Why I love this piano performance
- amoghdwivedi
- Sep 16, 2024
- 11 min read
Updated: Mar 10
I have been listening to Aaron Parks a lot lately. As a non-classically trained jazz pianist, he is an extremely versatile musician who seems to function well in several idioms. I have heard him shred on bebop tunes, more edgy odd meter jazz stuff, new age type music, jazz influenced by prog rock, and who knows what else. But the one recording that left me completely astonished was his solo piano performance of his composition Ashé, first recorded with trumpeter Terence Blanchard. The title seems to mean some kind of inner strength that allows you to bring about change. I imagine Parks (or should I say Aaron, because jazz and first names eh) wanted to create something empowering, spiritual, uplifting, emotions that are somewhat alien to me… but do you know what isn’t alien to me? Cold-hearted music analysis.
Ashé is in the key of C major, and all the melody notes are strictly diatonic to the key except for a Bb towards the terminating cadence of the form, and some improvised fills from the parallel minor. Aaron Parks also does some neat phrasing things by tastefully using mixed time signatures, which makes the melody sound conversational and almost metrically ambiguous. I would have to transcribe the tune in order to explain it further but have resisted doing so because it is aspects of the actual performance that left the most impact on me. Here are some neat things you probably won’t find in your music theory textbooks, thank me later.
Pedaling
Pianists often pedal very intuitively, and it is probably the least dogmatic part of piano technique. The general rule as most musicians know is to depress the pedal when you play a harmony and lift it completely once you change the harmony. Having two or more harmonic ideas clash unintentionally is considered poor pedaling. In contrast, leaving harmony sounding incomplete can also be a sign of poor pedaling- I was once told to be more mindful of whether I was letting low bass notes ring into the harmony, because I was pedaling, um, prematurely, which cut the low frequencies out too early. An example of conventionally appropriate pedaling then might be, depress pedal, bass note with left hand, high chord with both hands, new bass note & lift pedal (who knows which happens first 😳), chord, etc.
even they don't know what's happening! 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️ 🤷♂️
An assumption about this kind of pedaling is that two subsequent harmonies ringing out into each other are uncomplimentary. This no doubt comes from common-practice-tonal-harmony thinking from classical music, which is more or less conservative. In jazz, harmonies are basically richer (kindly note I didn’t say ‘better’), and more individual notes can be sounded at once in a given harmonic structure. For instance, in classical music, you would find ii-V (“two-five” for my non-musician friends 😘) progressions with a limited number of notes (D-F-A, G-B-D), but in jazz, you could add additional structures on top of these basic structures (D-F-A-C-E, G-B-D-F-Ab-E). This means you can have more notes per harmonic event, and a lot of people call this kind of phenomenon 'color', and jazz can be thought of as being able to accommodate more harmonic color than a lot of traditional classical music. Then, the manner in which you pedal is certainly going to be informed, in part, by what kinds of harmonic simultaneities are appropriate in your idiom. tldr (i think I am supposed to put this earlier) classical too much note clash bad, but jazz many notes together generally okay!
Aaron demonstrates this in the first 15 seconds. He improvises a melodic phrase in which each melodic note is laden with a generously voiced diatonic harmony underneath, and only lifts the pedal sparingly. The camera angle definitely helps, and one can see that he is frequently lifting the pedal at minute gradations. This clears out the previous harmonic events enough to avoid an aural catastrophe while maintaining a general sense of washiness in the music. When he finally clears the pedal in earnest around the 8th second mark, it feels as though a cadential point has arrived, by virtue of a suddenly diminished amount of color.
Cadences in music (i.e. a way to articulate the end of a musical phrase) are usually marked with arrivals of certain melodic notes, variance in rhythmic activity, pause, and harmonic events, but Parks for me most significantly articulates the first phrase with variations in pedaling! He does the same thing from 0:44 - 0:48, although this time rhythmic activity and expanded pitch range plays a stronger role in marking the phrase. Articulating phrases can then be thought of as a multifactorial technique, but with the pedaling being the somewhat unusual candidate in marking cadences. Throughout the performance, his over-pedaling mostly happens as he plays a string of triads together (which represent not functional but coloristic roles), which creates a sublime mood which I haven’t heard too often in solo piano music. It probably isn’t completely novel (think Debussy) but I haven’t heard it being done to such an extent.
Harp preset on piano?!
Let’s talk about the absolutely superb phrase he plays from 0:13 to 0:36. I have no idea whether it was improvised or composed but it is shockingly good. Structurally, this phrase sits in the introduction of the piece, and is, in some sense, borderline ostentatious. If you were to compose a piano piece in school, you would no doubt be encouraged to consider saving your best punchline for near the end- you would be encouraged to gradually build up to something this special during the course of your composition instead of revealing it too soon. I think what that typically does is create this trite compositional plan where everything always starts off small, and then gets big, and then resolves. It’s a fine recipe, but by no means is it the only one you can cook with.
In an interview with legendary pianist Keith Jarett, Marian McPartland noted that Jarrett seemed to follow a structural strategy in which he began his lengthy solo-piano improvisations with dense activity which only reached an equilibrium much later. Jarrett replied that even universes begin with a bang and slowly settle into space over time. In that sense, this introductory phrase in Aaron’s performance, somewhat unmelodic, rhythmically loose, metrically unanchored, creates, alongside the other hazy phrases in the introduction, a big aural mess that is only neutralized after the introduction with the entrance of the tune, which is marked by much more clarity, stability, and pulse.
The physical gesture itself in this introductory phrase is most reminiscent of a harp (my least favorite instrument, not because of its sound, but because of its association with angels and other cheesy ideas and also film music tropes with sunrises), and I suspect he may have consciously developed this bisbigliando sound. Pianists are often told to depress the keys all the way down to get the ‘right’ kind of sound, otherwise even delicate phrases can sound anemic and unclear. But I think Aaron is deliberately half-pressing the keys, potentially in addition to the use of the soft pedal, and certainly with the sustain pedal, to create a different kind of sound altogether.
wow! ergonomics!👍👍
Following my comments on harmonic color, this harp-phrase is probably the most vividly colored one in the entire piece. Its first half is also devoid of a cantabile melody, and the whole phrase is really more of a texture representing a dense harmonic palette. It is also unlikely that aaronparks.com is thinking strict rhythms for the phrase. He is likely thinking of loose yet extremely consistently timed and evenly weighed, arpeggiated figurations that resemble a strumming texture.
Although the harp-like texture is really neat, it is more than a superficial trick- underneath it all is a convincing musical architecture. Till 0:31 or so, we hear what I would call a bidirectionally expanding wedge. By this I mean that as the highest note in the melody expands to a higher note, the lower notes in the strum pattern get progressively lower. Another way to explain it would be to say that the outer voices move in contrary motion (I think ‘wedge’ sounds more intellectual, wouldn’t you say, fellow intellectual? Make the expanding wedge motion with your hands, you will feel enlightened).
The disjunct melody he plays in octaves (with the LH still depressed, which lets overtones of higher notes ring, or something) afterwards also has a consistently rising dynamic level in that the second note in the pair of notes is stuck louder than the previous second note in the previous pair (one two, one two, one two, one TWOLULULULU; he is trilling that last note lol).
It’s really satisfying for me to picture the geometrical aspect of this phrase because it represents rich musical character through clearly defined musical choices. Being able to combine this polished harp texture with a theoretically sound framework, and also considering that this was all potentially improvised, is just so classy and inspiring. This is a texture he never uses again, which might lead some people to say, “why didn’t you develop it or use it again?”. Well, my friends, even a cherry only appears once on a cake lol. I think the figure sits well and doesn’t demand justification by virtue of its, pardon the term, beauty.
Held notes
Another neat but deep aspect of his playing is his use of tied notes. A lot of jazz harmony is usually thought of as chord-chord-chord which can be cool and that is certainly a mood in itself. Something a little more subtle and something I haven’t heard as much is the idea of some notes ringing out into new chords, which adds a more nuanced horizontal aspect to the music.
I will call these ‘tied notes’ ‘held notes’ instead, because the latter term alludes more strongly to the hands, and I think the tactile imagery is helpful. In addition, the term ‘tied’ note implies that the melody crosses across rhythmic units/measures and is therefore a part of the melody. When I use the term held note, certainly on the piano, I mean to say a note that is held even after it has outlived its melodic significance, almost in a redundant manner- it is more of an aural effect rather than an abstract representation of the melody itself.
Holding notes is an extremely subtle trick that I was actually never even taught but it seems to be quite common in pop music piano playing, something I unfortunately never paid much attention to. As you play a note or a group of notes for a given chord, you may choose to keep some keys held, and then strike the next chord with those held keys held over, given that said held notes are not uncomplimentary to the new chord (did I make it clear that the notes are held?). An example of this held notes technique might be this- imagine you have just struck a chord but keep the key you struck with your pinky held. You lift all your other fingers and then strike a new chord, but with that pinky finger still held over from the previous chord. The pinky-finger-pitch will now be heard resonating into the new chord with a different kind of sound.
Pianists, brace yourself for this cliché- since the piano is an instrument whose sound is always decaying and dying, a superfluously held note has a uniquely evanescent quality compared to notes that are newly struck. This effect is unique to the piano and I can’t think of any other harmonic instrument producing this, certainly not in a jazz context. As a thought experiment, think of whether you could achieve the same effect with a horn section or even a strings section- you couldn’t, because those instruments don’t naturally decay the same way the piano does, and are likely to sound consistently louder unless you pre-compose dynamic swells or ask (hopefully in an amicable manner) your horn players to run out of breath. In synthesizer ADSR lingo, the decay time and sustain level for a piano is much lower than that of a string/winds section.
A typical aspect of superior piano playing is to voice notes of melodic interest louder than the chord and bass note, and you can think of three different dynamic levels, presented here in the most conventional order of loudness from loudest to softest- melody loudness, bass note loudness, and chord loudness. Held notes add a fourth but unique category of dynamics, because they aren’t struck, but are rather still sounding, as they bleed over from the previous harmony. Note that these tender held notes are often preemptively struck at a louder dynamic, so that they can keep ringing out audibly, and not be buried under the new keys that will be struck to present a new chord.
Aaron uses held notes very often, many times with melody notes with his pinky (or with another finger and then transferred to the pinky), and this should be easy to catch throughout the recording. It is satisfying to really hear the held note, originally a melody note, present itself as a lingering harmonic tension in the new chord. However, this wouldn’t be just a mere harmonic tension; what standard harmonic analysis would fail to capture here is the actual dynamic level and timbral difference between the held notes and the new struck notes. The held notes are like…idk. hmmm… let’s see…like lipstick marks on someone’s neck. It’s not the person themselves but the mark of their love that remained …
Okay so anyways, the held notes may usually be melody notes, but they can also be inner voices (imagine holding notes over with your thumb(s) as you change the rest of the chord). That sounds like it would be complicated, because it means you would have to know in advance, at least one chord in advance, which notes are okay to hold over, and suddenly your fingers look like Tetris. But I’ve tried this, and while it’s not easy and demands finger independence, it quickly feels very intuitive, especially if you are confident with abstract concepts like suspensions, common chord tones, available tensions, etc.
In fact, even though I haven’t tested this too extensively, I might still suggest finding notes in the scale (not chord scale, but the overall key scale), which work either as a chord tone or available tension. Scale degrees 2, 7, and 6 in major keys seem to work unanimously with every diatonic triad/seventh chord. If I had to practice this held notes technique, I would probably not torture myself with thinking of every note that could be potentially held and what kind of note it would become in the new chord. Rather, I would want to ease into it by knowing that if I play notes D, G, and A in the key of C, then I can just keep those held over as I change the harmony. Since I know those notes can technically work with all diatonic chords, I can feel confident that holding them over will work, as chord tone or tension, or as an inner voice or outer voice. I first heard how satisfying a generous helping of held notes can sound not in Ashé, but another Aaron Parks composition called Lilac.
Yeah brotherrrrr!!! 🤟🤟🤟
What a pianist!
There are other neat things Parks (Aaron) does, like the bass line which behaves either in conjunction with the arc of phrases, or independently of it, thus adding varying cadential weight to each phrase. His ghost notes throughout are executed with confident rhythms and perfectly weighed dynamics. His unerring sense of melody is at display here too, and I love the fact that he’s just singing through it all… it is a holistically brilliant performance.
The piano came out of the classical tradition, and so it could be said most piano education is informed by classical music performance too. What happens when you hand the instrument to a non-classical performer not playing classical music? A new kind of technique, and subsequently new sounds, all of it more personally motivated and therefore unique, can begin to emerge, and this phenomenon has already happened with other instruments like guitars for instance (I am thinking of Ali Farka Touré). Aaron really intrigues me because although he is a jazz musician, he draws influences from so many different places, and it all feels so legit and uncanny. Behind this exquisite piano playing is a really strong musical personality.
There is something epic about a musician who is capable of playing super abstract atonal stuff which leaves most normal people confused but chooses to play poetically in the key of C major one fine day and does it better than most people. It reveals firstly a commitment to musicality and personal musical values, but also an extremely formidable kind of musician who can seem to do anything. I find that really, really awesome. I first (and last) saw Aaron Parks at the ICA in Boston sometime in October 2023, when he was touring with Joshua Redman. To me he sounded really weird that night and I didn’t get any of it. I couldn’t have imagined myself listening to his work on repeat, let one alone blogging about him, a year later.
in his own words, he is "Drawn to beauty"... 🥺
..."and to the absurd". 🙀
I want to check his music out now!