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Hello everyone and welcome back to where is the music podcast. Today we're going to start from a quote.

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By the great pianist Krystian Zimermann, who I recently heard in an interview saying.

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Something interesting, he says that 98% of its activity is not of artists, but of Craftsman.

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He also mentions how in Italian the the word Craftsman is Artigiano artisan, which of course involves the term art comes from the term art. He mentions it exactly to point out the art and craft.

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Overlap quite a bit. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish great craftsmanship from a piece of art.

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So today I thought of doing something slightly different. Let's assume that he is right. The 98% of the activity of a concert pianist is being a Craftsman and take the opportunity to do a bit of Craftsman work together here.

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This episode I invite you to follow me in a typical session of craftsmanship where I would.

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Do what artisans do. I would select some material.

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Identify a model to refer to, perhaps a musical piece that already exists, come up with an ideal product to aim at something, something to think of that we would like to achieve, and draught many versions of.

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My piece until a more interesting design.

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Emerges. I don't know whether in the time of an episode we will be able to finish a piece, perhaps not, but sometimes it takes weeks, months, even years.

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But with the help of improvisation, we might get to a point of having some sort of a draught of a finished piece. We will point out how the challenges of this approach.

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The challenges that this approach leads us to face are intrinsic to the nature of music, those same challenges.

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While getting in the way of the creative process are in fact opportunities for discovering better music. So firstly as I said, I'm going to identify a model that I want to imitate.

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Imagine we are doing this with an actual object of design, such as a chair or a small sculpture.

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To.

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My model is short prelude by Frederic Chopin, the one in C minor. Sure, all of you have heard it goes like this.

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Etcetera continues for a bit, but most of it you have you have heard.

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Uhm.

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It's short but intense.

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So if you were to imitate an existing chair or sculpture, think of yourself. What would you do? You would probably first identify this scribe. The qualities of that object with a certain degree of detail so that you can imitate those qualities.

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With.

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Accuracy. So this pieces first look is solemn. Music to me feels like a funeral March kind of type. At least it starts like a big funeral March. There are these regular chords and and it doesn't change until the end.

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The dramatic and sad.

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And the reason why I picked it is exactly because I perhaps want to see whether I can imitate qualities of it without necessarily playing something so dramatic and sad. And I hope this will will come up later. So these are the most apparent quality.

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But on second look, if I listen carefully and the score might help me seeing what I hear. I notice there is certain squareness in the phrase.

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Meaning we find a binary principle that informs the the rhythm of this music, the motion forward of this music. Think about it.

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The March is walked with two feet.

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Slow pace of March and.

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You can hear left left.

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Right.

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Right.

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Left.

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Right.

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Left.

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And right.

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So there is a binary principle to.

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1.

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And this is obvious if you play.

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Music is obvious to think about it because you know that there is a time signature and this time signature is 4. So obviously binary principle comes out of four.

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But there is plenty of music that has four, four and does not necessarily represent model. The phrase and the pace, so clearly on such binary principle left and right, up and down, forward, backward.

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So it's a slow pace and it seems you can even attach it to a sense of of breathing going in and out.

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The general, let's say, rhetoric of this phrasing is of caller response. You have a call and the response.

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Another call.

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Another response.

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And there is another, I think, another dimension that might make us think of the dual binary.

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You know, feature quality of this music. The first part is all very loud and dramatic, but the second is everything is is the same except the dynamic is pianissimo.

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The length even of these sections are of these phrases are the same, just the four bars. So the you can think of the dramatic contrast emerges of this.

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Duality, even even the dynamics are dual. So let's do something similar, but instead of chords.

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I'll use single notes. What do I mean? I'm going to just play one note at a time, but I'm going to maintain this duality. I'll keep the rhythm. I'll keep the four beats in a bar. I'll keep the caller response rhetoric and the slow pace. Maybe something will come.

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Like this?

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OK, now I'm going to change a little detail. I'm going to make it major and see.

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How how it sounds?

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Remember, this is not art, yet this is just craft.

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Even more, this is a draught of craft, so let's continue once again. Let's maintain all the features, but let's do something about this solemnity, perhaps.

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Perhaps solemnity is is the the solemnity of this music comes out of the the regularity of the March, the repeated rhythm that is in this prelude, this long, long, long, short, long. Perhaps we can play a little bit.

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With it.

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Maybe we can maintain the initial rhythm.

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But let's respond with something different.

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OK, I'm going to.

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Develop this idea a bit further.

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Going to going to do some more, but from now on I'm going to add a second part, meaning I'm going to.

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Be harmonising, creating a second voice, which is this. I'm not suggesting that you should just sit at the piano and invent it. This this thing might be challenging, but this is just a way to, let's say, open up the the world of creative musician.

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To show.

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That what you hear as a final piece of art, or if you if you think if you think you're hearing this is very often the result of craftsmanship work anyway. As I was saying, I'm going to add the left hand part. Let's keep it simple and straightforward.

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Doesn't have to be complicated and on top of that, this is just a draught, so it's not going to sound amazing from the very start.

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OK, you probably get the point. Perhaps we can do a little bit more trying to do something a bit more original. I'm going to then since the pace has changed, you notice that it's not as low anymore. We've lost completely the solemnity that of the funeral March that was in the beginning.

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But perhaps I'm gonna balance this making it longer than 4 bars.

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OK, so it starts having some sort of shape. Now what we could do is maintaining the similar similar start maintaining similar ideas but develop.

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The feel of it now we have a sense that we are departing from the funeral March, going somewhere a bit livelier going up in the register, not staying in the lower register as she appended.

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Perhaps the feel of it could be could be achieved, or could be improved by thinking of the left hand part. Does the left hand has this long, steady accompaniment chords or interacts a bit more?

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Rhythmically something like this.

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Or something like.

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So let's see.

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I wonder if I should write all of these cause there is a lot already happening. I'm going to take some notes and.

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Going to interrupt the recording for a minute.

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OK, I'm back. I have written a few things, so here is the first draught.

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OK, it's certainly flowing that it has changed, I will say quite.

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Practically, the feel of the prelude by Chopin I've noticed as as as I was writing it that intuitively I probably maintained ideas from the original prelude. You remember the.

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Soft piano section.

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So the left hand has this descending.

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Part.

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That goes all the way towards the end, right?

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And the I've naturally came out as a compliment of.

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This.

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Etcetera. So.

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Then I maintain the squareness of the phases. So the first phrase.

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Is a call that has a response.

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Then another colour response based on a different rhythm.

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And.

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The colour response now blocks interrupts the flow to a little bit more reflective and perhaps solemn in the typical typical Chopin style where.

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You.

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You have longer notes, less less rhythm in between, but the whole character is delivered by the flowing left hand. What happens afterwards? Because here are my 4 bars. But we said earlier that we were going to extend four more bars, another corner response.

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So in the 1st 2 bars you can hear the squareness again and no no doubt, because this is a task position of the initial initial melody.

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Now I transpose it here. The feel of it changes just because it's in a different register, just lower.

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Little bit more powerful.

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And.

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The fact that these are is an exact repetition in terms of motives and rhythm makes me think that I am moving forward while staying in the same place there is a.

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Development in the emotional content while the speaker is.

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Aim.

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Or the context is the same, right? You can play all these imaginative games. What does it mean when the melody stays the same but it changes the key? Well, it means whatever you think it means. Whatever you feel it means in this context. This melody.

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That goes.

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And becomes.

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You can pause it. It's probably an increase in the depth and the intensity of it. Interestingly, I felt this increase and I doubled the right hand part with octaves in the second. In the response. It starts in a single note.

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And it goes.

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Please.

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Is much more powerful and there are two bars left in these two bars. I have once again changed the course of this very flow in trajectory into a slower, slower, more contemplative, more slim.

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OK, something like that.

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Perhaps this is? I mean to me it's probably the weakest ending of a piece ever, but nevertheless, I I liked the the trajectory from high slowly.

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Slowly.

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Low, low and more sombre. So somehow all this intensity gets channelled into a lower, more sober ending. Nevertheless, I maintain the rhythm.

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Term, which is the rhythm of the prelude.

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And I I use it.

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OK.

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Let's now take it. Take it further so you remember the duality the the binary principle that characterised the original prelude. We notice that one way in which it emerges is from the contrast.

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Between a very dramatic opening.

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Very soft, as dramatic as well, but certainly intimate. Second section.

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So the beauty to me is in this contrast.

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Certain composer do unbelievable things when they you want to create contrast so.

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I thought why not taking advantage of it and instead of maintaining as Chopin does in his prelude, maintaining the pace but changing the the colour the dynamic? What if I just maintain the duality?

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The binary sense of.

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Motion forward, meaning one and two in and out, forward, backwards or left and right. I thought about doing something quite far away from what we have. I'm changing the key, and I'm also changing the overall pace.

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Quite different, almost unrelated but.

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Where does this come from? And I decided to take this route because.

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First, the key has changed into the relative into the minor mode. We were in C major. Now we are in C minor, which is the one that Chopin uses. So there is a dual. Let's say contrast already there introduced out of the blue and then you might say well the pace has changed.

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Uh.

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The rhythm was, if you recall.

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Completely changed half and we should say, but nevertheless you can still hear the breathing out and breathing in. This is out.

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Animated.

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Or maybe the opposite, if you feel like in.

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Oh.

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OK so.

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And the certainly the flow that I create in the beginning stops the fact that it repeats steadily on 2 nodes.

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And doesn't move away from this two notes. Is also clearly a contrast with what happened before. You remember the base part before was going in a scale motion.

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Right. It was travelling. Let's play the whole thing. I'm going to now that I have two contrasting fields and two contrasting sections, I'm going to organise my story. I'm going to start with.

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A a little introduction.

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Taken from the second section, this one.

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Very little, maybe just a couple of bars. Let's see. I haven't. I've never tried it before. So we are just drafting a thing here. Perhaps it doesn't work, and then I'll just do a couple of bars and then go into my first idea.

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After that first idea, I'm going to dive in my second contrasting section.

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And after that, I'm going to come back to the initial one, perhaps some changes for sure will happen. I didn't write the whole thing yet, so I'm going to have to wing it. The technical term is wing it.

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OK, so if you followed so far, you probably.

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You probably followed my creative process and you could tell. Oh, wait, what's happening here? What this? What does this relate to with? Where does it come from? And if you followed so far, probably you also noticed how.

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Unplanned things happened. This is maybe a page or two counting just a quick count of the bars might be somewhere around 40 bars, something like that perhaps. Perhaps 50. No, no more than that. It's not much. It's a draught. It's an idea.

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And I'm sure that if I pick it up, probably tomorrow the next day, so many things will change. I certainly like to think about this activity as artisan cause.

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This is just a piece, a piece that comes out on an afternoon today with you listening with me doing it, but in the same manner we can produce pieces of music like this shorter, longer.

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On a daily basis, and once they exist, they just go and the the beauty is in the making. I hope you enjoyed this little little journey today. I'm not sure what kind of links.

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I would.

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Are the two things since this came out today, but I certainly can recommend you to take a look at my counterpoint course, because certainly this having a greater grasp, a better grasp of.

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How these things are done practically? How Harmony works certainly helps quickens this process. If you are a creative type of music passion, it's such as myself. So with that, all the best, and I will see you the next time.