Yesterday’s piano improvisation began with the usual frustration of looking for new chords—this time something around B minor. Just when I was sure I would find nothing, I began playing a repeating interval of a 3rd and a 12th above a G, then moved them around. I liked the repetition and stasis of the changing intervals above the drone, and I liked that it wasn’t overtly melodic. The intervals seemed to bring out or suggest harmonics inherent in the three pitches. This was helped by the fact that I had two separate reverbs on the piano sound and the volume fairly loud in my monitors. Whenever I made a dynamic shift, I could hear a lot of detail.
Listening to the changing harmonies and harmonics I realized that I was after a particular kind of experience rather than a particular kind of music. I wanted to hear the spaces between the decaying notes—the places of almost silence that keep almost arriving, but never quite. My interest in decaying notes is also why I enjoy working with echo effects that extend a sound over time in a way that your ears can track. It’s compelling to listen to—like being in a mini-trance.
brettworks 
A thing that can come from dancing about architecture is the building one constructs from literary choreography will no doubt lean in another direction. After reading this post, I worked on a new piece and in the two naive piano parts that were the first parts constructed, I sort of worked as if I was working in your outlook. As it turned out, the subsequent simple string parts took over rulership of the piece, but I did note and link your blog in my blog post on “Fog.”
As always, enjoy reading your thoughts here (and the pictures…)
Well put Frank and an interesting piece on your blog with the text tumbling around the music.