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An important lesson from this musical genius

I’m assuming you’ve heard of the composer named Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou. Ok, maybe you know him as Vangelis (hard G).

Vangelis passed away about a year and a half ago but lived a spectacular life. I’ve always considered him to be one of the all-time great film composers, having been responsible for greats like Chariots of Fire and the original Blade Runner. He didn’t just compose for films; he also created music for over 2,000 commercials. He had a rare sensitivity allowing him to complement visuals with music that reflected or added something important about the visuals.

I was reminded of him recently after watching a terrific documentary on him on YouTube. Lots of scenes of him sitting at his workstation creating emotionally lush music that poured out of his mind through his fingers. That was his compositional approach – just improvising and recording the music inspired by the visuals. The textures he created were always unique and perfectly suited for the visuals. He could go from traditional orchestral music to never before heard otherworldly sounds.

But the most interesting thing for me about Vangelis was that he neither read nor wrote music. He had someone transcribe what he played so that other musicians and orchestras could perform and record it. He was a pure improviser.

Take a listen to some of his best work:

Genius like Vangelis’s is rare but I think there is something for all us to learn who strive to improvise.

I believe that the lesson is that the technical nature of music is not a prerequisite for musical improvisation. I’ll go one step further, which I’ve said many times before, in that technical knowledge is often a hindrance to musicians who wish to improvise jazz.

I’ve never seen anyone who struggled with playing over chord changes suddenly find themselves playing glorious melodic lines after a deep dive into chord theory and scale association. My point is not that you should never learn musical theory, but that you should not assume that it is required for you to become a better musician.

My best advice continues to be: if your improvisation is less than satisfying, listen more deeply to the sounds over which you are playing. Don’t think about which chords are being played. Don’t calculate the next note. Instead, hear the harmony without analytical evaluation. Imagine the music that is brought about by the sound of those chords. Tell us a story.

You may lack the technical proficiency to play that imagined music on your instrument. If so, practice your technique. Run scales, play etudes, drill on exercises. But do those activities to strengthen your instrumental abilities, not to rehearse the lines and patterns you parrot in a performance of “improvisation.”

In my opinion, his score for Blade Runner was his crowning achievement. Blade Runner is my favorite film due largely to the musical textures Vangelis weaved throughout the film that created a world where the viewer is drenched in the feeling of dystopia, the mystery of androids, and the love of a woman. Or is she?

1 thought on “An important lesson from this musical genius”

Samuel Johnson
October 23, 2024 at 5:40 am

Well said about hearing the harmony without necessarily using an analytical mindset. I’ve found that my best solos are ones where I feel first, and then apply logic/vocabulary to translate that feeling in the moment.

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