ebony rain by paulflute

Piano stories

The short story is...

Here's a collection of improvised piano moments.
Mostly solo. Mostly single takes. Mostly spacious and meditative.
All real acoustic instruments. No midi. No AI
Please enjoy..

The much longer stories are...

First love

Piano was the first musical instrument I remember connecting with.
It was a small upright in the hall way of a flat above a place where my dad was working. I was maybe 9 years old. I quickly found out that the black notes made a nice scale. Pentatonic wasn't in my vocabulary then but pattern forming was clearly in my brain. I fell in.

The patterns grew like an organic fractals. Branching, shifting, repeating and varying. My first experience of state change through concentration. A new memory reborn. I was hooked and wanted one. But we couldn't afford one and without one I couldn't get lessons. At school I was given a violin because they could put three violin students in the small music room at the same time. I hated it.

One day, when I was about 13, my uncle arrived with a big old pianola with the guts missing. He was renovating a club in Liverpool and the owner told him to take it before the old dears from the Women's Club noticed. It was wheeled down our garden path and plonked in the dining room. I was ecstatic.

We found a teacher in the village nearby who charged the grand total of £70 for each course of 10 lessons. I drove my mum insane memorising the Pathetique Sonata and practicing grade scales while she was trying to cook dinner. Eventually it was decided that my elder brother would be moved into the small bedroom and I would get the middle bedroom with the piano.

My mom, my grandma and myself moved it down the long hallway on a kitchen rolling pin with my gran getting trapped in the bathroom at one point. My dad and had brother strangely disappeared.

Everyday for the next few years I would come home from school and open my Debussy Arabesque or whatever it was I was pretending to learn. I'd play two or three bars and then fall headlong through the keys. Like a black and white portal into another dimension. Hours passed. Teenage angst released in dramatic elaborate classical improvisations. Functional pattern medicine.

At 18 I went to University. Life happened. Moving around, shared houses etc. I lost contact with piano for many years. The summer I left for uni a friend gave me a penny whistle and a cassette tape of Irish music. An album called “Real Irish Folk” by The Sands Family. The sound hit me like a wet haddock slapped around a hot ear. It was such an odd experience. I remember thinking “Oh.! This exists in the real world too. I thought this was only in my head"

I learned to play flutes and drums and to sing at seaside gatherings and all night parties. I learned freely and effortlessly in public and made new friends who associated me with such things. I gained the nickname ‘paulflute’ as a practical measure to distinguish me from Paul sax, Paul Bass and Pandeiro Paul. Piano felt like a distant dream and nobody from that time even knew that I played.

Second love

Many years later when life had settled down a little and I had my own flat I began dreaming of getting a piano again. One day I finally set out in earnest to to see what was available. There was a piano warehouse in Kemptown in Brighton on the south coast of England where I was living. I figured that would be a good place to start. It was three floors of pianos and repair shops.

I arrived to find an unattended building. After some time I found one guy in the basement working on a repair. He wasn't a member of the sales team and didn't seem concerned. He told me to try what I wanted. I tried. After a few delicious hours on Steinway and Bosendorfer Grands I drew breath and began to look at things I could seriously think about affording.

There was a small black upright that I had barely seen in my initial excitement but through a process of brutal elimination it began to emerge from the crowd. Earlier that day on the way over there I said out loud to myself that I wanted an instrument with no frills. I was not interested in exotic woods or intricate ornamentation. I wanted something stripped back and pure.

Eventually everything else fell away and all that remained was a small Opus pianino. A curious creature in a matte black case with a single metal bar as a pedal and no lid. I’d never seen anything like it.. and haven’t since..
But in its heart was a harp that shimmered with beautifully soft yet bright bell-like tones. I was smitten.

In a story for another time I managed to scramble together enough cash to pay for it that very afternoon. When I returned to the warehouse excited and convinced that this was the one for me it was approaching close of day and the other staff had returned. I paid for it there and then. They asked when I would like the delivery. I replied "whenever you can". They replied "how about now.?”

I left my house thinking I would begin my epic adventure of searching for an instrument only to return with a piano in tow within a matter of hours. They carried it up three flights of stairs to my flat, placed it unceremoniously in my living room and my second piano affair began.

I'm happy to report that she's still with me 25 years later. She traveled through many houses, was babysat for several years while I traveled and eventually made it to Portugal on an overnight ferry in the back of a Citroën Berlingo. All the tracks on this album recorded in Portugal are on her.

I began again in my flat in Kemptown but this time the learning felt very different in a really beautiful way. I had enough classical training to know my way around the keyboard. To pull on scales and modes as I needed them. But enough distance to not be bound by this technique and enough life experience in the gap to have something that I actually wanted to say.

That something was about space and breath. It was about emotion, listening and healing. It was about inner work and giving time where time was needed.

This was hard work for me and hard work on a piano. Pianos make busyness easy. Large dramatic polyphonic chords are produced by literally pushing buttons. Add to that a neurodivergent triple air gemini mind and slowing down from 120 mph to 100 mph was an achievement. Slowing down to the speed of emotions shifting in real time was out of sight back then. But the journey began and the goal was clear.

The full journey culminating in this album was like finding another instrument inside the instrument I already loved and thought that I knew.

My teenager loved impressive runs and dramatic mood swings. Notes notes notes notes and many more notes… with maybe a few notes in between. If you play quickly enough you don't have time to think or feel anything. If you play big and loud maybe nobody can see you.

What I eventually found when I managed to peel most of these layers away is that underneath all that, inside the core of the piano there is a throbbing undulating warm glow followed by angelic choirs of afterglow. Liquid harmonic magma pouring through layers of itself in sustained ethereal resonance. Never is 'less is more' so true. Beyond the confined field of 'impressing' lies a vast wild forest of sonic complexity. But it took a few more stories to really get there.

Ali

Many years later I met my real love, my wife, my muse, my Ali.
At this time I was working as a multi-instrumentalist mostly in theatre and site specific art pieces. I was a resident musician at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London for the best part of a decade during some of its best years. I had a wonderful time there and enjoyed very much playing in that extraordinary space.

I thought nothing of walking onto an empty stage in front of thousands of people and opening a show playing Portuguese bagpipes. One show we were a trio of musicians on stage for 3 hours playing almost continuously. I played maybe 25 instruments in that show, swapping and changing with joy and ease.

But even here nobody knew that I played the piano and if I’d been asked to play in public, even in a small room with friends, I would have begun shaking with self conscious anxiety.

It's something that's interesting to share. People often assume that if you can play something in public then you can play anything in public. But as musicians our relationships to different instruments and genres can be as diverse as our relationships with lovers and friends. The piano held a deeply private part of my self.. quite jealously. A direct line to my most vulnerable soul.

I met Ali while I was working at the Globe. She is an insanely talented polymath and incurable dromomaniac. Through her my travels in the physical world began. From Africa to the Arctic, from the vast Himalayas to a lighthouse on a small Atlantic island. Wonderful experiences with memories to cherish and lessons to carry forth but not the most practical time for being a piano owner. My lovely Opus pianino went to live in a quiet house in Sussex for a few years.

At one point we relocated to Tamil Nadu. I imagined when we were planning this move that I would finally find the opportunity to connect with a bansuri guru. To draw from the traditional source of one of my other great instrumental loves. Perhaps I would also study some konnakol, maybe even a little tabla.?

But one of the great lessons of traveling is that the universe rarely flows in the ways that you might expect. As it happened no bansuri guru emerged, no Carnatic study presented itself in any way despite my best efforts.

To my wonder and surprise however what did present itself was a piano. A beautiful Yamaha grand in a purpose built acoustic performance space that I was given very generous access to. So I found myself treading barefoot through the warm red sands of Southern India making unexpected pilgrimages to my old love. To an instrument so strongly associated with the Western European classical tradition.

Perhaps I needed to find this instrument in this place to allow me to really step outside of all that old learning and delve into an inner landscape that matched the outer. A landscape of drone based harmonic stasis drawn from the deep roots of the earth balanced by sky-scapes of soaring delicate birdsong melodies, free as the Carnatic warm wind. Of ancient traditions born freshly with each rendition, never repeated but always connected. A musical language that eased me gentle out of my head and into my hands and heart and my warm sandy feet on the ground.

It was another beginning again in some ways. This time seeking even more simplicity. Finding the Zen mind. Sitting, feeling then playing. No structure, no piece, no plans, goals or bounds save the ever unfolding moment. Sometimes calm stability arose. Sometimes open ended fluidity.. Rigid rhythms fall far behind and sometimes I would find that I didn't even know what key I was in.

The practice is in not knowing.. not predicting what is coming next. When the imagination strays more than a beat ahead just release that idea. Allow it to fly through the open window into the forest.

Return to the lingering harmonic interplay of the open strings. Invite bare attention back into the space. Focus on listening to what is happening here and now more than craving and carving what might become.

The only true sign post is silence.. the sounds are there simply to frame the silence.. until it becomes inaudible to our untrained minds.. then we need a new sound to refresh the ears and frame the new silence.


The steering wheel is in gently subverting my own expectations.
Notice, acknowledge and greet the familiar kindly.. then turn another way. When the road ahead seems clear… turn left down the next dirt track and see where it leads… for a while.

I had taken a basic stripped down recording setup with me so I wafted an audio butterfly net over some of these moments. The process of capturing or even observing can be antagonistic to the practice of being in the mindless mind.

But snapshots of our journeys can bring joy and comfort to friends and family back home as well as to our future selves listening from another time. Somnambulant sonic postcards reflecting forgotten possible pasts.
The pieces recorded in Tamil Nadu are selected from these sessions.

Abhi

At the same time I made another friend. I'd started a small singing circle exploring vocal improvisations purely for the purpose of sound play.

One day a new member was invited to our group. I had arrived late so I joined in the sounding before we spoke. At first it felt odd to have a stranger in this delicate setting but I quickly realised that his musicality matched his playful joy and we fell into sonic journeying together. After the session we spoke properly for the first time on the road outside. I had time with the piano booked afterwards and spontaneously invited him to join me.

This was unusual for a couple of reasons. Firstly because almost all of my piano sessions in that place were in the morning. I am a chronically nocturnal musician who barely functions before noon but in a bizarre way this had been helpful. My half-awake liminal consciousness is more present at the beginning of the day than the end. For some reason though I had a late night piano slot booked on this day.

Secondly, as I've said, playing piano was still a very intimate process for me. Inviting someone to share that moment felt significant. Inviting someone I had known only a couple of hours and spoken to for only a couple of minutes even more so.

But I had another thought brewing which was piano as a sound healing instrument. I was working in that place with sound healing. There was a sound healing bed there strung as a monochord underneath in a dedicated room full of bowls and gongs.

It seemed to me that the piano matched all of these tools in potential sonorities with so much more besides. I had this image of somebody lying comfortably on the closed lid of a grand piano while I channelled the soundtrack of their dream.
I don't know why but that moment told me that Abhi might be such a person.

He agreed. We went. I made a nest for him out of blankets and cushions on the floor (not on the piano just yet). I played for a long time. He rested, listened, then danced then rested again. Only afterwards did I explain that this was something I have been building up to for a while. To sharing this new voice that I was finding in the inner core of my old keyed friend.

He smiled and explained in return that piano was his favourite instrument. That he listened to it daily, in particular when he needed to rest or be at peace. But this moment that we shared together was the first time that he had ever heard a real piano played in person. Our bond was set and a lifelong friendship born.

We shared a lot in that space and on many other musical journeys. When Ali and I decided to return to Europe I continued to share my piano improvisations with him. He is a synesthetic filmmaker who visualises all my free melodic meanderings in full colour cinematic form. He would describe each piece back to me as though he was watching a movie, which in some sense he was.

When we settled in Portugal and Opus finally made her way to join us he pestered me regularly for food for his piano playlist addiction.

It was through his collecting, enjoying and encouragement that he finally talked me into sharing some of these personal moments with a wider audience…
and here they are.

I hope you enjoy them. I hope they give you breath and a moment to pause in this busy life, to pay attention to the inner story that is always running along side the outer. I’d love to hear back any thoughts that arise in response.

with best blessings
paul

I am a multi-instrumental performer composer and recording artist
living in the quiet hills
of central Portugal

I enjoy collecting unusual instruments from interesting places
I learn through joyful patient play sculpting soundscapes using a mixture of sweeping chaotic gestures and finely tuned
deep listening

I hope you enjoy the fruits

paulflute.co.uk