Embraceable You

**Mark Kleinhaut** · 09-29-2023, 01:32 PM

**Oscar67** · 09-30-2023, 07:34 AM

Very nice, thank you! You seem to be really listening to yourself, almost as if you were playing with someone else and responding. How much of this arrangement is spontaneous vs worked out?

**Mark Kleinhaut** · 09-30-2023, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by Oscar67

Very nice, thank you! You seem to be really listening to yourself, almost as if you were playing with someone else and responding. How much of this arrangement is spontaneous vs worked out?

You’re spot on! That’s a really good summation of how I approach these all-improvised solo pieces. I listen as if the music just played is from someone or somewhere else and I react to and answer it with whatever I can come up with in the moment. Then, do that again and again and again. I don’t really think of it as someone else, but I do detach from what ever was just played as “done and fixed in the past”. I keep a vague idea of where I’d like to go, but the focus is always in the moment to deal with “what now”. Thanks for the observation and for me the opportunity to put some of this into words!

**Oscar67** · 09-30-2023, 12:18 PM

Thanks! Am I correct in assuming that you’ve played the song a zillion times before over the years, in a zillion different ways, and that you drew from this intimate knowledge of the piece to create an entirely new interpretation of it, on the spot?

**Mark Kleinhaut** · 10-01-2023, 07:12 AM

Originally Posted by Oscar67

Thanks! Am I correct in assuming that you’ve played the song a zillion times before over the years, in a zillion different ways, and that you drew from this intimate knowledge of the piece to create an entirely new interpretation of it, on the spot?

Thanks again so much for your interest. I have that experience with some tunes, for sure, but not this particular tune. Tunes like this are more in the background of familiarity where I’ve heard it played by others. Years ago I worked regularly with a singer and this was in the book, so accompanying her certainly baked in one level of “knowing” it though I didn’t play the melody. Anyway, I had to peek at a chart when I decided to start playing this tune a couple of days before recording it. The thing is that the vocabulary of counterpoint I use to connect the chords, subs and lines work the same in any tune, but especially transfer easily in this sort of American songbook classic genre. The forms and harmonies are all sort of similar.