logo

Are you satisfied?

How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?

I don't think I do, for me it doesn't mean that much. All I care for when making music (live or in studio production) is that I feel good. 

As long as the music moves me, helps me through the day or through a certain time it's good for me.

Of course it can happen that certain parts of an idea are written down as chord charts for example or I might even use a midi sequencer for certain ideas. Maybe that's already something like a composition. It doesn't matter what you call it. What I'd bother to separate is improvisation from free improvisation.

The role of an artist is always subject to change. What's your view on the (e.g. political/social/creative) tasks of artists today and how do you try to meet these goals in your work?

The main reason to make music until now is to make myself feel good. It's like medicine; maybe I don't need alcohol or anti-depressive medicine because of making music.

Of course on a live-event it's the best thing that can happen when you're able to please an audience. I'd say that's like having not only having a wife but having a wife that's good looking. If music helps me in my daily life, maybe it can help others. Even if it's only for some minutes or an hour or for one concert.

How, would you say, could non-mainstream forms of music reach wider audiences?

First of all when a non-mainstream form of music reaches wider audiences it might not be a non-mainstream form of music anymore. Maybe you can see in this sentence that I am a musician and will always answer such a question from the musicians point of view. Having magazines like tokafi.com and the people behind it helps.

Of course one could reach wider audiences when played on radio or tv – but to be played there one must be known by wider audiences first. So maybe the only things one can do is pray, which I think doesn't help too much, and the other thing is play live which is not always possible.

Today it's possible to promote anything over the internet sitting in front of the computer for hours, months and maybe years... But that's not my idea of living the life of a musician. I guess the most important thing is having a starting point where you can reach people and convince them. I think one needs an obsession – it must be the most important thing in life for you to do what you do.

An artist making non-mainstream forms of music almost never aims for a lot of money or being famous in the first place. Maybe commercial success just happens sometimes...

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance?

At a performance one needs space to be able to produce sound. To be honest, as I don't think about music, I can't tell you the answer. I don't know much about music and so I only feel something and try to make music out of it. It is not intellectual at all. 

I have a certain feeling and if possible, I try to make music out of exactly this feeling exactly in this moment. This is dangerous for a concert because it could happen that I only play one note for two hours. But as I am able to play for hours and hours I probably wouldn't do it because I'd be afraid of annoying my audience. 

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

I think I started playing free improvised music and electronic music just to not think anymore. When you're open-minded anything can stimulate feelings and lead to new music, even quietness. 

For me the only thing important in improvising is that I feel good at the time of the improvisation. And if it is recorded and still is good: even better!

For me, anything is good when I feel good. Maybe the word satisfied is even better. I need to feel satisfied after having played. 

Purportedly, John Stevens of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble had two basic rules to playing in his ensemble: (1) If you can't hear another musician, you're playing too loud, and (2) if the music you're producing doesn't regularly relate to what you're hearing others create, why be in the group. What's your perspective on this statement and how, more generally, does playing in a  group compare to a solo situation?

Number (1) seems to make sense to me. But sometimes it happens that you are playing on a big stage with a bad PA and bad technicians and a bad sounding room. So it can happen that you can’t really hear what's going on. And the solution is not always playing less loud.

Number (2) is so abstract to me, it doesn’t mean anything to me.

Playing solo or in a group to me is like living alone or with a wife or maybe a group of people. Alone is very good and I love it but it can be better not being alone. It depends on who is with you and it depends on the day and the feelings you have at a certain time. 

And I think that I don't really have the choice. I am who I am and I just can’t  do it any other way. So one day I hate playing alone, the other I hate playing with others. 

 Some people see recording improvised music as a problem. Do you?

No 

Music-sharing sites and -blogs as well as a flood of releases in general are presenting both listeners and artists with challenging questions. What's your view on the value of music today?

 For me the value hasn’t changed; only the ways music is being published. For example, when I get an album burnt on CD and I love it, I will buy it because I want to own it. Of course it's much easier today for everyone to release music which also means that there are probably thousands of releases that maybe shouldn’t be there, but who am I to judge?

It makes it interesting because there are thousands of releases that wouldn’t be there without the possibilities. There's always music I like and music I don’t. If you're open-minded and searching you will find. 

Nowadays people listen to mp3 files and that's supposed to be bad sounding. Maybe it is. But what is a CD compared to live music? Also bad sounding I guess. I have always dreamed of owning thousands of albums and many instruments. And now I do and I am not rich. This is possible because of the internet and for companies being able to produce things cheap.

I bought a real cheap grand piano some years ago which everybody thought I would kill in maybe two or three years. But I've had it for eight years now and I have recorded three Boogie-CDs on it and several other things. It still works and does a good job everyday. So, for me this is an example of a good thing in our modern world. I would love to own a Steinway & Sons or Bösendorfer Grand but I had to decide between owning a house or owning a grand.

Of course it's true that thousands of so-called musicians could make albums with cheap instruments.  But why not? Maybe there are a lot of musicians that would not be able to make records without cheap equipment and the benefits of internet.

Please recommend two artists to our readers which you feel deserve their attention.

John Coltrane – Interstellar Space

E.S.T. - Leucocyte

To read more about Henning Pertiet, visit www.blues-piano.de

For his electronic project Teitreph, visit http://www.pertiet.de/teitreph/


Previous page:
Doing what's right  
3 / 3
previous