When something feels off?

On improvisation and the strange usefulness of that feeling

On Sunday mornings I improvise. During the week I'll identify one technique, one motif, one idea to play around with — and Sunday is when I let it loose. One of the first times I did this, the prompt was simply: write a Chopin-esque melody.

Some Sundays I just sit down and play something. Like I did this other Sunday. Although the intention was to try something else this little melody came to me:

And every time, the same question surfaces: do people who are genuinely good at writing for the piano sit down with a plan — A minor today, lots of diminished chords — or do they just wait and beam something down from the universe?

Constructed vs beamed down

These feel like two genuinely different schools of thought. As an engineer, the constructed approach is seductive. Define the problem, solve it. A minor. Diminished chords. There — fixed it.

I read a great piece from Matthew Morgan Makes Music earlier today that touches on this a little bit:

The first movement

Apart from the fact that he’s documenting his writing of a symphony (!) — he goes into detail about the effect of the pentatonic scale — and as he writes, you can approach music theoretically, using the pentatonic scale for a specific reason. Or you can, as he did, beam something down from the universe that happened to be pentatonic.

This other way — sitting still, fiddling, waiting for something to arrive — feels completely out of control. And scary. Thirty seconds of silence and my mind starts: this is a waste of time, why do you think something is coming?

But the times I’ve done that I think were the times where some of the most interesting patterns emerged.

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The Judge

These Sunday sessions has produced around two minutes of music so far. I’m not even sure all pieces belong together (how do you know that? — well that’s a topic for another post) - but somehow they fit - mostly. Still rough, but it’s there. Beamed down.

I know what I like in this piece: the two melodic lines, the arpeggiated left hand underneath them. I like the drama and the softness. The contrasts. But there are a few moments where I’ve used what I can only call “engineering glue” — patches that don’t sound wrong exactly, but feel out of place.

Where does that feeling come from? There’s nothing technically wrong. It’s completely mysterious to me.

I’m genuinely curious whether you can hear it too — if you can, drop a comment with the timestamp where it starts. I’d be very grateful.

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Life

The feeling of something being off — I’ve encountered it before. A couple of years ago I had a deep passion for cooking. Deep enough that I even had a plan to switch careers. But something always felt slightly wrong, even in the middle of loving it. I can still feel it when I think about that period. I feel something similar in those moments in this piece.

I also feel it very strongly when I imagine a regular 9-5.

Which is interesting. To say the least.

I know I will come back to those places in this piece — and I suspect I will come back to this feeling everywhere else too.