Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today I deliver an improvisation I recorded yesterday and today I present it as a case of what to do when things go wrong. Before I begin, I want recall an amazing concert I attended at the University of Kansas where the AGO held a pedagogy conference. There were MANY, MANY great concerts and one of them was a two and a half hour improvisation concert given by Philippe Lefebvre. Holy cow it was a concert of endurance, both for the performer and the listener; it was absolutely amazing and everyone there was on board. There was one moment though, one of many, that stood out to me: Lefebvre hit a wrong piston and then had to quickly adjust what was happening on the fly. It was quite astounding how a “mistake” turned into something as a part of the whole rather than an accident.
Well, that happened to me in this improvisation! I accidentally bumped a piston in the middle of this improvisation and it turned out to be way more interesting than I had planned. Here was the original plan: I had transcribed the sound of a bell for a talk I gave at a local AGO meeting and given a short demonstration of what a bell might sound like in the most literal reading of that particular harmonic spectrum (the loudest pitches are C#, E/E#, B, and a higher B). I planned a sort of typical ABA arch form and well, the unintended piston certainly helped that out! I wanted to build the harmonics up and really mess with them and the piston abruptly interrupted that arc: but when given lemons, make lemon bars (I like lemon bars more than lemonade, lol).
All that being said, I like the bell sound! I used a small amount of stops to create the general hierarchy between the manuals and pedals and used the boxes to a sort of maximal affect: a constantly revolving harmonic spectrum. This is even punctuated by the accidental piston which I tried to use in a devolving manner to get back to where I started: thus creating an ABA like form. I recently spoke about this on a podcast and it was kind of fun to have it happen in an actual recording.