{"id":737,"date":"2015-03-20T00:42:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T00:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notesnletters.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2015-12-19T23:09:35","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T23:09:35","slug":"american-suite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"American Suite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"840\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C3eNjVdGQG0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In February 1980, KET (Kentucky Educational Television) asked me to record three short videos to be used as fillers in between programs.<\/p>\n<p>In those days, I\u00a0made music &#8212; &#8220;composed&#8221; is too formal a word\u00a0&#8212; by playing piano improvisations with a tape recorder running. I would listen to the recordings, and if I heard something I liked, I would\u00a0refine\u00a0it for a few weeks \u00a0until I had something with which I was relatively satisfied.<\/p>\n<p>Not a great system, I&#8217;ll admit. I realize now that I needed to work much harder at it to produce music that was really good. Still, there&#8217;s something to be said for music that just comes out\u00a0naturally.\u00a0This was one\u00a0piece that didn&#8217;t change much\u00a0after the first time I played it;\u00a0it pretty much came out in this\u00a0form, and\u00a0just sort of meanders from one little melody to another.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, the tux and ruffled cuffs were not my idea, or my style, but I was so happy to have the opportunity to do this that I went along with the producer&#8217;s suggestions.\u00a0And he also\u00a0asked me to take off my glasses, so any\u00a0stumbles\u00a0you hear\u00a0happened because I couldn&#8217;t see the keys. At least, that&#8217;s my story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In February 1980, KET (Kentucky Educational Television) asked me to record three short videos to be used as fillers in between programs. In those days, I\u00a0made music &#8212; &#8220;composed&#8221; is too formal a word\u00a0&#8212; by playing piano improvisations with a tape recorder running. I would listen to the recordings, and if I heard something I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/?p=737\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;American Suite&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,110],"tags":[94,2],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-my-music","tag-arts","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notesnletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}