A Rewritten Account

xix

how certain detailed aspects of improvised conduct are organized. I intended it as nothing more or less than a descriptively
close account of some essential problematic tasks faced in the
production of a three- or four-second spate of sensible linguistic gesturing. Twenty-odd years of extensive piano playing later,
I find that its descriptions of key aspects of musical-linguistic
skill remain sufficiently valid, and so far as I know not challenged, that I can simply restate them. And perhaps more
clearly.
The report is about jazz piano playing, and most particularly so. But by the time it was done, I also saw it as a sort of
prolegomenon to the study of talking. There is so much in
common between ordinary speaking and musical improvisation that, at the least, not to expect descriptions of experience
at producing one to inform approaches to the other is plainly
unreasonable:
The body makes rapid and finely articulated moves from one
place to the next on time, proper places and timings very closely
defined by cohorts of fellow speakers. The body finds its way
from place to place in the course of moving, and, certainly in
general, not by figuring out places to go in advance. It takes
years to become a mature speaker and listener in each domain.
I came to see my passable first phenomenology of aspects of
jazz piano performance as a suggestive preface for the phenomenological description of articulated gestures of all sorts, talking included.4
But now its your book, not mine, a study of speaking jazz at
a piano, and Im gratified if there are any other useful meanings
you might find in it for yourselves.
In light of its form, I think youll gain a best first access to the
phenomena it reports if its read in full sections, with chapters
or numbered section headings as pause markers. Occasional
double spaces within sections might best first warrant little