INTERVIEW

In the following conversation, from his home in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles, Lyle Mays discusses those ways in which he found his own manner of creating SOLO (Improvisations for Expanded Piano). He also pinpoints an intriguing modus operandi for expanding the piano to orchestral dimensions. Then, in the track-by-track analysis that appears separately from this biography/conversation, Mays summarizes each of SOLO's ten selections. TALK ABOUT THE PREPARATION INVOLVED IN MAKING THIS RECORDING. "We found a rehearsal studio at Sony Studios in New York. I spent three or four days keeping my chops up because we'd just been on the road. I sketched out some ideas, but we wound up only using one, 'Let Me Count The Ways.' That's an improvisation that's based loosely on a tune I worked up a few days earlier. When we got into the studio, we basically threw everything away. So on the one hand, there was no preparation whatsoever. The first thing I played was the first thing you hear on the record. In the other sense, I'd been improvising pieces on stages, in front of audiences, during a year of touring with the (Metheny) Group. So it's hard to say what the actual preparation was. It was both minimal and year-long." THE VERY FIRST NOTE WE HEAR IS EXTRAORDINARILY STRIKING, VERY RICH AND HARP-LIKE. "It's a combination of what I played — synth sound, reverb, an arpeggio — where I held down certain strings and strummed them. The whole record's like that, in that it's orchestral in nature. If you look at the track sheet for the individual performances there are, at times, a hundred things going on." THE MIDI PIANO PLAYED A VITAL ROLE IN SOLO. TELL US WHAT THE INSTRUMENT IS AND ITS FUNCTION ON THIS PROJECT. "The Yamaha MIDI grand piano is an acoustic piano that also puts out computer data on what you played. The actual information, like, say, a C-natural held for four seconds, is recorded on a computer in real time. So I had not only the audio performance captured on tape, I also had an exact description of the performance in my computer. So I went back and took that information and then, using the notes I played — with their respective durations, and following everything else I'd done — used them to orchestrate the pieces. This took months and months. It was the first time I'd done anything like this. "In addition, I recorded sound effects basically by crawling around inside the piano, banging it, throwing objects into it, that I could sample for more polished sound effects. But hopefully they would all have the characteristics of the grand piano." DOES THIS IN ANY WAY COMPARE TO THE PROVOCATIVE "PREPARED PIANO" EXPERIMENTS DURING THE LATE-1930s OF THE COMPOSER JOHN CAGE (1912-1992)? "I modified the piano, that's a better word. The starting point was the prepared piano, but then, one more level of transformation to the computer took place. But I did try a little bit of the older 'prepared' approach, with wingnuts (inside the piano), but that sounded clanky, like a novelty. I wanted rich, gorgeous pieces and natural piano sound." OKAY, GETING BACK TO THE MIDI PIANO AND ITS FUNCTION HERE... "As I said, the MIDI piano offers an exact computer description of the performance, so that at a later point a computer could play through a synthesizer exactly what I played on the piano at the time. The MIDI piano is as rich and full as any concert grand, but it's also equipped with sensors under every key and pedal. It records exactly the physical performance. It could be reproduced on a disclavier, a special instrument Yamaha has developed, which we also used. This is an acoustic piano, as well, but it's one step more sophisticated than the MIDI piano. The MIDI piano just puts out the data that's played. The disclavier can actually, physically reproduce a performance. The disclavier can be plugged into a computer and actually played by that computer. So when you see the keys move, you actually, physically record the performance, not just the sound of the performance." AND HOW DID ALL OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES FIT INTO THE REALIZATION OF YOUR MUSIC? "Because I was envisioning an entire orchestra accompanying me as I was improvising. I knew, because of these technologies, that there was going to be, after the fact, all this sound, so I changed the way I played. I was basically trying to show how I think compositionally, in real time. My whole approach to improvisation is compositional, and the best way to illustrate that is to have the large forces of orchestration bringing out all the counterlines, all the little orchestrational touches. It seems like the most honest way to present how I think, musically." WERE PIANO OVERDUBS USED AT ANY POINT DURING THESE RECORDINGS? "At one point, at the very end of the record, there's a slow, almost rhythmic piece called 'Long Life' that has something that sort of resembles a conventional solo over (chord) changes. That solo is an overdub. It was designed that way, as a studio piece. It was going to be played to a prepared sequence, to an existing track. But I'm not necessarily responding to improvisational events as much as trying to fit into the music, trying to make it a band piece, almost. That piece was the one exception to the overall concept." ASIDE FROM THE TECHNOLOGICAL/INTELLECTUAL PREPARATIONS, IS THERE SOME PERSONAL PART OF YOUR LIFE THAT INFORMS THE MUSIC? IT CERTAINLY SOUNDS VERY PERSONAL. "It almost sounds raw at times. I wasn't holding back at all. But I'm not sure those emotions correspond to any specific thing in my life. I think it's more about the power of art, the power of drama." "DRAMA" WAS ONE OF THE FIRST WORDS THAT CAME TO MIND IN LISTENING TO THE ALBUM. "Very intentional. Again, that goes with the idea that I was going to have large forces to support me later. So I knew I could have certain passages be amplified, emotionally as well as sonically. I counted on that and played with that. I hope that people can conjure visual images as they listen, but that's not to say I had specific visual images in mind. I was just trying to do my job as the creator of the music, to make it dramatic, and I think if I do my job right, it's broad enough that there are many possible interpretations, and you can have a different one with a different listener. It's not written in stone. At least that's what I aspire to."