One of the techniques I use when composing is to record an improvisation and then develop the ideas later. To its advantage, this method allows me to follow my muse in real time, and to stumble upon happy accidents that I would never discover otherwise. Of course, there are problems with this approach as well, chief among them a lack of form, focus, or direction. The music may flow out, but it also might just circle the drain.
But perhaps the biggest dilemma I face when it comes time to shape my improvisation into something more concrete, is the question of just how much to change it. What should be preserved? What should be dropped? What needs a light adjustment? How much new material should be added? Normally, if I like an improv, I like the whole thing, and thus very little gets changed. And then I look at the finished product, and wonder if should have done more. Perhaps it's a touch of anxiety about how limited my role in creating the work seems. After all, the initial steps of composition would be slap-dash and impressionistic, the second pass little more than a touch-up.
I muse over this as I'm currently fleshing out one such improv into a larger piece. The source in this instance is a driving piano rhapsody I banged out some four years ago, predominantly in the key of b minor, in a loose 5/4 meter. There's not much in the way of melody or chord changes, but the piece possesses a boundless energy and a number of powerful moments. For instance, at one point, following a long section with largely static, pulsing chords, an arpeggiated bass line bursts forth, briefly carrying the piece into new harmonic territory. Elsewhere, a triumphant section in B major suddenly falters and gives way to a series of disconsolate chords, plunging into the bass, stripped of the rhythmic vitality that characterizes the rest of the piece.
As I work on transforming the improv into a formal composition, I find myself often torn between expanding certain sections and leaving them more or less as-is. When written out, the individual phrases seem rather trite. And yet, efforts to elaborate on these gestures upset the natural balance of the whole.
I find myself usually siding with the need for balance. I've gained at least a little wisdom over the years, and understand that a piece of music must be true to what it is. This particular piece could not become an expansive sonata, not without first becoming something that it is not, and losing the elements that made me come back to it in the first place. No, instead it is to be that which it is: a perpetual motion machine, forever catapulting itself toward the next big gesture, never looking back.
But perhaps the biggest dilemma I face when it comes time to shape my improvisation into something more concrete, is the question of just how much to change it. What should be preserved? What should be dropped? What needs a light adjustment? How much new material should be added? Normally, if I like an improv, I like the whole thing, and thus very little gets changed. And then I look at the finished product, and wonder if should have done more. Perhaps it's a touch of anxiety about how limited my role in creating the work seems. After all, the initial steps of composition would be slap-dash and impressionistic, the second pass little more than a touch-up.
I muse over this as I'm currently fleshing out one such improv into a larger piece. The source in this instance is a driving piano rhapsody I banged out some four years ago, predominantly in the key of b minor, in a loose 5/4 meter. There's not much in the way of melody or chord changes, but the piece possesses a boundless energy and a number of powerful moments. For instance, at one point, following a long section with largely static, pulsing chords, an arpeggiated bass line bursts forth, briefly carrying the piece into new harmonic territory. Elsewhere, a triumphant section in B major suddenly falters and gives way to a series of disconsolate chords, plunging into the bass, stripped of the rhythmic vitality that characterizes the rest of the piece.
As I work on transforming the improv into a formal composition, I find myself often torn between expanding certain sections and leaving them more or less as-is. When written out, the individual phrases seem rather trite. And yet, efforts to elaborate on these gestures upset the natural balance of the whole.
I find myself usually siding with the need for balance. I've gained at least a little wisdom over the years, and understand that a piece of music must be true to what it is. This particular piece could not become an expansive sonata, not without first becoming something that it is not, and losing the elements that made me come back to it in the first place. No, instead it is to be that which it is: a perpetual motion machine, forever catapulting itself toward the next big gesture, never looking back.