Invevitability is What Happens
Technology is what makes inevitability inevitable
NOTE 1: Articles like this one, with embedded music that connects to the text, are best experienced on the Substack app or in any web browser. That way you don’t get taken away from the page when you listen to the music.
Note 2: Speaking of inevitability, serendipity, chance, fate, or whatever…I realized after writing this that the next chapter in Blues, Preludes & Feuds (coming Friday) is called “Fate v. Chance, and covers some of the same territory in a fictional setting. That chapter, the last in part 1, was written some 6 years ago, so this was not by design, but by chance, or fated to be by chance. Anyway, onto the show…
First, I improvised this: (listen to the whole thing, it’s short.)
It felt right—like it was meant to be the way it was.
The “J-MP” of the title refers to the initials of fellow pianist-composer Jean-Michel Pilc, who appeared on my podcast a few years ago, and whose work I greatly admire. I listened to a couple of his recent albums, and they inspired my little ostinato-like improvisation here.
But then, as I was going through the workflow of preparing and uploading the track to my Piano Diaries 2022 album, I kept noticing this thing sitting in my studio, beckoning me with its colorful pads:
What’s that, you ask?
It’s an Atom, manufactured by PreSonus, which describes it as a “Groove Production Hardware Control Surface.” That no doubt means a lot to you.
Basically, it’s a touch-sensitive drum controller that allows you to play/record software instruments in your DAW (digital audio workstation.) But never mind all of that. The buttons are cool, changing colors depending on what they’re doing. It’s got some interesting and creative features, and since it was on sale, and since I occasionally like to shake things up here in the radical isolation that is life in my studio, I bought one.
Technology can inspire creativity, like other humans (including other pianist-composers like J-MP) and nature. After all, the piano itself is a highly-advanced piece of mechanical-acoustic low-tech. Nevertheless, I’m inspired by its history, all of the composers and pianists who’ve written and played it, and the simple fact that it takes up significant space in my studio—almost every day. So why not let this little 1-pound box with the color-changing buttons inspire something different?
So there it was, practically begging to be used. But in a short solo piano improvisation? Aren’t these Piano Diaries “entries” supposed to be spur-of-the-moment improvisations with no editing, just moments in musical time unchanged by technology and after-the-fact considerations? Well, yes, but that’s also a ridiculous proposition.
Because, as I said, the piano is itself a complex piece of technology, not inherently “purer” than more recent tech. Tech like my excellent Audix microphones that capture the piano’s rich sound; or the various software and hardware that records the actual sounds coming through those mics to my very techy RAID hard drive; and then there’s the reverb, equalization, and compression I add in the effects chain to make it sound more “natural” (ha!) after the actual recording is done.
The point is that the entire process of recording and even playing is technological in nature. So why would using a little “Groove Production” box destroy the “sanctity” of the creative process? Of course, it could if you didn’t have some skill with these sorts of higher-tech tools. But I’ve had a home studio since the mid-1980s; I use and know the high-tech toys almost as well as the piano.
So I fired up a little drum patch from Roland on their fine Zenology soft-synth (yet another type of tech in the endless chain of tech) and went to work. First, I improvised a little drum part with a hip-hop kit, then ran it through an autofilter plugin, improvising with some of the parameters within the plugin itself and with reverb using the Atom’s knobs and my Faderport’s faders…
The result was this:
It’s the same track as above, but with the improvised drums and effects added.
After listening to it, this one also seemed right, like it was meant to be the way it is. Perhaps you beg to differ; perhaps you prefer the first “pure” improvisation, or maybe you like neither.
The point is, the implication when something seems inevitable is that it couldn’t be another way and still be inevitable. Only one way can be inevitable, right?
Wrong.
This is, in part, a historical misconception. We hear Beethoven’s 5th symphony, and it seems perfect like it couldn’t be any other way. But Beethoven, a supreme musical craftsman and inspired genius, could have easily taken it in another direction, and we would have said that way was perfect. We accept the way we hear it as the perfect way because that is what he left us with: the final word, as it were.
What I’ve found about the whole inevitability game, at least when it comes to making art, is that if you know what you’re doing, if you’re an expert at your craft and have talent and taste, multiple ways of doing something can be the inevitable way, but not the one and only way.
Each way, in other words, is the right way for its way.
What?!