Can wordless instrumental music tell a story? If so, are my improvised piano solos somehow autobiographical?
When I began recording entries for my ongoing series Piano Diaries in 2009, the idea was more or less what the title implies—a personal record of my thoughts as expressed through improvised piano music.
As with an actual diary (which I’ve never kept), it is mainly for me; I doubt most will listen to all or even any entries. But I put it out publicly as an ongoing record of my musical thinking because why not? Unlike a written diary, there is nothing in my piano diary that I need to keep to myself. Or is there?
The Process
It works something like this: I improvise a (usually) short piece in the morning before I’ve officially started my workday (rarely in the afternoon, almost never in the evening), and if I like it, I post it on my album on Bandcamp. The idea is to record my musical thoughts before I am fully awake, allowing a kind of stream of musical consciousness to flow from my mind to my fingers. Each new day becomes a kind of musical tabula rasas. Of course, this is complete nonsense: I’ve been accumulating musical knowledge, technique, and acquiring a personal style via various choices for decades. It’s not as if I’m literally starting over every morning. But, perhaps, it’s the closest I can come to unfiltered musical thought.
To make it more like a diary, the tracks are simply presented in the recorded order. (To be clear, I don’t post everything I record—if it’s terrible, it stays on the cutting room floor.) I give each track a title right after I record it. This is itself an improvisational act. The titles may have something to do with the musical ideas I was playing within the improvisation or may just be an attempt to encapsulate its emotional character.
Either way, it got me thinking: if I listened to the entries for this past March (there are seven of them) would I be somehow hearing a sonic autobiography of my month? Of course, I wanted to find out. So being the intrepid self-investigative reporter I am, I listened to them non-stop. First impressions? Damn, they’re pretty good. But enough of the self-praise.
My second impression was that they were autobiographical somehow, but how? Let’s listen and find out how:
Entry #1: Ending First (3/05/22)
Ha! I title the first track of the month “Ending First.” What was I thinking? Just that it sounds like the epilogue to something. Something that happens after a long struggle, and now I’m sort of at peace with the way things didn’t work out. Maybe it is the nearly two weeks of being angry about Putin’s pointless and evil attack on Ukraine. Perhaps this was my respite from all that angst. I was certainly in a dark mood most of the time since the wart started. So this feels like me giving myself a break. Not so much that everything was going to be alright (it won’t) but that I was still alive and OK, e.g., that it was OK to enjoy an emotion other than pure anger. So strangely, it’s a break from autobiography. Music as a respite. We all listen to music for that feeling sometimes, right? Music to escape our troubled world.
Entry #2: Four Note Descent (03/05/2022)
Ah, so I immediately returned to my angsty mood here, on the same day, probably minutes after my musical respite. I call it a Four Note Descent because that’s what the theme is (coming about 5 seconds in.) But it’s also a kind of symbolic descent into…madness. Or I was just being mad. Fun stuff. This one reminds me of Debussy, with a touch of Cecil Taylor, a smattering of some virtuoso Romantic stylings, but pretty much all rage.
Entry #3: Pseudo-Reflective (03/21/2022)
The title says it all, and perhaps it subconsciously reflects back on the opening track of the month, which now seems like a false respite. This one begins sweetly enough with some pleasing rolled chords, moving in a descending 4th pattern, with a lovely little cadence to make it seem all peaceful-like. But something happens about halfway through: the chords start to become a bit queasy. There is another reference to Debussy (who is now seeming like a more significant influence than I thought) at the 2:17 mark. A second theme, more unsettled, emerges at about the 2:45 mark. I do temper it with a reference back to the central pleasant chord theme at 3:15, but the music keeps moving in this more romantic unsettled manner even as I refer back to the central motif again. It seems like it will end with the 2nd theme, but the main theme comes back, followed by a quick restatement of the unsettled theme.
Note that this leaving and returning and mixing of themes is pure classicism. Brahms would be proud. It’s also, to my mind, a perfect example of balancing feeling (autobiography) and form. Well done!
Entry #4: 7th Haven (03/23/2022)
The title, obviously a play on words, refers to the musical interval of the 7th—that is, the distance between two notes. If you have a keyboard at home, go play middle C and then the B above it. That’s a 7th. A relatively dissonant interval and one I make use of extensively in this improvisation.
In fact, I decided as I sat down to play that morning to base my improvisation on that interval. Why? Because it has an angular feel to it, and I was in that kind of mood. Sometimes making music is an act of working out feelings and ideas to get them out of your system. Still, despite its angularity, this has a certain sweetness to it—thus the “Haven” part of the title. But then, after some moments of silence around the 2-minute mark, it becomes quietly stark with some inside-the-piano noise and some truly dissonant intervals. Not so much angry as a quiet sort of madness that is never resolved.
Entry #5: Ostinato in G (03/24/2022)
On the very next day, I pull out of that mood, sort of. “Ostinato” is literally Italian for obstinate. But in music, the term refers to a repeated pattern of notes or rhythm. And it is a kind of musical obstinance. Here, it’s the G and D in the left hand, over which I build a theme out of three descending notes mixed with some fast non-tonal arpeggios (broken chords.) The mood is mostly upbeat but still a bit stark and edgy. The ostinato is not quite regular—it moves between various time signatures, adding a beat here and subtracting one there. Overall, it seems to be an attempt to be cheerful rather than actually cheerful.
Entry 6: Amber #871 (03/24/2022)
This does have a kind of amber feel to it. #871 refers to nothing. It’s making fun of those painter studies, e.g., “Study in Blue #3”. I’m pretty sure I don’t have 870 other Amber studies. This one has a kind of creepiness that subtly relates to the previous track, almost a reaction to it since they were recorded one after the other. Or perhaps a bitter comment on the Ostinato’s false hilarity.
Entry #7: Incomplete (03/25/2022)
Finally, we arrive at something that really feels upbeat, positive, and forward-looking. But of course, it is literally incomplete. Frankly, I just gave up at the end, unsure where to go. Or, more likely, it was the “worm” inside (a term stolen from the novelist Jennifer Egan) that moment of existential self-doubt derailed what going to be a fitting conclusion to the month. The worm inserted itself because at about 2:15, I ruined the mood with an ostinato in the left hand with a too-cheerful gospel feel (though in 5/4 time) that doesn’t work at all with what came before. As a result, sensing I had lost my way, I try to get out of it with some jazzy figures that are even less appropriate. And then I gave up, realizing I messed up a really good thing.
To quote one of my own one-minute songs:
It doesn’t work out in the end
It just ends in the end.
Like life itself, so in that sense at least, yes: the music is autobiographical.
The Piano Diaries Albums go back to 2008. For those interested in exploring the development of my improvisational style over the last 14 years, they are in chronological order. As you can see, there are several years with no entries, at least publicly released. Listen to the first track from each album. Then ask yourself, what has changed? What is consistently there from the beginning.