Imagine the air that is floating through a huge pipe of a monstrous church organ! The sound generated this way is not only heard by our ears. It’s felt with our whole body, the stream of air, of course especially when playing the very low tones.
Then imagine the electrons floating through the tubes of a (my) guitar amp, heating up, producing extremely high volumes, if you like. (Well, I do!) When transferred to the speaker, they are moving the air as well, even though in a very different manner than the pipes. And yes, we feel this sound as well in our whole body, not just with our ears.
And now imagine Pipes and Tubes combined making music together!
Yes, that’s us, the organist and cantor Jan Weige on organ and me on guitar and, sometimes, voice as well.
We are exploring the soundscapes of this two instruments united and are currently working on our first concert program. It’s just feels natural to dive into different genres as the organ and guitar have such a different repertoire background as well. J.S. Bach or rock music, religious chorals or rap? It’s all a part of this band and we’re both extremely curious to walk this path together.
Improvising is one important part here that is truly connecting us. The organ is one of the few (if not only) instruments in the classical world where the tradition of improvising is kept alive till these days.
It is not exaggerated when I say that the guitar might be the most common instrument when it comes to improvising. There might be even more guitarists that are not reading any sheet music than players who can. Some of my biggest idols don’t read sheet music and learn and create all their by improvising and memorising. It’s, after my perception, an amazing approach to music that is much closer to the essence of music than the common classical approach of reading music.
Imagine we would teach our children how to speak by only talking words to them we had written out before! And we only accepted their answers when the words belong to a certain poem – or so. Impossible – even hilarious!
So, our whole life is about communicating, speaking and listening, and we all do that in an improvisational way. We create thousand of thoughts and words every single day – how can we even dare to claim we couldn’t improvise???
Of course it’s like any other language: We have to learn it in order to feel home when using it.
So using this language feels natural to us – and we use it to find our ways through the soundscapes.
We’ll let you know as soon as concerts are scheduled – visit again soon and subscribe to my newsletter (please scroll down to the bottom of the page).