Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes

Kant I? – Does improvising improve self-esteem?

Does the capacity for improvising and listening to improvised music improve a person’s (and a society’s) self-esteem? And what might the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant add to this question?

In this episode, composer Casper Hernández Cordes draws on his own experiences with improvisation teaching to reflect on the relation between open artistic practices and selfhood.

The background music to the podcast is an improvisation in itself by the composer, ‘commenting’ on the content of the podcast.

Listen to improvisations dealing with these ideas here: https://soundcloud.com/chcordes/sets/kant-i

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes · 5 Comments

Music as an ecosystem?

What happens if we create and experience music as a kind of ecosystem?

Improvising on the piano, using what I would call intuitive intelligence, I am developing a method for using my body, hands, arms, and mind to create a kind of sound ecosystem.

This is how this improvisation came into existence:

Next step is to make a score, a transcription of the improvisation. Check it out here.

The score as a map of the ecosystem. A map that can be explored, researched, studied, expanded, etc. Putting the score in front of me on the piano, I made ‘journeys’ into the ecosystem, resulting in a number of variations on the composition.

A traditional format – theme and variations. In nature, we are talking organisms interacting in an ecosystem, and evolving, mutating, adjusting, etc.

Listen to the variations here:

Please share your thoughts about the variations. Help me decide which (parts) to develop further. Comment on the tracks, in the tracks. Thanks! 🙂