Extraordinary pianist and musical explorer Edward Chilvers explains to host Frances Butt a few basics about his mission to push the boundaries of harmonic and polyrhythmic possibility.
Edward's website
Youtube channel
Facebook page
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Buy 31 Pieces, CD or download
Contact Edward (via website)
- -
Recorded March 2022
All music: Edward Chilvers, from 12 Etudes & 31 Pieces
Join Frances on Instagram:
@francesbbristol
or LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/francesbvoice
Or visit Frances's website:
francesbutt.com
Extraordinary pianist and musical explorer Edward Chilvers explains to host Frances Butt a few basics about his mission to push the boundaries of harmonic and polyrhythmic possibility.
Edward's website
Youtube channel
Facebook page
Instagram
Buy 31 Pieces, CD or download
Contact Edward (via website)
- -
Recorded March 2022
All music: Edward Chilvers, from 12 Etudes & 31 Pieces
Join Frances on Instagram:
@francesbbristol
or LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/francesbvoice
Or visit Frances's website:
francesbutt.com
EDWARD CHILVERS transcript
Emotipod podcast with Frances Butt, episode 31, published 9thApril 2022
Frances Butt 0:02
Music, broken down into its component parts, is made of notes or pitches, and rhythms or pulses. Both notes and rhythms are vibrations or sound waves, measurable by the number of waves per second or frequencies, which are named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz.
Different frequencies vibrate within us, through us and affect us in different kinds of ways. Singers talk about the ‘high head voice’ and the ‘low chest voice’. But these describe not the voice itself, but where the high and low notes they sing vibrate through their bodies. I remember a DJ friend mentioning how the women in his audiences seem to respond favourably to the booming sub -bass sounds. And he said “yeah, I've been told it gets them right in the uterus.” Most of the music that most of us in the western world listen to day to day has a simple 1212 or 1234 pattern. ‘Twos and fours’ music has a simple order to it that makes it pleasantly easy on the ear. But of course, you can also count in one two threes, as you do with waltzes. The great jazz pianist Dave Brubeck experimented with fives…
Sevens…
Nines…
And you could keep going, counting in any sets of numbers really. There's a whole world of complexity in Indian ragas, for example, that my untrained brain can't begin to get itself around. But what happens if you run two or more rhythms at different counts alongside each other? It makes for a more complex pattern - a polyrhythm - and many composers have played with this. Brahms puts threes against twos and sixes against threes in much of his music, and I've always loved this sort of thing. But perhaps my favourite example is in Shostakovich’s second piano concerto.
But how do you think playing twos threes, fours and fives all at the same time would sound? You might think it would create a rather too-messy mixture. But listen to this:
3:21
isn't that lovely? This is a piece by my guest Edward Chilvers. He is constantly exploring polyrhythm and different forms of harmony with his music, stretching mental and physical possibilities with the piano. And I'm fascinated to find out more from him about what he's discovering along the way.
Frances Butt 3:47
I'm Frances Butt, and this is Emotipod, a series of conversations with brilliant artists about the work they do, and the mental and emotional benefits of it for them and for their audiences. I used to compose for TV programmes. So you could say I have a reasonable handle on the concept of polyrhythm. But I confess I'm always daunted by complexity in anything really. Edward, on the other hand, is constantly pushing the boundaries of how much complexity a human can handle in terms of polyrhythm and harmony. So hold on to your hats, because as you might expect from someone who can play rhythms of 235 and 7 all at the same time, the conversation gets a bit technical, and Edwards a fast-thinking fast speaker. Enjoy the ride.
Well, first of all, thank you for giving me your time for this podcast. I appreciate it so much, Edward. And thank you for sending me your beautiful music too, which I've enjoyed listening to so much.
Edward Chilvers 4:56
Thank you .
Frances Butt 4:58
So. Oh, where to begin? Your body of work is just - it's so huge, but you're working not just with music, but you're working with music and science and maths and philosophy.
Edward Chilvers 5:09
I'm interested in maths, and I'm interested in science, and I'm interested in philosophy. And all those things find their way, find their influence into the music that I'm doing. But I think ultimately it's nice not to see these things as separate. They will started with the Pythagoreans who studied number and astronomy and music. But to them it was all part of one general search for truth.
Frances Butt 5:28
Very good point.
Edward Chilvers 5:29
The kind of the thirst of the spirit, the thirst of the soul is something deeper than this mundane reality. And that thirst for something deeper, I think encompasses for me personally, particularly science and mathematics, to a lesser extent philosophy, and I guess you could say spirituality, although I'm very cautious of using that very loaded word. But this altogether was one thing; but because music is what I do, these concepts definitely fall into my music quite a lot.
Frances Butt 5:53
That's beautifully put, and actually we have compartmentalised these things so terribly. You either do the arts or you do the sciences that's really - it’s as bad as that these days.
Edward Chilvers 6:02
But then within that you've got this constant, more and more compartmentalising. So for example, traditionally you just had mathematics, I think Henri Poincaré was the last person that knew like every field of mathematics, back in the 18th century. And so you've got you've got these different fields of mathematics. You’ve got topology, and you've got complex analysis and blah, blah, blah, but then each of those skills then gets into subfields; you’ve got subfields within subfields within subfields. And the whole of science has gone like that, you know?.
Frances Butt 6:25
Yeah, yeah.
Edward Chilvers 6:26
Science becomes physics, biology, chemistry; physics becomes astrophysics, and quantum physics; astrophysics becomes all of these branch-offs; but they're all part of the same tree. They're all part of that same just… And I would love it, actually, I think it would be such a great idea, if every year, professors from different university departments and graduates in different university departments got together, and bounced ideas off each other. You’d have a physicist talking to biologists about his ideas, and a biologist talking to chemists about his ideas. I think that'd be really productive.
Frances Butt 6:52
I hadn't mentioned biology. Yeah. Because the patterns that we see are everywhere in nature. Before we before we were here, there were patterns
Edward Chilvers 7:00
and harmony as well.
Frances Butt 7:02
You're absolutely right
Edward Chilvers 7:02
All those harmonic ratios in those patterns, this is it - all of nature is this gigantic piece of music. At a very, very small scale, a molecular scale of the atoms that make everything up, you've got this beautiful harmony. The orbits of electrons are forming essentially chords, within the atom. So if you if you're hearing at the right speed, you'll be hearing chords with an atom because the electron ratios are whole numbers, whole numbers is - the relationship whole numbers is what harmony essentially is. It’s just the relationship of small whole numbers that the brain can actually process. When the numbers get too big, it’s not really harmony anymore because the brain can't process it. That’s a subjective thing.
Frances Butt 7:36
Well, we can get back to a little bit more of that later. But speaking of going back to just patterns, are you a pattern maker, finder, lover? Is that where you sort of-
Edward Chilvers 7:45
All of those things, all of the above?
Frances Butt 7:46
Do you think you were born with a sort of pattern loving mind?
Edward Chilvers 7:49
Absolutely. And I've always found it. I've always found all the time, just finding - even registration plates, I'm always looking registration plates. And as I'm walking along and looking for pattern in the numbers, or relationships in the letters and numbers, that kind of thing, I'm always quite excited when I find a particularly interesting one. I know it seems so sad!
Frances Butt 8:05
I just read them out, and people think I'm very strange, but that's even better what you're doing.
Edward Chilvers 8:09
Often I'm walking down the road, I just see a row of cars, I think now that's interesting because there's mathematic progression between the numbers, or I think that's interesting, that's three consecutive prime numbers, for example, or something like that. You know. Quite a nerdy quality. I do look for patterns all the time. I guess we're pattern-looking-for creatures, aren't we?
Frances Butt 8:29
I think so. They're very pleasing. I mean, we like the order of pattern.
Edward Chilvers 8:33
But that's how we perceive reality. You know, our whole foundation perception of reality is based upon the recognition of patterns. It all comes down to that, doesn’t it? When you think about how you live your life from day to day, you're not constantly relearning every new thing you experience.
Frances Butt 8:45
Thank God
Edward Chilvers 8:46
You’re basing it on previous patterns, and you make patterns within patterns and stuff. So I guess the human mind’s really attuned to want to see and understand patterns. And I feel like the most intense beauty is right at the threshold of comprehension, you know?. A really simple pattern like a square. isn't that beautiful. But something like a tree is amazingly beautiful, because it's right at the threshold of our comprehension of that beauty. There's just so much going on, so much complexity .
Frances Butt 9:10
Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. That's lovely. So I had a go, in my intro, at what I understand by the basics of polyrhythm, which is where you are a pioneer. Could you call yourself a pioneer in polyrhythms?
Edward Chilvers 9:13
I suppose that’s fair, yeah.
Frances Butt 9:19
Yeah, okay. Could you give us your basic outline, give us your best shot at simple simple.
Edward Chilvers 9:22
Okay, well, to start with, polyrhythm does mean different things for different people
Frances Butt 9:27
Oh, no!
Edward Chilvers 9:33
and the word is - I know, it’s so confusing. You want a simple answer and I’m making it more complicated immediately. But some people, when they say polyrhythm, are talking about phase patterns, things - we've got different numbers of beats in your phase, but they still move essentially at the same speed. Some people are talking about, in Latin music, where you have the drum playing one kind of rhythm and the shaker playing another kind of rhythm. And together that makes a polyrhythm, but they’re both playing in the same speed. What I'm talking about, is things playing at different speeds relative to each other. So if you've got three cars going along, one's going 20 miles an hour, one's going 50 miles an hour, and one’s going 70 miles an hour; they're going round a track. The way that they will overtake each other and make patterns is much more interesting than if they’re all doing the same speed.
Frances Butt 10:17
Ah, that's nice. That's nice. Common culture now is we see things in twos - always listen to music and twos and fours, twos and fours. That's where most music - certainly popular music seems to lodge itself; but you play with odds against evens, quite often.
Edward Chilvers 10:32
I've almost got too many points in my mind to be able to process them all in one go. To start with, that whole counting in twos and fours is something that's very basic towards just symmetry. With basic symmetry. When you see the buildings that human beings create, they're all like rectangular and that kind of thing, because that's basically how we think, in terms of powers of two. So most things are structured musically in 4 bar sections, 8 bar sections, 16 bar sections, because it just seems natural to do that.
Frances Butt 10:54
You know where you are.
Edward Chilvers 10:55
Right. It just feels normal and natural to have two or four beats in a bar. Now sometimes you have music with 5 beats the bar, like Take Five, famously, it has five beats in a bar-
Frances Butt 11:03
Mars
Edward Chilvers 11:03
Mars, very good, yes, Mars is in 5/8, excellent. And Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead is in 5. But most things are in fours, and for good reason. Now the music I'm playing, I actually mostly use fours as well; but I'm just using them at speed ratios that include seven, five and three. So although I'm playing within speeds, I'm generally playing in groups of fours and threes, and still playing ultimately, I'm pursuing it at playing four, most of the time.
But you are putting odds and evens together, at the same time, and that must be quite stretchy for the brain.
Oh, well. Yes. Yes, it's very stretchy of the brain. It’s much more stretchy for the brain than than if you were going to just do say, 15 beats in the bar or 9 beats or something. Or even 11 beats in a bar, or 13 beats in a bar, can be very difficult.
Frances Butt 12:03
Yeah, yeah, there's layers of complexity there. But you're caught holding them all. I mean, if I listen to some of your beautiful tracks, I tune into the three, or I tune into the five. I can just stay with the five or stay with the three, whatever, and you’re going, “oh, he’s really doing it!”
Edward Chilvers 12:18
I'm really excited, though, that you can hear each of those parts. And that's what I'm hoping for the listener right is that they're able to distinguish the individual parts and be able to tune it which one they like, in the same way that if you walk through a beautiful garden, you'd be looking at different things on different days. And so they've got the garden spot they can sustain many walks will get bored of it. Yeah, yeah. I hope that the reason I'm trying to create will be experienced the same kind of way as experiencing see the nature or you might change the rippling of the water, we might tune into the sound of the birds or you might turn into the rumble of the cars in the background or whatever else but all there yeah, all contributing to the overall feel. of the situation, but you can be specific about one bit. You also can take on the whole sort of as well.
Yes, well let's let's talk about the whole feel. Because you create different - different emotional effects. I mean, I was very moved by some of your pieces and you use some of the words - I wrote down some of the words you're use in descriptions of your pieces: gentleness lament, desire, bewildering, agitating, confrontational, terrifying majesty - I mean, gorgeous, and there's plenty of emotions in there. And so there are in the sounds that you create, and some of them are very, very flowing. And some of them are very staccato and spiky and quite funky.
Right.
Frances Butt 14:16
And some of them are very spacious and lush and calming.
So I was feeling emotions, or feeling feelings, just listening to these beautiful patterns you're making. But do you - yeah, what's the experience for you as you play them? Did emotions appear when you started to build these patterns? Or are you investing your emotion into these patterns?
Edward Chilvers 14:49
It's more than it starts out with emotion. There's something in the soul that wants to be expressed. And then I don't have the language to express it. So I need to create the language, and a lot of the creation of the language is in learning to play lots of speeds at the same time, and in learning mode groups. This is the language that I feel that I need to express what's in my soul. So there's always - the theoretical, mental construction is always the servant of this underlying need to express, which can't really be spoken about, you know, you can't be say anything about it. It's just it's just a '-ness', there, I couldn't tell you anything about it, really,
Frances Butt 15:22
It's beyond words.
Edward Chilvers 15:23
Yeah, it's beyond words. But the mechanism for doing it is I, I need multiple speeds, because what I'm feeling is something that's multi dimensional. It's something that has lots of things happening at the same time. Like the world, you know? We see and hear and smell and taste all at the same time. There's a multiplicity about the human experience, which is really beautiful and exciting. And even the idea that we've only got five senses ins't true; we've got like twenty odd senses, twenty at least,
Frances Butt 15:45
Yes, emotionally speaking, we're feeling all kinds of things at once very often.
Edward Chilvers 15:49
Right, so I think there's a much greater capacity for humans to experience much more than music, than just a kind of one-dimensional - however beautiful that one dimension might be and often is very beautiful - but that's a kind of one dimensional, one world at a time, because we exist in multiple worlds at the same time. And I think that's something which is that can be expressed artistically. And that's great. And it's a difficult thing to try and do, but I'm just having a pop at it, to try my best to try and yeah, try and get at that sort of what makes the depth of human experience or what's the nature of the human experience.
Frances Butt 16:17
And are you always - are you often, not always - are you often surprised by what happens when you just take yourself into these experiments with whatever you're feeling at the time?
Edward Chilvers 16:27
Yeah. The surprises are the best things. When something happens I didn't expect, or something comes out of the mathematics that I hadn't anticipated, that is just the best time, the best moment, when I've discover something and go oh, wow, I hadn't thought about that. And that's another thing: when you get a really good concept, it gives out more things. If I get a kind of modal concept, or some sort of harmonic concept that I play with, if it's a good concept, it will give me lots of new things.
Frances Butt 16:48
Could you give us an example of what might come up that you didn't expect?
Edward Chilvers 16:52
Okay, well, this is gonna be - I'm just trying to think of a way of explaining this that isn't massively technical, but I've got an exact concept in mind. Basically, if you take a nine chord, which is a five-note chord, any five note chord, you can rethink that as being a scale, and then extract the chords from it in the same way you'd extract the chords from a seven-note scale, or any normal scale. So you're, just by rethinking the chord as a scale, you extract chords.
Now you've already got, as every musician knows, a bazillion five-note chords; you've got your nine chords, flat nine chords, all these different kinds of nine chords. So then again, if you can take those chords and turn them into a scale and extract chords from that, you get a set of five chords for each chord! And these five codes that you use are not necessarily what you would expect.
Frances Butt 17:30
There are going to be some non muso listeners here who are going to go 'woah, lost me now!'
Edward Chilvers 17:45
Yeah, that bit, that is overly technical, to be honest, even if you do know about music. That bit is going to be a little, probably a little bit bewildering.
Frances Butt 17:57
Might play with that one or-
Edward Chilvers 17:59
Maybe edit that! Another simple example: if I try and drill a particular polyrhythmic pattern, and I try and do omething like with seven against five against three against two, where they're all doing a particular thing...
...in doing that pattern, it opens up new coordination. But then suddenly, when I'm in the flow of inspiration, something comes out, something that I hadn't been able to do before, or wouldn't have been able to do before
Frances Butt 18:30
Because you've build a skill.
Edward Chilvers 18:31
Because I've built a skill, yeah. That's the thing, that's driving me so much. I love the feeling of building new skills. I love the fact that I can do something new, you know, like getting to the next level, or a computer game or something. I want to be able to do something that I couldn't do last year. I'm working with a pattern at the moment, which is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. And it's really challenging, I'm really finding the limits of my kind of capabilities; but I'm really enjoying pushing that, and just trying to squeeze it a bit further and, you know, pushing against that ceiling. I think that's where I want to be.
Frances Butt 18:57
So you create these incredible charts and graphs and things that are absolutely bewildering to me; b oxes full of numbers and rows full of written numbers, and diagrams. But you were just saying that new things come out of what you've just been developing. I guess it can go both ways, that you write down something you want to achieve and try and build that pattern and skill; or, do you develop a new pattern out of your new skill set?
Edward Chilvers 19:23
Well it's a bit of both. It's a bit of both. I mean, in terms of the chart, I had a vision of there being different harmonically distinct sound worlds, so that each piece is coming from sort of a distinct kind of harmonic character, you know? Because, you know if you listen to blues, for example, blues tracks pretty much all have the same harmonic characters. So if you're going to write a blue scale, it's about certain chords, it's got a same harmonic character. A lot of, like Mozart quartets, right, they will have the same kind of harmonic character, roughly speaking. And what defines a harmonic character is the notes that it's made of. So if you have different sets of scales that give you different notes, and you stick strictly within the rules of that scale, it kind of demarcates these different harmonic worlds to your pieces.
In '31 Pieces', some of the pieces I've stuck strictly to a particular harmonic world to keep it distinct from the rest, so it doesn't blur into one kind of harmonic style. And there's a certain beauty in that; like a garden where you put roses over here, and these kinds of flowers, rather than just be all flowers everywhere, you know, where it's just like we're everywhere you look it's all flowers.
Frances Butt 20:49
Yeah. Oh, lovely. Can we talk a little bit about Hertz? Because we're talking about frequencies, and different frequencies have different effects on us, on the body - certainly emotional, because the body is the emotional resonator. So yes, I mean composers have always used different keys to different effect, with different intentions, to show different emotions or evoke different emotions. See, I don't know much about which ones do what. I mean if I looked that up, it's a bit like cheap astrology, where they say "E flat major is cruel, but also loving and-" you know, you just could say any old stuff!
Edward Chilvers 21:27
It's true, isn't it, that you could say whatever you wanted. However - however - there are definitely distinct characters of the keys, which if one is taught and explores a lot, you definitely get a feel for.
Frances Butt 21:40
Right. Now, could you help me with some of those? Have you got any good examples of those?
Edward Chilvers 21:43
The interesting thing is that - I definitely can, I definitely can - I could give you lots of examples, I could give examples of any key you want. With every key - I've got a deep relationship with each key, so I know it almost like a particular city that I know well. So you'll notice, you might sit at the piano and you might notice, like, C minor, that's quite dramatic isn't it? You feel - it seems quite - I don't know why, I don't know why it feels dramatic, but it is dramatic. Then you look at the classical literature and you see, Beethoven's Fifth symphony - da-da-da-daaa - C minor. Chopin's Revolutionary Study, C minor. The Siegfried motif from The Ring - dramatic, C minor. So many examples, all through classical literature, of C minor being used for drama. You then might discover on the keyboard, like you play around; E flat minor's quite dark, isn't it? E flat minor sounds quite cold, or quite, quite, I don't know, dark; I can't think of a way to put it, but it's not dark in the same way that we mean dark as the lights. It's a different kind of dark, but we haven't got a better word, so use the word dark. It's not a good enough word, but it will have to do. So you find E flat minor - dark imagery. And then you look to the classical literature, and there it is: E flat minor, again and again, used for dark imagery. B flat minor as well. F minor is used for passion, constantly. If you see something called Apassionata, there's a very good likelihood it's in F minor. Won't always be, some people get passionate in different keys, you know, we've all got our different preferences; but F minor is frequently used for passionate music. And the list goes on, and we can talk about any given key, and I could give you the properties of that key and examples from the classical literature.
Frances Butt 23:10
They were a couple of beauties, so thank you for those. But Hertz is frequencies of pitch, but it's also-
Edward Chilvers 23:16
Hertz the amount of waves per second. So like, 440 Hz, what that means is that the A, at 440, this string is going 440 times in a second; you've got 440 waves in a second.
Frances Butt 23:19
So rhythm is also a kind of a...
Edward Chilvers 23:20
Yeah, so what it is, is that the human ear makes a distinction at 20 Hz, roughly. So everyone's got something between 18 Hz and 22 Hz, but that means that you can pick out 20 distinct pulses per second, just. So if you're hearing something like an engine running, 'drrrrrrrr'; if you've got less than 20 Herts, you can hear him the individual pulses. Or if you heard a really fast (clapping), I'm thinking of doing that really fast, like flapping, like those flaps on bike wheels, you know? You might have experienced this when you put cards on your bike, as a kid, that they start going flap - flap - flap-flap flapflap frrrrrrr - and a pitch emerges, as you go faster on your bike. Once you get more than 20 per second, you'll start to hear a pitch. So the human ear draws the distinction between pitch and pulse at 20 Hz. But it's a completely subjective thing. And different, you know, beings, animals, or whatever consciousness there might be in the universe, could experience it completely differently.
Frances Butt 24:22
Does the same apply to - I mean, you know - what we hear as fast beat makes you feel more anxious, and slow beats make you feel more slowed down and calm, or whatever; so is that a mood thing, or do you do you use that?
Edward Chilvers 24:36
I guess one has a natural instinct for what speeds suit what you're trying to achieve. You know, whatever you're trying to do, there's a certain speed that makes the - but the speed of the polyrhythm is akin to the key; because if I slow down, that's like dropping the key. You know. C is essentially a bit slower than D. That's why it sounds different, because the waves of C are slightly slower, so our ear picks it up as different; and the different keys are ultimately different speeds of note. So similarly, polyrhythm, a different - a five over three at a certain speed has got a different feel from a five over three at a different speed. In the same way that a major chord in D has got a different feel a major call an F sharp; they're both a major chord, the ratios of the chord and the harmony are the same, but the different speeds give it a different flavour in the same way as the different keys have a different flavour. There are parallels all the way through; the parallels between multi-tempo and pitch harmony are just many and many. And it's not the whole universe is doing it, yeah, the whole universe is doing this.
Frances Butt 25:30
All the time. All the time.
Edward Chilvers 25:32
Yeah. On every level.
Frances Butt 25:33
Thank you for that, you're explaining these things very beautifully. Who do you like to listen to?
Edward Chilvers 25:39
I have a very, very wide taste in music. I tend to like the extremes. So I mean, I love Bach and Wagner most of all. I really like some of the modern electronica music, the really kind of really crazy, complex, interesting stuff, you know, that people are going to really try and do something different and interesting. I really like Indian raga music. That can be so awesome, really good Indian raga music.
Frances Butt 25:59
Speaking of patterns, my goodness, yeah.
Edward Chilvers 26:01
That's a whole other world of music-
Frances Butt 26:04
And pitch as well, yeah.
Edward Chilvers 26:05
And pitch and all that. There's so much to learn from that. I think every Western musician should spend a bit of time listening to raga music, because a there's a whole lot there that doesn't really exist in the Western canon, but it's really awesome.
Frances Butt 26:15
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Edward Chilvers 26:16
I really like African Bwiti music, African Bwiti music, a lot different kind of tribal music, I'm really kind of intereste in the rawness of it, and there's a different kind of creativity there that I like. But most genres of music have got something really, really good. But also, most genres of music are mostly a bit rubbish. Most most genres of music - if you pick any genre, and you pick a CD randomly and ... from that genre, it probably won't be very good. But the top of each genre. If you can find it, is really good. So I pretty much like all genres of music, but only if it's really good.
Frances Butt 26:48
That seems fair!
Edward Chilvers 26:51
But particularly Bach and Wagner, because I think Bach lays down the harmonic foundation for the whole of Western music, and the more one studies Bach, just the better and better understanding you get of how everything sort of fits together at a fundamental level. And Wagner just scaled the heights, so you get the richest, most exquisite, amazing harmonic ideas, and I learned the most from those two composers,
Frances Butt 27:10
What a great combination - I mean, Bach, speaking of pattern and order, and just what it gives you to have back in your life, is absolutely that - well, it certainly is for me.
Edward Chilvers 27:19
Yeah. And doesn't it feel like it's so good for the brain?
Frances Butt 27:21
It really is!
Edward Chilvers 27:21
Doesn't it feel like you've eaten a healthy meal for your brain, when you listen to Bach?
Frances Butt 27:25
I was put on to you by Elizabeth Mikellides, I don't know if you know her. She a friend of mine now, who I did a podcast with; she draws music.
Edward Chilvers 27:32
Right, cool.
Frances Butt 27:33
Yeah, she does gorgeous projects visualising music digitally, and she's done a whole lot of projects on Bach, in pattern, and then she does collaborations with composers that are gorgeous, and is just stretching her capacity of what she's doing all the time.
Edward Chilvers 27:48
You see, Bach does stretch the capacity to listen in a very awesome way.
Frances Butt 27:51
He really does.
Edward Chilvers 27:51
What's so beautiful about Bach is that on a surface level, it's just beautiful; but then as you listen more deeply in, there's more going on. There are more relations and order and symmetry going on that you just don't even notice. In the same way you look at the tree from a distance, it's beautiful. If you're gonna look closely at the bark, there's all this new patterns and order in the bark. Now, if you look at it on a cellular level, there's all kinds order going on in that tree on a cellular level. All kinds of amazing things go on. So it is with Bach. You can look at it on this basic level, or you step back and look at the whole form of a piece, for that gigantic feel. Or you can look at it on these tiny little levels, they're like amazing little gems, incredible little gems, just - the the whole is dotted with these amazing harmonic gems. So that, because of that sort of fractal quality - of quality - of Bach, I think it really stretches the mind out in a way that I'm quite keen to do.
Frances Butt 28:35
Beautiful description of this order of magnitude listening. Love it. Thank you very much and where would you start any newcomer who might be wanting to find out more about...
Edward Chilvers 28:47
One hesitates to suggest their own work at a time like this...
Frances Butt 28:50
Oh yes, obviously, I will be sharing your links in the text for this podcast; yeah, because I really did love listening to your music. I've got it now, I'm listening to it again. It's really wonderful. I do recommend it, peeps.
Edward Chilvers 29:00
I mean yeah, anyone who'd want to start, who's interested in what I'm talking about, in the project I've been talking about, would do best to study, like, myself, I suppose, like my 12 Etudes and 31 Pieces.
Frances Butt 29:09
For sure. And do you perform live, Edward? Where - can people come and hear you?
Edward Chilvers 29:14
I mean, I do when I can; but the whole COVID thing sort of took me away from the concert hall a bit. So when I had the release of 31 Pieces, there would have been a concert tour there, but there was nothing. And now, we've got the situation where all the concert halls have got these massive backups, backlogs of people, so it's quite hard to get... But I will be back performing. I had a few, I had a good live stream from Steinway Hall, during the pandemic. That was quite good.
Frances Butt 29:36
Gorgeous.
Edward Chilvers 29:37
There's been a few performances that have been okay; but I definitely haven't got as many as I'd like. I'd like to be performing constantly. But it's, you know, it's...
Frances Butt 29:44
We'll get there.
Edward Chilvers 29:45
There's a lot of hurdles for that. We're getting there.
Frances Butt 29:47
We're still opening up, it's early days.
Edward Chilvers 29:49
But also there's the difficulty that I'm trying to get something really new across to people, and it's very hard to persuade a population that this is worth their time and their attention to listen to it. It's like trying to go like, "yeah, just listen for a bit" - people don't want listen. People want something instantly accessible, they want something they know, they want to go hear some Beethoven sonatas, or whatever. So, it's quite hard as well in trying to really just push something new, and totally keep the integrity of the thing, but also try and use the tools of the world to actually get it out there.
Frances Butt 30:16
I hear you; but we'll drop in some music, and give people some examples, and I'm sure they'll want to come back for more. Thank you so much for your time.
Edward Chilvers 30:25
All right, thanks a lot, thanks for having me.
Frances Butt 30:26
All the best to you
Edward Chilvers 30:28
All right, I'll see you later.
Frances Butt 30:42
Well, I hope you found that as invigorating as I did. I felt humbled, as well, by the all-encompassing nature of Edward's harmonic and rhythmic explorations, the extent of his knowledge of music, science, maths, philosophy, and the way he brings them together in the true spirit of Pythagoras. He's a real polymath. There's so much emphasis these days on 'niching down', in art, in services, certainly in business, and I'm not sure how healthy this is. This may be a pure flight of fancy on my part, but it crosses my mind to wonder whether a willingness to 'stretch the brain', to take in more of a multiplicity of sound, and more of the countless layers and patterns in the world, might also increase our capacity to truly consider other points of view and paradigms, and make us more tolerant. Maybe. I certainly believe passionately that music builds and feeds the empathy we so desperately need in the world.
All the music clips in this episode are from Edward's album 12 Etudes and his latest three-disc collection called 31 Pieces. You can find links to his website and where to buy his music in the text for this podcast.
If you enjoyed this conversation, there are plenty more excellent guests of all flavours in the series. Please feel free to subscribe or follow on your favourite listening platform, and if you fancy sharing Emotipod with your friends, and/or kindly offering a review on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you like to listen, that'll be hugely appreciated because that's the best way for new listeners to find us. I'll leave you now with a little more of Edward's music from the first of his 31 Pieces. And until next time, enjoy keeping all your senses open and alive to whatever art makes your life better.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai