April 2008 Offerings Of The Month: "Piano Improvisations" Written by Edward Jerlin © 1985 Everlasting Arms Records & Publishing - All Rights Reserved "Wasted Time" Written by Edward Jerlin © 1987 Everlasting Arms Records & Publishing - All Rights Reserved It's been an incredibly busy month so with no new recordings to offer at this point, we're pulling some from the archives... "Piano Improvisations" is a live recording from my small part of a classical concert that was given at Hosmer Hall in the Crane School of Music (part of the State University of NY in Potsdam) by the music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha during my college days back in 1985. What I had decided to do was go with a very rough road map, & just play whatever came off the top of my head. It was a semi-courageous move on my part, & one I came close to regretting at a couple of interesting "moments/junctures" where I had no idea where it was going next. You can probably tell where they are when you listen to it. Sometimes I would end up in a key & think, "Oh, I've got a little snippet/piece in that key - okay, I'll take it in that direction." There are little nods to Keith Emerson (one of my favorite musicians) throughout. Oddly enough, when I listen back to it now, it actually comes across as a semi-coherent planned written piece of music, since it kind of ends where it began (which was something I planned to do) though it is episodic in nature, moving from one idea to the next without tarrying in any one place for too long. I recently came across a tape of piano music I was working on at the time that I hadn't heard in a long time & I found it amusing that I'd copped snippets from a number of already-written pieces & kind of spliced them together (you might even recognize a bit from last September's offering) -- so this isn't really an improvisation in the purest sense. Maybe 25% of it was made up on the spot. My original intention was to play for 15-20 minutes, but I panicked, & cut it a bit short. While I was up there, it sure felt like I was playing for a long time, over 10 minutes for sure, so I was a bit surprised at the time to see this clocking in under 7 minutes. The funniest thing for me was when a few of the classical players asked me for a written transcription of it. Some of them didn't believe that I made it up on the spot, & that it was a one of a kind performance! When asked how I could do that without any written music in front of me, I replied citing one of my favorite John Lennon quotes (when he would answer music critics who over-analyzed Beatles music), "It's just chords, man." This piece may eventually end up on the "Music For Piano, Drums, Bass &..." series. Enjoy! I recently re-read the FAQ I wrote for the monthly offerings idea & realized I had forgotten about & gotten away from this bit that I wrote: My "vision", if one can call it that, is to try to offer at least one "finished" track per month, along with a "bonus curio" of sorts. The recording quality will vary greatly, but hopefully, it's all fun. So perhaps for the next few months, I'll re-introduce the idea of including some of these "bonus curios". :-) Picking one out of a hat... "Wasted Time" was a piece I was working on in 1986-1987 shortly after I'd graduated from college. I never did come up with satisfactory lyrics & the main song was kind of drab with some brutally bad singing, but the instrumental middle section had some really cool echoing-synth ramblings & bass lines that I still kind of groove to. Presented here is that middle section as it was recorded back in 1987, straight to a cassette, with me playing along live along with a drum machine & a sequenced bass line. Enjoy! Comments & feedback are always welcome at our guestbook. Thank you & God bless! To download the music, RIGHT CLICK and choose "Save Target As": "Piano Improvisations" 6:40 "Wasted Time" 2:31