A Choir of Stars / Album #90

LinearLineman

More culling from the archives. These are more on the serious side.

https://michaelalevy.bandcamp.com/album/a-choir-of-stars-2

Happy weekend, guys. I hope you like this one.

MrStochastic

👍🏻 I remember some of these.

LinearLineman

Thanks for listening @MrStochastic. Hope all is well!

McD

Only 10 more to reach the century mark!

boomer

Stunning. Man this took me places. Your improvisation skills are astounding. You have explained how you do it but it still mystifies me. This is heavy stuff that sounds like you are directly channeling the universe. Question: do you improvise into a midi sequencer and then orchestrate that single improv after the fact? Do you set up synths ahead of time and then improvise the orchestrations in real time? Do you improvise multiple tracks?

LinearLineman

Thank you @boomer, it’s gratifying to hear you say that. Although it sounds more grandiose than it is, I do, indeed channel…. something. I know that because I cannot ever play it again and, also, that the improvs often have a cohesiveness (like Fugue, or The James Webb, for example), that would require extensive planning if composed…. and a big amount of time to notate.

OTOH, I must have a huge library of musical material that has accumulated from years of listening to different genres, consciously or subliminally (like movie soundtracks). This album, especially, evokes lots of movie cliches that have been pounded into my brain. But, I am usually not consciously picking and choosing what to play next. The work is NOT picking stuff to play. My teacher Connie Crothers, once said to me “If you have an idea of something to play, play anything but that”. I can’t say I follow that rule 100%, but it’s close.

Often a listener can hear slight pauses in my improvising. It provides an emotional effect, but really new material is loading onto my hard drive and I am waiting to access it. I also have found that I sometimes drift, or the energy flags a bit, or it just sounds “off”. Strangely, when that happens I will follow up with material that is surprisingly good. That can happen because I am usually not consciously derailed by those “less than satisfactory” parts.

It is the will power not to judge (good or bad) as I’m proceeding that allows for complete “pieces”. Again, I have varying degrees of success. These “best of” albums allow me to choose those where I was “receiving” the clearest signal.

As to the actual process, I usually play a 3-5 minute stretch which I repeat once in assembling the track. I find I have the best shot at succeeding if I keep it short as the quality remains more intense than a ten minute effort.

I either use just the bass, mid, and treble midi to create the orchestration, or add another solo line with a separate solo instrument. That experience is odd, too. It usually feels like I don’t know what I’m doing because I truly don’t know what's coming next in the original piano part. I just go for it and, later, delete the excess material I’ve played that doesn’t work. Hence, a live performance would be pretty disappointing.

A lot of creative ideas also happen with midi editing… transposition, harmony building, bpm adjustment, etc. …another opportunity to refine an improvisation that may have gone wrong for my end intentions as I build the final track. A lot of small changes add up to a big effect.

Bottom line, for me, a track is mostly inspiration plus some conscious choices in the elaboration of the received material. @McD has noted that there’s a lot of variety in my stuff. I agree and that is because it is, initially, unplanned by my mind.

It’s a kind of magic that is improved by the technology at hand. I’m just not the magician. I cannot pull the same rabbit out of a hat twice,

Thanks for your curiosity, bro.