Pianologues, by Robert Fuller
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Pianologues is an extension of The Improv Zone showcasing longer-form piano improvisations (and occasional shorts, since on YouTube they seem to get more views), not necessarily on a daily basis, but certainly whenever I feel inspired to create them. The meaning of the name “Pianologues” should be fairly obvious; it’s piano monologues (or dialogues, there being two hands; or multilogues, there being multiple voices expressed in terms of the counterpoint that happens).
While they will all be available on YouTube, and on this website as embedded-link videos, they may not all feature live video of me doing the improvisation (although it will still be me doing the improvisation); for any of the more lengthy improvisations, I may record them as audio-only, in which case the video posted on YouTube will feature a single static image in place of the live video you would otherwise see.
In terms of my approach to piano improvisation, I feel that I have a rather unique harmonic and rhythmic language, with inspiration from numerous sources, of course, but the harmonic aspect of what I do, I must admit, has been profoundly influenced by the music of Olivier Messiaen, who I had the honor of meeting in person, along with his wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, at the Ojai Festival in 1989.
With regard to my approach to rhythm, I tend to be fairly “allergic” to highly-repetitive music, so for much of my adult life I have sought ways of bending rhythms, and even trying to create rhythms that are in some sense “arhythmic”, in the sense that repeated patterns are mostly avoided, a regular metronomic beat is largely evaded, and rhythm is done more as a flow than as a straitjacket or shackles that impedes that flow.
Patterns emerge, however, as we listen; we are in some sense hardwired to perceive patterns where there don’t appear to be any. But the patterns may be there in any case; it’s just that the ones we’re not used to, in certain cases may not be heard as such. Just consider the complexity of everything we call “life”, and the infinity of patterns within even this small, infinitesimal fraction of the universe that we know in any sense directly.
But perhaps the most important facet of my approach to improvisation is that it is a feedback mechanism, in the sense that I am intently listening to (and physically feeling, via the keys and my bodily movements) what I am doing in the moment, and in any given moment, I am responding to what is happening in various ways, so that the result becomes something like a random walk, a strange attractor, or a fractal. At least I like to think so...