I could not bring myself to look away. I don't know this music although I have some familiarity with a few of Dan's other recordings. The polytonal moments remind me of the spices with which chefs add "notes" to their creations. The tempo here must have added to the challenge. I recall watching my son, Dan's friend since boyhood and a gifted pianist in his own right, transcribing when he was in his teens. The short-term playback repeat on the machine never got such a workout! One thing I wonder regarding this performance: was it immediately spontaneous, or were elements worked out over the course of many performances? I think of some jazz solos which are nearly if not quite the same, or at least more or less closely related, through various performances, both in in live performances and in the studio.
This is very much freely improvised - that's the whole point of this project. I perform this project live and the improvised inventions are different every time. On the other hand, the ostinato pattern here is one I've used many times - but only in its figuration. The theme, the harmonic journey, and all the note choices, are freely improvised. I've worked on being able to do this for many years.
very cool. i might describe this as an ostinato piece instead of an “invention”, which to me implies baroque counterpoint. There’s some counterpoint-esque stuff in the beginning, but from about 1:40 onwards it’s an ostinato
Yeah, I wouldn't say you are wrong necessarily. This piece comes from Dan's album _Inventions / Reinventions_ where he performs all 15 of Bach's 2-Part Inventions and improvises "inventions" for the 9 keys that Bach didn't compose Inventions for. These improvisations aren't meant to be in Bach's style, but they are intended to develop a theme and take that theme on a journey. This is also an "invention" in the sense that it was invented spontaneously by Dan.
Here's a link to the liner notes from _Inventions / Reinventions_ where Dan discusses his thoughts behind the album. He explains it better than I can! dantepfer.com/blog/?p=1408
Amazing piece! I think the notation would be much easier to grasp in 2/4 with quintuplet 16th notes: the polyrhythms later are a “hemiolic” structure superimposed on the left hand pattern IMO.
Ha! No problem! I worked closely with Dan on all of these (there are 8 more that I will be releasing!). We wanted to notate these to be as readable as possible, but to also convey what he was thinking in his head at the time. With this one, I believe he feels the left hand in groups of 5 but the right hand is definitely in 5/4. We experimented beaming the left hand in groups of 5, but we decided that it was harder to read that way. Another option would have been to just write the whole thing in 5/8, but that would imply that the right hand would have a stress every 5 8th notes and that's not the way it feels. I will admit that we didn't consider your option. And, I get what you're saying, but I think it would have been harder to format (dealing with a bunch of tuplets). I think really your suggestion is similar to the option of writing it all out in 5/8, but with the same problem in the right hand that we wanted to avoid. And wow, it's hard to write this out in words! I hope this makes sense.
@@michaellucke2654 It is an option of course to have different time signatures, e.g. 10/8 left hand and 5/4 right hand, if that’s so consistently the musical idea. However it will make it considerably harder to read and learn. I very much wouldn’t double the amount of bar lines. If I understand your worry about formatting correctly, the tuplet brackets would of course only be needed for the first bar or so.
Heard him live in Munich a few months back. It was a mesmerising musical journey.
It’s always fascinating to see all the improv notes transcribed and thus made available, theoretically, to one and all. What a world!
Astounding! So wonderful to see this notation! Thank you!
Beautiful
Thanks Emilio 🙂
Amazing. I love this guy.
Nice! Thanks for watching!
I could not bring myself to look away. I don't know this music although I have some familiarity with a few of Dan's other recordings. The polytonal moments remind me of the spices with which chefs add "notes" to their creations.
The tempo here must have added to the challenge. I recall watching my son, Dan's friend since boyhood and a gifted pianist in his own right, transcribing when he was in his teens. The short-term playback repeat on the machine never got such a workout!
One thing I wonder regarding this performance: was it immediately spontaneous, or were elements worked out over the course of many performances? I think of some jazz solos which are nearly if not quite the same, or at least more or less closely related, through various performances, both in in live performances and in the studio.
This is very much freely improvised - that's the whole point of this project. I perform this project live and the improvised inventions are different every time. On the other hand, the ostinato pattern here is one I've used many times - but only in its figuration. The theme, the harmonic journey, and all the note choices, are freely improvised. I've worked on being able to do this for many years.
very cool. i might describe this as an ostinato piece instead of an “invention”, which to me implies baroque counterpoint. There’s some counterpoint-esque stuff in the beginning, but from about 1:40 onwards it’s an ostinato
Yeah, I wouldn't say you are wrong necessarily. This piece comes from Dan's album _Inventions / Reinventions_ where he performs all 15 of Bach's 2-Part Inventions and improvises "inventions" for the 9 keys that Bach didn't compose Inventions for. These improvisations aren't meant to be in Bach's style, but they are intended to develop a theme and take that theme on a journey. This is also an "invention" in the sense that it was invented spontaneously by Dan.
Here's a link to the liner notes from _Inventions / Reinventions_ where Dan discusses his thoughts behind the album. He explains it better than I can! dantepfer.com/blog/?p=1408
Amazing piece! I think the notation would be much easier to grasp in 2/4 with quintuplet 16th notes: the polyrhythms later are a “hemiolic” structure superimposed on the left hand pattern IMO.
Sorry for the unsolicited opinion! I much appreciate the work you do and have already gotten myself some of it off the website
Ha! No problem! I worked closely with Dan on all of these (there are 8 more that I will be releasing!). We wanted to notate these to be as readable as possible, but to also convey what he was thinking in his head at the time. With this one, I believe he feels the left hand in groups of 5 but the right hand is definitely in 5/4. We experimented beaming the left hand in groups of 5, but we decided that it was harder to read that way. Another option would have been to just write the whole thing in 5/8, but that would imply that the right hand would have a stress every 5 8th notes and that's not the way it feels. I will admit that we didn't consider your option. And, I get what you're saying, but I think it would have been harder to format (dealing with a bunch of tuplets). I think really your suggestion is similar to the option of writing it all out in 5/8, but with the same problem in the right hand that we wanted to avoid. And wow, it's hard to write this out in words! I hope this makes sense.
@@michaellucke2654 It is an option of course to have different time signatures, e.g. 10/8 left hand and 5/4 right hand, if that’s so consistently the musical idea. However it will make it considerably harder to read and learn. I very much wouldn’t double the amount of bar lines.
If I understand your worry about formatting correctly, the tuplet brackets would of course only be needed for the first bar or so.
Someone is really under the influence of Chick Corea's Children's Songs....
Love Chick but I've never heard his Children's Songs