The book on the piano. Published by

staccato-verlag.de. At the moment available only in German language. An overview:

It is important for students to develop sensible practice strategies. In the absence of good strategies, their efforts may be counter productive. For example, a student may spend a lot of time repeatedly playing a long passage at a fast tempo without expression, thinking that he is improving his technique. I call it fingergym. The student does it every day, not aware that his brain is saving information from the experience, regardless as to whether it is valuable or wrong information. The result is that the learning process takes too long and is not reliable under the stress of public performance. This chapter offer solution with conscious practicing, using the right memory slots and lear peaks.

Published by zimmermann-frankfurt.de

Years ago, pianists were always composers and composers were usually pianists, or at least capable piano players. And both were improvisers. Improvisation was often used as a source for later compositions (the root of the word composing meaning to compile). This was so until the beginning of the 20th century. Following Rachmaninoff and Gershwin the art of improvisation became extinct in classical music. Classical pianists became interpretive artists although improvisation lived on in other musical fields, such as Jazz, Rock & Pop, and to a minor degree in so-called "Contemporary Music". Composers became "workers at the desk of experiments.'' Old ways of composing were abandoned and, new ways - far more complex but more artificial, too - were created. Composers and performers made   marginal experiences. I think nobody puts into question that the development hat to be like this.

 

The piano cycle ZEITKLANG returns to the roots of the compositional art: it was written by me to fit my hands and my performance style. This simply means that ZEITKLANG has its origin in the improvisational, searching hand, and that it blends that improvisational process into a formal composition. In this work, the musical thought - originating in improvisation - is condensed and distilled until it is reproduced in a simplified way without becoming merely simple. For example, as I compose, I love to employ the techniques of omitting, five-note-themes with alternation, and warped rhythms becoming straightened out again as they complete their cycle.

 

Let's compare this process to viewing images that emerge from reflective light. The light is comprised of a spectrum of colors. If you change the mathematical percentages, you will change your eye's perception of the reflected image. It is not much different working with notes: Every note mathematically separates into partials with octaves, fifths, and thirds dominating. The other partials (up to the seventh and ninth) remain in the background where they add color to the sound.

The more distant partials have even less effect. In every note, we feel the dominating intervals that comprise the sound as pleasant sensations. Similarly, most of us find the deep blue sky with little white clouds, the turquoise colored caribic sea and the red of dusk and dawn to be visually attractive. Have you have already begun to imagine these pictures? Why? Because the evolution of our human brain resulted in associations with these proportions of the various light waves, and this visual stimulus excites our emotions. The same thing happens with notes. Certain fundamental frequencies and their partials stimulate our emotions according to their relative proportion. In a figurative sense, the composer defines the nuances of the color of the sea from grey-black to turquoise-blue.

 

The duty of all music is to excite our senses. Since every day presents us with plenty of stress, I give myself the goal of transporting the listener into an another world - not necessarily an ideal world - but one which offers a generally positive feeling. Like the Scottish say, ''A 10 year-old malted drink can be absolutely rough while drinking it. But after a while the comforting taste of mussels, peat and moor remains a long while and narrates fairy-tales of old times.'' Cigar? I move quickly into dreams. Putting it another way: ZEITKLANG takes the familiar sounds of our time - with a lot of consonant harmonics and a few, well directed dissonant - and creates a pianistic and joyful performance punctuated with conflicting rhythmic patterns.