, but mostly living for decades. That is my preparation for these moments of “free” improvisation. Their freedom, as I discuss in the podcast, is limited, ironically, by not only how much I've prepared, but the ways I've chosen (free will) to prepare. If, for example, I practiced nothing but the standard major and minor scales and arpeggios along with the 18th-century repertoire they are connected to, my improvisations would be rather limited. I haven't practiced any of that for decades; I practice my own scales an repertoire, so what you really hearing in these free improvisations is a kind of free association/free play within the framework of all of those things I've been practicing for years. It's still limited, but it's my own. But back to that original question: are free improvisations truly free, and is that freedom governed by free will. I address that question in some detail in this episode, but one thing I don't address is the possibility that being willful itself may, at least in this context, be antithetical to freedom. What? You Say?!? In the podcast, I briefly discuss philosopher Sam Harris's book, Free Will, the premise of which is that we don't have free will, that everything is determined by this infinite regress of events going back to the Big Bang. This idea, of course, is called determinism, or Neo-determinism, since the original determinism was determined to be too fatalistic to free-thinking progressive moderns. I argue that Harris is wrong, that even with all of the accumulated baggage of our history, we are able to make our own decisions in the moment. I make this argument solely through music: I take a simple musical idea, go one "standard" direction with it, then "prove" that I can freely choose to go many other directions. This is, for me, the definition of free improvisation, and the musical equivalent of free will. In the back of my mind as I was performing the various free improvisations, however, I was troubled by this notion of willfullychoosing which direction to go. Isn't the imposition of my will a kind of master-slave proposition where I'm assuming power over the music, telling it where to go? If that's the case, am I really free, and if so, what kind of freedom is it when you are imposing your will upon something (or worse, someone) else? Free Non-Will As it turns out, I end up addressing this issue near the end, if somewhat inadvertently, or better, by chance. I mention Keith Jarrett's approach to free improvisation wherein he says that he just places his hands on the keyboard and they tell him where to go. Well, this is a very Zen approach, where we are freely exploring by letting the music take us where it will. It's not so much free will as it is free non-will. And there is far more freedom in that than in pushing the music around where you, the master, want it to go. But it's not determinism either. Determinism is also a kind of master-slave proposition in which you are at the mercy of some unseen master. (Time? God?) Rather, it's the middle ground in which, yes, there is all of this history behind you, but it doesn't determine where you're going next. Instead, you freely explore where the universe is taking you—in music or life. Follow: [- Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Podcast Homepage](https://improvisations-on-the-ledge.simplecast.com/)

Composers, songwriters, and performers of a certain age grew up experiencing, thinking about and creating music in larger formats—primarily the album. Sure, we, like the rest of you, bought 45s, assigned ourselves as DJs at dance parties, and selected songs on jukeboxes. We listened to the radio where the DJs spun hit after hit (sometimes what they were paid toturn into hits.) We even made mixtapes, transferring songs via electronic analog signals from our LPs onto cassettes. But mostly we listened to albums because a) it was cumbersome to keep switching between songs on a single, let alone switching among multiple discs; b) we understood that with the serious artists at least, each album was meant as a cohesive artistic statement. Or at least artists aimed for that goal. It didn't always work: there's plenty of lofty and pretentious rock and pop from the 1960s and 70s. Still, you loved that artists were trying. Now? Artists still think (often reluctantly) in albums. Some albums, like Beyoncé's Lemonade, and Kanye West's best material even feel like fairly cohesive artistic statements. Most do not for the simple reason that it almost feels like it's not worth the effort when hardly anybody listens to an album as a unit. Do you? I don't. Or at least not very often. That King's Speech Music Maybe none of this matters. Maybe it's just the natural evolution of the music industry—how we experience, relate to music and artists. Or maybe it's just me being old, out of touch, not getting it. I am all of those things, but another thing I am is this: a musician with a deep knowledge of music itself, and it's evolving role in the broader culture. I'm not a musical scholar; I'm a working, creative musician, and my experience tells me something is wrong. Something is wrong with music itself when it has no context larger than the individual song. More to the point, the full potential of music as a powerful, emotionally rich storytelling language is diminished when all we are left with is "singles." And I don't just mean "singles" in the normal sense of the word, e.g. a hit pop song. I mean "single" in the generic sense, as in a single piece of untethered music, regardless of style, period, or it's original place in a larger structure. So that can just as easily be a movement from a Beethoven symphony as it can be a pop song from a great album. I recall thinking about this when watching the very fine film, King's Speech. In a scene near the end, King George VI, after much training to ameliorate his stutter, makes a live radio speech announcing the declaration of war against the Nazis to the nation. The accompanying music throughout the scene is the 2nd movement—the Allegretto— from Beethoven's 7th symphony. That movement, in an of itself, is one of the most moving pieces of music ever written. And the way it underscores the scene is beautiful. The director lets the music carry the emotion—as it should. But I couldn't help but think of the larger context of the movement as it was originally concieved—the dangerously wild first movement whose repeated bass figure in the coda led Beethoven's contemporary Carl Maria von Weber to call the former "ripe for the madhouse." That bit of looniness perfectly sets up the Allegretto. And the two movements that follow that complete the story of what Richard Wagner called, "the apotheosis dance." The point is, most people will never know or care about the rest of the symphony. Most people will probably call it "the King's Speech music" or something, The Album is Dead, Long the live the... There's nothing I can do about that. The technological cat is long out of the bag and we're not going back to a time of four-movement symphonies or even concept albums that matter. The only thing we, as musicians, can do is create new larger contexts for our music. That could be in the form of an Instagram story album, serial television (a new form of opera?), or, perhaps, something like this podcast, where I seem, in the end, to have found a context for this lonely, disembodied nocturne. That is until someone else finds another place for it. Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

In episodic television (Seinfeld, Friends, etc.), a bottle episode is one in which the writers mostly take leave of the regular format,  opting for a cheaply produced, one-set show that often features secondary characters.   Infinity times Zero I tried to do that with this episode, not so much because I needed a break from the regular show themes, as because I had absolutely no clue going in what I was going to talk about. But as is usual with free improvisations, themes have a way of establishing themselves by a) sheer force of my monomaniacal personality; b) the fact that I talk about the same basic three things over and over; c) the fact that just because the universe is random, doesn't mean everything isn't connected, and therefore as soon as you begin talking, all sorts of connections start forming automatically in your mind; D) all of the above. Memory + Forgetting = The Future And so it is that I delve into the role that memory plays in improvisation, how it creates a dialogue—sometimes an argument—between the past and present, the result of which is the future. Memory, of course, is imperfect: we remember bits of tunes, conversations, events, but we remember them imperfectly. I find that the imperfection of remembering is itself a creative tool: I will be improvising, and a bit of some tune I played years ago comes up, but I only remember the first part. So what do I do? I'm forced to take the idea in another direction. Or stop. But going in another direction, in some ways, is the definition of creativity. So why stop? Eventually, of course, you do have to stop. Mentioned: Bloom School of Jazz David is a wonderful, iconoclastic teacher, not just of jazz, but the meaning of music itself. Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Epissode 17 TranscriptionEpisode [MUSIC] In episodic television shows like Friends Seinfeld, the first iteration of Star Trek, there is a thing called the bottle episode. A bottle episode is a kind of cheaply produced, usually on one set, more often than not with secondary. Tertiary characters being featured, tends to leave behind the main structure format of the regular show that you're used to. It's this independent little entity of a show. So that's what I'm going to do today. Of course, this is not a television show. It's not truly episodic either for that matter. Even though each podcast has a kind of episodic tendency, there are themes that build up over time, but this episode is going to be a independent little thing in itself. And the reason for that is because I had no idea coming in what I was going to do and it's cheaply produced. Well, it's produced exactly like all the others now they think about it. I put a microphone in front of the piano. I have two microphones inside the piano and I talk and play. So in that sense, it's exactly like every other episode. [MUSIC] Bottle episode or you could call it the whatever episode, whatever is on my mind that may seem irrelevant to everything else. Well, that’s impossible. [MUSIC] Angular Blues or asymmetrical blues. [MUSIC] After all. The premise of this show is free improvisation. It’s called improvisations on the ledge, which seems to imply the possibility of falling off, which I can edit out or leave in. As I’ve said in other episodes, mistakes often lead you down paths you weren’t expecting, which in itself makes free improvisation a worthwhile endeavor. Now that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a worthwhile endeavor for the listener. It this, well, it’s worth it for me because I get to experiment with new ideas. It doesn’t mean you would want to hear it. [MUSIC] Well, that’s the way with all free improvisation, not just in music, free improvisation in comedy or whatever it is. In that case also used as a tool to explore one’s technique, to go further with it, to get you out of perhaps patterns, and I’ve talked about this before in my avant garde episodes, that’s episodes 15 and 13 and I talked about the avant garde as being a useful technique for those who are otherwise mainstream in their approach, as a useful technique to break out of certain patterns. And free improvisation, whether it’s avant-garde or not,is the same way. And I suppose in television then a bottle episode is a chance for the writers to just go, what the hell! So this is the whatever, what the hell bottle episode where anything can happen but mostly won’t. And the Nice thing is I can edit it all out. I can edit it all out. I can edit… [MUSIC] Since we’re on the topic of doing whatever the problem is. When you’re this old 58 and you’ve had a life in music and a life in general, everything you do, everything you say, everything you play, every move you make. See, this is what I’m talking about. Every move: I start saying that and I think of Sting’s Every Breath You Take because I just said every, every, every. So every thing I play has some association with something else, whether it’s by me or somebody else. And sometimes I get the two confused, I’ll start playing something and I’d go, oh, did I write that? No, that was by Sting. You begin to play on your own memory. Your memory starts intermingling with the present and then the problem becomes do you go with the memory or do you deny it or do you do something somewhere in between those worlds? [MUSIC] So for instance, right there, I was thinking as soon as I played it of a tune and I knew exactly what it was, it was by an old mentor of mine, David Bloom, who has for many years had the Bloom school of jazz here in Chicago. And David wrote this tune that he would play for me in his smokey old school on Rush Street in Chicago. And I believe it was called Shadow of a Soul. The tune, I mean not the school, though God knows that the school had kind of a shadowy vibe to it and it went something like that. But I don’t remember it perfectly cause this was when I was 17 years old, so 41 years ago. And so I started playing it. And inevitably I’m aware of this past, these moments where I see David up there with a cigarette in his mouth, on his Acrosonic piano with cigarette burns probably on the keys because he’d leave the cigarette dangling over the edge. And I have this memory of him playing that. He was not a very proficient pianist. He’s a guitarist and flutist, and I don’t remember where, what chords it was, but I know the tune basically. [MUSIC] So when I’m doing something like that, I’m in the mode of interacting with the past, the present, and trying to create something for the future. This is really what all music is. When you’re playing, you think you’re in the moment, but you’re also in the past, you’re drawing on the past to create the future. [MUSIC] So what I normally do in free improvisation, because there are all of these free associations going on, is I get into kind of a dialogue with my past, other people’s pasts, other music. But I, I try not to do a literal representation of what I remember, partly because I don’t remember it perfectly. And so I try to build on that and create something new out of it. So … [MUSIC] That’s somewhat the beginning of that. David Blum tuned, but I don’t remember where it’s gonna go. So I just do something else with it. [MUSIC] David would never do that. Maybe he would. [MUSIC] He would definitely never do that.

Left-leaning improvisations on patriotic tunes for (what’s left of) Independence Day. I had a whole rant planned for this episode—a musical/verbal elegy on the disaster our country has become under the regime of he-who-shall-not-be-named. But let's face it, there are plenty of podcasts—like Pod Save America—that are more effective at ranting against the grotesquerie in D.C. than mine. What I'm good at is ranting through music, and that includes instrumental music like this. What, you didn't think a person could rant through the piano? Think again. And enjoy (what's left of) independence day! Mentioned: Music for Blues, Preludes & Feuds on Streaming Platforms Apple Music Spotify Google Play Tidal Bandcamp CD Baby Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

In episode #13, Avant-Garde Jazz for Dummies, I spoke about how avant-garde music plays a behind-the-scenes, supporting role in much of the mainstream music we love. But as a musician who isrelatively mainstream(sort of), I realized, after producing that episode, just how vital the avant-garde has been in keeping mefrom getting stuck in predictable, ultimately deadening patterns. Musical Nature vs. Musical Nurture Most of us create music with many assumptions, a priori axioms that we think of as being "just the way things are." To some extent, these assumptions grow out of nature and how we perceive the world aurally. We are drawn to the major triad (C-E-G in the key of C), the tonic, the one chord, because it is the fundamental chord of natural acoustics. It is literally part of nature and how we perceive it sonically. On the other hand, while based on natural "laws" of acoustics, many of our musical conventions simply reflect cultural norms—what we've grown up with seemsnormal. But, of course, normal wasn't always normal. At some point in the past, the commonplace was a new idea. Over time, through inertia, habit, and even a kind of cultural hegemony, what was once new is integrated into our lives as the new normal. As with everything else in life, we yearn for a certain amount of normalcy in our music. We want it to be reasonably predictable, with just enough surprise and innovation to keep us interested. Still, when "normal" ossifies—in culture, politics, and science—somebody needs to shake things up. Avant-gardists, by definition, rarely enter the mainstream, at least while they're alive and advancing the guard. But they do help push the boundaries of the mainstream, to help us break out predictable patterns. Plunge or Dip? As for me, I frequently traverse the boundaries of the avant-garde in music, never diving in completely. Why don't I take the full plunge? Because I really don't want to swim in that pool, where all norms disappear, and you are effectively reinventing water—and the treading thereof. But I do like to dip my feet in occasionally. It keeps me fresh. Am I a coward for never going all the way in? Perhaps. But it's really more about my personality (and perhaps my status as a white-male-heterosexual.) I still want to live in "normal" society, even if I find it to be about 49% screwed up. I'm assuming that for the full-fledged avant-gardists like Cecil Taylor, "normal" culture is at least 75% screwed up. Music Mentioned: My Memoir, Blues, Preludes & Feuds Music for Blues, Preludes & Feuds on Streaming Platforms Apple Music Spotify Google Play Tidal Bandcamp CD Baby -4'33" of Silence: Full Orchestral Performance Cecil Tayor video:Improvisation #3 Follow: Podcast Homepage [Episode Transcript](http://www.petersaltzman.com/2019/07/01/#15-avant-garde-for-wimps-(like-me/#transcript) Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

**Why am I a lousy film composer? Could it be because I'm a composer? ** I've written a few movie scores and had a few tracks placed on TV shows. What I've come to learn, though, is that due to my musical ego, I'm a less than ideal film composer. I trained myself as a composer to be upfront, to have my music not just enhance the story but be the story. Film/TV music is called underscoring for a reason. It is there to underscore the emotion of the story on screen, but must never overwhelm that story. The film is the story; the music supports the story. When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, music was king. Or at least that's how I interpreted that time. Maybe I just wanted to see it that way. Sure, musical artists, particularly in pop and rock, used visual and extra-musical dramatic elements to enhance the stories in their music. But it was the opposite of what film music normally does: the imagery and drama enhanced what was already there in the music. The music is ultimately what mattered. The music told the real story. And the music had to be able to stand on it own. Now in the realm of film music: the music CAN stand on its own but more often than not it doesn’t have to. And because it doesn’t have to it usually doesn’t. Composing vs. Film Composing There are some excellent and distinctive film composers out there: Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Ennio Morricone. The question is, how does their music hold up in its own right, without the benefit of the images and stories it is composed for? Because when it has to do that, it’s now entering into a league with much stiffer competition. So Zimmer and Williams, for example, write a lot of music for traditional orchestra—they write for other types of ensembles as well, but let’s keep it in that realm because you really can’t compare their electronic music with, say, Beethoven’s or Stravinsky's. So for symphony orchestra: Williams vs. Beethoven? Umm... How about Zimmer vs. Stravinsky? No comment... Of course, this is unfair: Beethoven makes most composers sound like amateurs. My point is not to denigrate these film composers, but to keep what they do in the proper perspective. Their music servesa different god. They are great film composers; they are not great composers. Not even close. But the truth is, many listeners lack the proper perspective; they have either forgotten or never knew what great standalonemusic is. Listening to foreground music requires focus—a particular type of focus that obviates, even negates, the need for visual stimulation. (When you read a great novel, do you need to have music in the background? When I'm engrossed in a great novel, I want to shut out the world altogether.) I've never been able to understand why people listen to film scores sans the movies they're connected with. Most of this music just doesn't hold up on its own. So perhaps when they are listening to film music without the movie, they are, having seen the movie, essentially providing the film in their heads. In which case the music is still the underscoring for, in this case, the remembered movie. Either way, just because you can compose, doesn't mean you can successfully compose for film. More to the point, just because you can compose for filmdoesn't mean you can successfully compose for music. Music Mentioned: View/Purchase Piano Score for Nocturne #9 Listen to Tragic Fugue (end music) Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

The musical Avant-Garde in general and Avant-Garde jazz, in particular, have either misleading or no connotations at all for most listeners (and non-listeners.) Say the words "free jazz," and most will think of musical anarchy—sonic chaos. And then they'll run for their lives. But when you consider the most prominent practitioners of so-called "free jazz"—the likes of John Coltrane (late period), Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor—one thing should be clear: these are great musicians. So before you run, at least consider why they might be doing what they do, and what they're really doing. And also consider some of your favorite mainstream music may be imbued with musical ideas brought into the world by the so-called Avant-Gardists. The Choice By definition, there is not much in common in the music of artists like John Cage, John Coltrane, Edgar Varese, and Sun Ra. They are, after all, musical outliers: they don't hang out in the same clubs together. But all of them do have one thing in common: they made a choice, somewhere along the line, to create their own musical languages. Making such a choice can, of course, be artistically and personally dangerous, leading to ostracization within the artistic community, derision by fans, and diminished employment opportunities. So why do some do it, where others are satisfied to work solely within the "accepted" musical frameworks, seemingly passed on down for generations? Here's the thing: what we think of as the "accepted" frameworks are almost always languages created by some bold musical soul in the past. Now, I will be the first to admit that we will probably never walk around humming Cecil Taylor or Schoenberg tunes. This music is too extreme in its willingness to push boundaries to become part of the popular music culture in its own right. Seeping Into the Mainstream But these extremes of musical expression, if they are any good, do enter the musical lexicon, even if we're not consciously aware of them doing so. They have a way of filtering down into more mainstream forms, enriching them with surprising turns and details. Listen to the experimental elements in later albums by the Beatles, like Sergeant Pepper's, then go check out modern "classical" composers like Edgar Varése or Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Beatles did. Or, as a more recent example, check out Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. Then check out late Coltrane,or Ornette Coleman. And movie music? Psychologically challenging scenes would be nowhere without Arnold Schoenberg's serialism. To be sure, Schoenberg created his twelve-tone system for reasons that had nothing to do with Hollywood (though ironically, he ended up living there) but the point is that once these new musical languages are let loose into the world, they find many "uses" beyond the composer's original intention. They simply add to to the ever-growing musical palette. So before you run away from the Avant Garde, seriously consider what it has given us. Artists Mentioned in this Podcast: Cecil Taylor: Conquistador certainly gets right down to it. Cecil's pianistic language is so distinctive as to be recognizable in about 3 seconds. If you're looking for traditional song structures, tunes, recognizable chord changes, etc., you've come to exactly the wrong place. But, try to get through it. There is a structure there, just not one you're used to. And, more importantly, it's simply beautiful music by an oft-maligned genius. Late Beethoven: I mentioned the Great Fugue(Grösse Fugue) in the podcast. It is really a strange and difficult piece of music. Fugues, in general, are intellectually challenging, and this is what's known as a double fugue (two themes interacting.) Also, check out Hammerklavier. The first movement is particularly challenging; the 2nd highlights an interesting trait in late Beethoven wherein he seems to be hinting at a swing (jazz) rhythm. What's up with that? Late Coltrane: Interstellar Space, is one of the last things John Coltrane recorded. It' a suite with just him and drummer, Rashied Ali. To say the least, it's relentless and challenging. But even as Coltrane was always pushing boundaries, there is always something of his lyrical side here. Carlo Gesualdo: The madrigal, Moro lasso al mioduolo, is so strange, and harmonically ahead of its time that people probably thought the composer was crazy. And he probably was. Edgar Varése: Perhaps Poem Eletronique sounds like so much noise and effects to our ears—sound design in modern terms, and pretentious sound design at that. But while it may not be something you put on to chill (or sing along with) it does prove my point about sounds of the Avant-Garde being incorporated into the mainstream. So you can easily hear elements of this being incorporated into a "chill vibe" if not being a very chilly vibe itself. I don't' know if that's good or bad. It just is. Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

A bluesy improvisation on the theme from the slow movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto inevitably leads me down the path of noninevitability. But why did it lead me back to Leonard Bernstein for the 2nd episode out of the last four? I mean, I love Lennie and all, but really, I don't normally think about him two out of four times I'm thinking about things. And yet here he is again. The reason is that the 3rd motif of the aforementioned Beethoven slow movement is basically the same as the opening of Bernstein's equally gorgeous tune Somewherefrom West Side Story. Bernstein, in fact, said that he borrowed the theme from the concerto. Which is fine. But. It's not exactly the same, is it? The 5th note of Bernstein's theme (on the word "us") is different, and that small difference leads the tune somewhere else entirely. And this leads me back to the point I mentioned in Episode 9—that all of these supposedly meaningful connections between disparate pieces of music are not that big of a deal, certainly not epiphany-worthy. They're just more evidence that there are a limited amount of lyrical melodies available in our universe. Happily, though, there are unlimited variations on those basic themes. So it's not so much the immediatetheme that matters as what comes after it. Links Mentioned: Emperor ConcertoThis is a recording with Bernstein conducting and the great Rudolph Serkin at the piano. (This is on Apple music, but you can find the same on Spotify, Tidal, etc.) Something I notice right away: when the piano enters at around 1:41, it has an improvisational feel. Which reminds me of a salient fact about this period of music. Composers like Mozart and Beethoven, both virtuoso pianists, often didn't write out many sections of the piano parts in their concertos, particularly the cadenzas, until after the fact, when it came time to publish. Mozart, in particular, whose late concertos are absurdly beautiful, rarely wrote out the piano part at all before the first performance. He was either improvising, playing the part he had in his head, or probably some combination of both. This should remind us that the music of that period was far more "improvised" than we tend to think nowadays, when "classical" music has been put on a pedestal, objectified, and consecrated like the god of a major religion. SomewhereThis is Barbara Streisand's recording from her 1985 BroadwayAlbum. Very 1980s in its production, excess, and the goddamn Phil Colinsesque gated snare drum. But, holy crap, that voice—one of the greatest in recorded history—transcends everything. Follow: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com Episode 12 Transcription: [MUSIC] And I’ll stop right there because I realized it was going down a path where it could only get worse. Now, some of you may recognize that theme. It’s an improvisation on the second slow movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, the Emperor, and I occasionally start improvising on these slow Beethoven movements. Another one is, uh, the violin concerto in d major. [MUSIC] That one. I just will find myself randomly improvising on these themes. They are very soulful, simple, but deeply emotional. Of course, those who know me know that I revere Beethoven as the greatest practitioner of our art, the greatest composer, and that’s part of it. There are other, perhaps lesser composers who have equally strong themes, but there’s something so fundamental about these slow Beethoven movements. All the complexity in his first movements generally and often the last movements of Sonatas, symphonies, concertos leads to a need for simplicity in the slower movements, Song-likemovements. So they lend themselves to interpretation in an improvisational setting because fundamentally they’re songs and as someone who grew up playing jazz, the foundation of improvisation in jazz, of course, is the song, popular song, particularly the early to mid period of jazz going back say to Ellington and through the bebop era, through the even post bop up to the modern era of Coltrane and Miles. Mostly we’re dealing with songs as the foundation for building larger compositions, meaning the song is the vehicle to create something bigger than the song. This is no different than what Beethoven or Mozart or Haydn or Shubert we’re doing back in the late 18th, early 19th century, using the song as the foundation and this is all the more true in the slower movements because they are literally song like. Whereas in some of the more complex, faster opening movements, the so called Sonata Allegro movements, while there is still a connection to song, it’s more about motif, usually shorter motifs like and and basically Mr Beethoven builds the entire movement on those. Three g’s and one e flat. He builds the whole thing on a short motif, which is not to say there are not song elements in it, but that it’s primarily about developing that very short motif in numerous and ingenious ways. But you notice that he follows that very intense driving complex first movement with a song. [MUSIC] That was the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony. [MUSIC] That doesn’t work quite as well as a vehicle for improvisation. And at least for me. But it does highlight my point about the song as the basis of developing musical ideas, particularly in slow movements. One of the things in a jazz, you had to prove your mettle with the ability to play up tempo, be bop tunes like Confirmation… [MUSIC] And be able to improvise on those changes as we call them, chord changes. And you had to be able to play the modal tunes like So What? [MUSIC] And improvise on those, uh, single chord or two cord tunes. But the sign of a truly mature player was, can you cut it on a ballad? Can you make music on a slow tempo? A very songful type of movement. So once you got beyond the kind of athletic demonstrations in the faster, more complex movements, what could you do when you brought the lights low and it wasn’t about a lot of notes, too many notes as the emperor said in Amadeus. That of course is a movie, not real life. So what can you do with something like this… [MUSIC] That’s not an actual tune. Just giving a example of a slow jazz ballad. I try to avoid too many actual tunes that are not in the public domain so I don’t have to pay licensing fees to be honest, copyright laws being what they are. But getting back to Beethoven, the slow movement of the emperor concerto. In an earlier version iteration of this podcast, believe it was the first episode a friend came over. We were considering using him as a kind of counterpoint to our JingleJews episode because he came up, this is Marc Stopek. He came up with the idea of jingle Jewswith a cartoon from several years ago, which got him into a lot of trouble even though he was Jewish—and still is. But during that recording session Marc, we were somehow talking about Leonard Bernstein again and he mentioned somewhere along the line that the theme from “SOMEWHERE” from West Side Story that Bernstein said that he got it from the slow movement of the Emperor Concerto. I had never really thought about this connection, but if you’ll notice the second or third phrase of that piece, let’s do it again. I’ll do it in the original key. [MUSIC] You can hear there’s a place for us. I’m not going to sing it right now cause that key is too high for this time in the morning [MUSIC] and so on. Mark pointed this out and I immediately pulled out my score because I have the complete Beethoven concertos and symphonies and Sonatas and all that stuff on my bookshelf here. Pull out my score and checked it out. And he was right. There’s a connection between those themes, and apparently Leonard himself said that’s where he got it. Uh, so I suppose in the modern world, contemporary copyright laws being what they are, he would have been sued right there. Fortunately Beethoven’s work is all in the public domain. Unlike Bernstein’s work, which may never be in the public domain because they keep extending copyright laws out into perpetuity through the known universe. Anyway, I pulled out the score and started playing it and Marc was incredibly impressed that I could just do that. I’m not, Why shouldn’t I be able to do that? I’m a composer. I studied all those works very intently back in the day when I was in my teens and twenties. That’s how I learned to compose…by Primarily studying Beethoven and the rest. What I thought about after that encounter with Marc was the absurdity of this notion that that one thing in the Beethoven Concerto, Bernstein somehow came up with the melody based on that. He may have or may not have because the truth is it’s not exactly the same. One goes like this, the Beethoven [MUSIC] and what is Bernstein do? He goes [MUSIC] so it’s really four notes that are exactly the same. Otherwise, it’s completely different. And this gets back to a point of mine in an earlier podcast, I believe it was called, Everything Relates to Everything Else. And so what. That’s my point. So what? Speaking of, so what … [MUSIC] It’s four notes, man, it’s not that big of a deal. If we’re getting to the point where we’re saying Bernstein owes Beethoven for those four notes, I mean, folks, you could come up with a million themes on those four notes. [MUSIC] Hmm. Well, it is kind of a distinctive four notes.

My recording equipment was flipping out (or maybe It was me). Which may seem like a hindrance to artistic expression but then I realized that the flipping out was part of the flipping art! I'm trying out a new audio interface—the device that takes sounds from the supposedly real analog word and converts them into the virtual world of my computer—and nothing seems to be working. Yes, it's another episode in the ongoing battle between me and my technology tools—computers, recording software, virtual instruments, FX plug-ins, mics, MIDI keyboards (that send out random pitch bend data), etc. Just when you think you've got the collective beast of advanced music technology working for as opposed to against you, something goes terribly wrong. It stops you in your tracks—literally prevents you from recording your tracks. But here's the thing I've learned over the course of several decades of recording: the taming, the mastering, the fighting with technology is very much part of the artistic process. The tools are not merely a means to an end, they are fully integrated into the end. You can't, in the end, separate the tools from the finished product. And that includes all of the technology mishaps, the beta versions, the random quantum fluctuations. All of these things are part of the art. Follow Me: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

What is a blues? A genre? Musical form? A scale? It's all of those things and more because the blues is a fundamental musical structure with infinite possibilities for making musical statements. Which I find out here... One Saturday morning, several years ago I wrote a blues for solo piano that didn't really sound like a blues... Or did it? I Try to Write a Blues That Doesn't Really Sound Like A Blues...but only if You've Already Decided What A Blues Sounds Like The thing is this: you say "blues" and it comes with a lot of baggage, good or bad. But can you actually define what a blues is? Blues as A Respite from Blues? So that Saturday Morning Blues gave me the idea that I could write a set of blues that purposely avoided reference to standard blues cliches, even though I love the standard blues cliches, but still stayed more or less in the 12-bar blues form. Why do this? To see what was there, to see what would happen. So listen on. The main track here is that first "New Blues" (as I've come to call them) I wrote that Saturday morning 11 years ago. Follow Me: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

When a free improvisation doesn't go the way I planned it leads me to the conclusion that sometimes the best-laid plans are unlaid plans. But really, it's a combination of intention and non-intention that makes for the best art. Sure, that's very Zen, or at least partially Zen. In any case, the sweet spot seems to lie somewhere between making a choice and letting the choice be made in the moment. Leonard Bernstein & Original Intent vs. Intuition The approaches to how we make and interpret music draw on knowledge, history, analysis, etc. But at the end of the day, we can only rely on the data and information so much; we don't have infinite knowledge, we can't make all decisions based on perfect information, perfect skill, perfect knowledge, so we rely on our intuition. Bernstein talks about this in reference to how two (hypothetical) conductors approach the the opening movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, but the idea is equally true with free improvisation; when you are creating music on the spot, there are innumerable decisions to be made at every moment. You can't possibly control all of them. You are, in a way, at the mercy of where the music takes you. In the End it Will Sound Like it Was Intended, Though it Wasn't In the moment of its creation, an improvisation can often feel like a struggle between what is and what is possible but not necessarily achievable. So while the intent is there, it rarely, if ever comes out the way you actually intended. Ironically, though, when I go back and listen, it does sound like it was meant to be the way it it is. Mentioned in This Podcast: Leonard Bernstein On Musical Instinct (Watch the opening section. ) Follow Me: Podcast Homepage Episode Transcript Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Bandcamp Page Patreon Page Twitter Peter Saltzman Website Facebook Contact: info@petersaltzman.com

I accidentally (if there are any accidents) improvise a melody that sounds somewhat like a Stevie Wonder tune, which takes me down a rabbit hole of musical connectedness and its close friend—litigation!

My previous was podcast was a defense of musical complexity in a time of musical dumbing down. But that does not mean I'm about complexity for its own sake. In truth, musical complexity should arise out of fundamentally simple ideas. The fear of being direct and straightforward with one's music is really about being afraid to expose one's musical soul. And all of the production and complicated techniques don't mean a thing if there's no musical soul as the foundation. In the middle of this episode, I do a kind of live analysis of what I'm improvising—not so much theoretical, but an explanation of the thinking behind what I'm playing, and where it's going. I'm my own play-by-play announcer! Weird, but fun. Listen on...

Part 1 of a rant (that will undoubtedly have many parts) on why we are so afraid of musical complexity.

A quick overview of what you'll hear on "Improvisations on the Ledge"...

A simple hymn-like tune gone wrong...because that's what I do.

In this episode I dissect one of my pop tunes from the 1980s and the way in which it appropriates multiple styles across the world and centuries—which is not only a good thing but completely natural. So get over it...

A reboot of Improvisations on the Ledge as a solo act (for now.) Somehow I conflate my free improvisation here with Damian Lillard's game and series-winning shot the other night.