2 Preface

up 2 and down 3, then up 3 and down 4, to create onesequence from an infinite pilesuch paths become clearlystaked out keyboard places that are eventually seen at a glance,paths along which you can sustain your movements and keepup a more or less continuing flow of articulations. Without ascore, when faced with the task of making up melodies suchpaths are invaluable.

For a long time I guided my hands on the keyboard by movingalong all kinds of routes and scales that I conceived in myminds eye, and, when I did look at the piano, I was so involvedin an analytic mode of travel that I didnt see the hands affairsas I now do. Their affairs and my looking were different.

Now I dont expressly use pathways to make melodies, butdiscover good-sounding places to go, from each note to the next,in the course of getting there, singing improvised jazz. And frommy upright posture I look down and see what I never sawbefore. At last I see jazz pianists hands, and there was a criticaltime, not long ago, when I had the most vivid impression thatmy fingers seemed to be making the music by themselves.

As I watch letters coming up on the page when I rapidly typeout a note to myself, watch them lay down as smoothly as acompetent flycaster places his lure on a trout stream, I wonder:had I a similar history of looking at my hands at this keyboard,would I now see fingers thinking?

I intend my descriptions as indications for how one mighteventually speak methodically and rationally, if only crudely fornow, when saying things like: the handin music, eating, weav-ing, carving, cooking, drawing, writing, surgery, dialing, typing,signing, whereverthis hand chooses where to go as much asI do.

I offer a first portrait of the handicraft of jazz piano impro-visation, an extraordinary domain of action for the closer studyof the body and its works in general. In jazz piano play we have