Atelier Window Photo: C.Pleteshner

This piano etude as Rick Rubin would say explores the possibilities. It is performed within a digital ecology.

In terms of contemporary jazz piano techniques this means drawing on minor 9ths, shell voicings, tight voicing clusters, dominant preparations, half-diminished chord and ii-V substitutions. Broken chords and natural minor scale flurries are used for texture, and sustaining an off-beat rhythmic flavour in the melodic line. Open voicings, applying the ‘less is more’ principle.

The full range of notes on the piano keyboard, from low to high-sounding, are drawn into play. Intentionally playing for sustained dissonance and tension. And from a digital engraving perspective, apparently simple vertical and horizontal harmonic structures in the music, were at times quite complex to notate.

Working from the outside in, the seed of this musical exploration grew out of SEDAA’s eloquent and original Coming Home (2018) — a syncopated melody line with the emphasis is on the off-beat. This technique displaces the standard rhythmic pattern of strong and weak beats as established by the 4/4 time signature, and instead emphasises beats that are generally not stressed.

SEDAA: I’ve long been a fan of this Mongol-Persian world music ensemble: Master singer Nasaa Nasanjargal and Naraa Naranbaatar who studied in their Mongolian homeland, dulcimer player Ganzorig Davaakhuu and the Iranian multi-instrumentalist Omid Bahadori.

With the arrival of Autumn where I live, a certain quietude now inhabits our natural world:  pristine blue skies, cooler crystal nights and not a breath of wind. As I look out from my kitchen window, flocks of migrating birds swirl and glide across the sky.

CP in Mongolia on You Tube

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© 2013-2024. CP in Mongolia. This post is licensed under the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions.   Posted: 5 April 2023. Last updated: 24 April 2023.