Editorial team, harrypepl.com, October 2026
A band of one
Hernstein, Lower Austria, Austria, in the mid-1990s. In the basement of his house Harry Pepl has set up a studio, and he records there almost every day. “Ich geh jetzt ins Bergwerk” (I’m off to the mine now), he says, half ironic, half serious, whenever he goes down to the cellar to make music, just as he did long before this period.1 Usually he starts at the drums. Then he listens back to what he has played, picks up the guitar, adds the bass, which he plays as a sample via his MIDI guitar, and finally sits down at the piano or keyboard. There is not much room: until he records straight to hard disk from 2002 onwards, he works with ADAT, a digital tape format, which limits him to eight mono tracks, that is four stereo tracks: one for the drums and one each for bass, guitar and piano.2 Every part is improvised, every part an answer to the ones already there.3 No metronome runs along. He played, he said, “without any point of reference: no metronome keeping a particular time, no chord sequence, no melody”.4 Nothing gets corrected: what arises in the moment stays. That is the core of his Real-time Composing.5 He is his own band, and he calls it the Lonely Single Swinger Band.
There was deliberately no plan: no lead sheet, no chord sequence, no melody invented in advance. All his life Pepl had practised obsessively. Only in the last phase of his work, after his second brain haemorrhage and with the start of the Lonely Single Swinger Band, did he no longer want to, and in his home studio he sought the opposite: the immediate flow, one part after another. Practising and “checking things out”, he said at that time, was “somehow not my thing”.6
What interests me is really not knowing anything. I just play whatever comes to mind, with really nothing […]. I do still sometimes think about something and write it down, but I've done that so much that it doesn't really interest me at all any more.
All the more remarkable, then, that individual parts without a shared plan add up to a coherent whole.
Listen to the results, for instance on “Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band (Volume One)”, and a contradiction emerges. The parts do not sound layered; they sound played at the same time. They come in together, thicken, pick up impulses and pass them back. Stefan Heckel describes how Pepl added virtual fellow players over several successive takes.8 Daniel Pepl, his son, who worked as sound engineer on many of these recordings, hears in them something close to the Wayne Shorter Quartet, the band the American saxophonist led from 2000 with Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade.9 What follows is an attempt to grasp this paradox with the concepts of scholarship. The footnotes give the evidence; interpretations are marked as such.
One example to listen to is “Nach Saalfelden” (“After Saalfelden”, referring to the Austrian jazz festival town) from Pepl's Christmas CDs of 2002. The bass, played on the guitar synthesizer, begins alone. At 0:25 drums and guitar come in at the same instant, although Pepl recorded them in separate passes. The music thickens to a climax after about two minutes, draws back, builds a second time and finally fades out without the bass, on guitar and drums alone, without a single pause.10
Nach Saalfelden, Lonely Single Swinger Band
Harry Pepl plays every instrument himself, track by track, one after another, in his home studio in Hernstein, Lower Austria, Austria, and yet the music enters like a band: a low register begins alone, after 18 seconds the other parts join in, the music grows denser until around the two-minute mark, pulls back and builds up a second time. From Pepl’s 2002 Christmas CD.
The six multitrack pieces on “Volume One” show the same pattern; the other two, “Abstract World” and “The Crow”, are piano solos played on keyboard. Daniel Pepl, who was the sound engineer at many of these sessions, has listened to every track for who plays when.11 In each multitrack piece one instrument begins alone, usually the drums, and the others join one by one. The guitar, Pepl's own instrument, always comes in last, like a soloist entering over a rhythm section that is already running.
- Instrument can be heard, by ear; times as on the player
- Change of tone or effect; the number refers to the list below the title
- Measured pull-back from the signal analysis (not shown for “Nach Saalfelden”)
1 Dedicated To Michel Noiret's Stockhausen
- 0:00Drums: contemporary
- 0:29Bass: acoustic bass via guitar synthesizer
- 1:04Guitar: electric guitar
- 1:331Guitar: ring modulator mixed in, turned off, later back
- 2:202Guitar: ring modulator on again, chords, Pepl adjusts the effect by hand
2 Abstract World
- 0:01Piano: on keyboard, both hands
3 Meckis Dm Special
- 0:00Drums
- 0:13Bass: acoustic bass via guitar synthesizer
- 0:49Guitar: electric guitar, probably ADAT 5/6
- 0:49Synth: synth saxophone in unison, same pass
- 2:181Guitar: distorted tone, synth saxophone continues
4 Piano Drums
- 0:00Piano
- 0:25Drums: with brushes
- 6:141end together
5 Scratchmo
- 0:00Drums: muffled, specially tuned
- 0:55Bass: fretless bass via guitar synthesizer
- 1:10Synth: scratching, guitar synthesizer or keyboard
- 2:30Guitar: electric guitar, distorted
- 4:401Guitar: pad-like, clean, chordal
- 5:072Guitar: distorted again, later audible delay
- 7:153Guitar: cleaner tone
- 8:304only scratching, bass and drums with cowbells
- 8:30Guitar: no longer heard from 8:30
6 Git Trio 2
- 0:00Drums: melodic, much bass drum
- 0:48Bass: acoustic bass via guitar synthesizer
- 1:06Guitar: jazz tone, little distortion
- 4:201Guitar: distortion on, Marshall 19-inch unit
- 5:242Guitar: distortion off, drums to the fore, clean guitar with reverb
- 5:503Guitar: chorus or ring modulator, bass no longer audible
- 5:50Bass: no longer heard from 5:50
7 Git Trio 3
- 0:01Bass: acoustic bass via guitar synthesizer
- 0:21Drums: solo from 3:25
- 0:34Guitar: jazz guitar with reverb and delay
- 3:251Drums: drums alone, solo to the end
- 3:25Bass: no longer heard from 3:25
- 3:25Guitar: no longer heard from 3:25
8 The Crow
- 0:01Piano: on keyboard, direct, small room
Nach Saalfelden (2002)
- 0:06Bass: acoustic bass via guitar synthesizer
- 0:25Drums
- 0:25Guitar: electric guitar
- 0:251drums and guitar enter at the same moment
- 4:542Bass: bass no longer audible, only guitar and drums
- 4:54Bass: no longer heard from 4:54
Listening analysis by Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026; pull-backs: own measurement, October 2026. The lanes show when an instrument can be heard in the finished piece, not the order of recording. Pepl played bass, synth saxophone and scratching on the guitar synthesizer (scratching possibly on keyboard).
A measurement of the sound curves confirms these entries, mostly to within a few seconds, and shows how the music takes shape: it grows denser towards the middle and draws back at the end.12 The following chart shows these form curves track by track, together with their average: an arch with its peak in the middle. The two piano solos show the same arch; the multitrack method adds the quiet, staggered opening.
Volume One, averaged
- Loudness, 5-second average, relative to the track's median (0 LU)
- Pull-back: 5 seconds at least 5 LU below the median (excluding start and end)
- Registers: high above 5 kHz, mid 300 to 2500 Hz, low below 200 Hz; the darker, the stronger (measured against the register's median)
- Entry of a register: from here on, for 3 seconds, no more than 12 dB below its median
- Entry of an instrument by ear (listening analysis by Daniel Pepl): D drums, B bass, G guitar, Sy synth, P piano
- Time normalised to the length of each track; “hardly any signal”: register almost empty (median below −55 dB)
- Reading aid: high mainly cymbals and hi-hat; mid mainly guitar, piano and drums; low mainly bass, bass drum and the piano's low register. Only frequency ranges are measured, not instruments: drums without cymbals show up in mid and low.
1 Dedicated To Michel Noiret's Stockhausen
2 Abstract World
3 Meckis Dm Special
4 Piano Drums
5 Scratchmo
6 Git Trio 2
7 Git Trio 3
8 The Crow
Own measurement: signal analysis of the WAV masters of “Harry Pepl's Lonely Single Swinger Band (Volume One)” (Fullmax Recordings, 2020), loudness according to EBU R 128, frequency bands, spectral flux; harrypepl.com, October 2026. Line-up and entries by ear: listening analysis by Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026 (track 1 also after Heckel 2024).
Measured values as a table
| No. | Track | Line-up by ear | Music | Entries by ear | Entry high | Entry mid | Entry low | Pull-backs | Densest point |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dedicated To Michel Noiret's Stockhausen | drums, bass (guitar synthesizer), electric guitar | 3:52 | drums 0:00, bass 0:29, guitar 1:04 | 0:28 | 0:05 | 0:10 | 3 (0:17, 0:36, 0:48) | 87% |
| 2 | Abstract World | solo piano (keyboard) | 2:41 | piano 0:01 | hardly any signal | 0:03 | 0:02 | 2 (0:46, 2:11) | 40% |
| 3 | Meckis Dm Special | drums, bass (guitar synthesizer), electric guitar with synth saxophone | 3:13 | drums 0:00, bass 0:13, guitar 0:49, synth 0:49 | 0:03 | 0:30 | 0:11 | 0 | 64% |
| 4 | Piano Drums | piano and drums (brushes) | 6:14 | piano 0:00, drums 0:25 | 0:23 | 0:00 | 0:17 | 4 (0:15, 0:24, 4:44, 5:39) | 39% |
| 5 | Scratchmo | drums, fretless bass (guitar synthesizer), scratching, electric guitar | 9:14 | drums 0:00, bass 0:55, synth 1:10, guitar 2:30 | 0:10 | 0:19 | 0:00 | 5 (0:15, 0:24, 0:41, 8:39, 8:48) | 33% |
| 6 | Git Trio 2 | drums, bass (guitar synthesizer), electric guitar | 6:30 | drums 0:00, bass 0:48, guitar 1:06 | 0:00 | 0:00 | 0:00 | 1 (5:21) | 33% |
| 7 | Git Trio 3 | bass (guitar synthesizer), drums, electric guitar | 4:15 | bass 0:01, drums 0:21, guitar 0:34 | 0:20 | 0:21 | 0:01 | 3 (0:17, 3:28, 3:43) | 43% |
| 8 | The Crow | solo piano (keyboard) | 3:17 | piano 0:01 | hardly any signal | 0:01 | 0:02 | 2 (2:10, 2:31) | 57% |
| Tenth | Multitrack pieces (LU) | Piano solos (LU) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 10% | −4.3 | −0.5 |
| 10 to 20% | −1.1 | +0.5 |
| 20 to 30% | +0.6 | +0.3 |
| 30 to 40% | +1.5 | +0.4 |
| 40 to 50% | +1.5 | +2.6 |
| 50 to 60% | +1.0 | +2.9 |
| 60 to 70% | +0.6 | +2.4 |
| 70 to 80% | +0.7 | +1.4 |
| 80 to 90% | −0.4 | +0.8 |
| 90 to 100% | −3.0 | −6.7 |
Interaction without a partner
That jazz is above all interaction is one of the settled insights of jazz studies. In “Thinking in Jazz” (1994) the ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner drew on conversations with more than fifty musicians to trace how improvisation arises in an ensemble, through constant listening to the others. In “Saying Something” (1996) Ingrid Monson showed that the rhythm section does not merely accompany: drums, bass and piano improvise just as the soloist does, and musical meaning arises in the exchange.13 The psychologist R. Keith Sawyer calls such group creativity emergent: the result cannot be attributed to any one person; it arises between those involved.14
With Pepl this reciprocity is technically ruled out. Each new track can react to the old ones; the old ones know nothing of the new. The drums, recorded first, could not answer a guitar line that did not yet exist. And yet we hear drums that seem to respond to the piano. And at the end of “Git Trio 3” bass and guitar drop out as if they had agreed to leave the close to the drums. It seems reasonable to see this not as a trick but as an achievement that comes from two sides. Pepl listened to the existing tracks so closely that his answers sound like prompts; and we, as listeners, hear what sounds at once as a conversation. The interaction that ran in only one direction in the studio becomes mutual in the act of listening. The trombonist and composer George E. Lewis has pointed out that improvisers hear their music for the first time at the same moment as their audience, who in their own way improvise along.15 With Pepl, the listener becomes, as it were, the last member of the band.
In an ensemble
In the home studio
Process after Heckel 2024, pp. 158 and 259 f., and Kohler 2006, pp. 133 to 135 (“usually”; no metronome, no corrections). The order of guitar and bass between themselves is not documented. Until hard-disk recording from 2002, Pepl recorded on ADAT: eight mono tracks or four stereo tracks (information from Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026), usually 1/2 drums, 3/4 bass, 5/6 guitar, 7/8 piano (Daniel Pepl's recollection, 18 October 2026). Mutual adaptation in ensembles after Keller, Novembre and Hove 2014. Diagram: harrypepl.com.
Cognitive science has since shown in experiment how fine the difference between genuine and one-way interplay is. In 2020 Matthew Setzler and Robert Goldstone had professional jazz pianists from New York improvise freely in duos, once interacting with each other and once playing along with a previously recorded partner who could no longer respond, in other words in overdub fashion. In the genuine duos the entries lined up more precisely, and listeners found these recordings more successful. Yet neither lay listeners nor jazz professionals could tell which recording was which; their guesses were at chance level.16 As an interpretation, it seems reasonable to read Pepl's home studio as a limiting case of this experiment: the recorded part he played along with was his own, with the same phrasing and the same inner time. How much expression lies in such tiny shifts of timing, which no notation captures, has been described by the pianist and scholar Vijay Iyer.17 For further reading: in 2016 George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut edited the two-volume “Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies”, with contributions from musicology, cognitive science and philosophy; the open-access journal “Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation” continues this research.18
A shared inner time
In his 1951 essay “Making Music Together” the Austrian-American sociologist Alfred Schütz described what binds musicians together: a “mutual tuning-in relationship”, in which each participant lives through the other's stream of experience in inner time. What matters for Pepl is that Schütz did not tie this relationship to physical presence. Even someone listening to a work, Schütz argued, follows the composer's stream of consciousness in a kind of quasi-simultaneity, though centuries may lie between them.19 Pepl's home studio is a limiting case of this idea: a tuning-in across time, with himself as partner, separated by minutes rather than centuries.
The missing metronome is no minor detail. Without a click track there is no external clock that all the parts share. The time in which the later parts move is the time of the first track, with all its stretching and quickening. Whoever plays along has to tune in to it as to another person; the shared inner time Schütz speaks of is created across the recording. In 1998 the ethnomusicologist Thomas Porcello related Schütz's social-phenomenological approach to work in the recording studio; Pepl's recordings would be a particularly clear case.20 Pepl himself described the state he was after as presence: what he liked so much, he said, was “the element of surprise, that I myself am in the moment, with whatever comes along”.21 Heckel reads this through the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow.22
The recording as the site of the work
In “The Prospects of Recording” (1966) the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould declared the recording to be music's true form and the edit a legitimate artistic tool.23 Pepl, whose love of Schoenberg's piano music was bound up with Gould's recordings of it,24 drew the opposite conclusion: the recording, yes; the edit, no. With the term “phonograph effects” the musicologist Mark Katz has described how recording technology changes what is played and how; Albin Zak has shown, using rock music, that record-making is itself a compositional process.25 Pepl's home studio combines both in its own way. Only multitrack technology makes this music possible, and the work, as Nikolaus Kohler notes, exists solely as a recording.26
In “Liveness” (1999) Philip Auslander showed that being live is not a natural property of music but a category that only arose in contrast to technical reproduction.27 Pepl's recordings take this thought further. They have everything we associate with liveness, the risk, the unrepeatable, the reaction in the moment, although no two musicians were ever in the room at the same time. Here simultaneity is not the condition of the live impression but its effect.
Precursors and differences
A single musician layering several parts has existed in jazz since 1941, when the New Orleans clarinettist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet recorded “The Sheik of Araby” for Victor on six instruments by himself.28 In the 1950s Lennie Tristano layered his own piano parts; in 1963 Bill Evans recorded “Conversations with Myself” with three piano parts.29 Pepl went further. He played an entire rhythm section, drums included, freely improvised and without correction, as real-time composition. Heckel puts the difference from Tristano and the saxophonist Warne Marsh this way: they reacted to one another within a single take, whereas Pepl reacted to himself across several takes.30
In his standard work “Improvisation” (1980) the British guitarist Derek Bailey distinguishes idiomatic improvisation, bound to a style, from non-idiomatic, free improvisation.31 The Lonely Single Swinger Band moves between the two; Kohler hears in it new music as well as what Pepl called “normal jazz”.32 The idea of instant composing that the Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg associated with the Instant Composers Pool also meant inventing together in the moment; Pepl transferred it to an ensemble that consisted of himself alone.33 In 1996 George E. Lewis described two attitudes in improvisation after 1950, an “Afrological” one, for which he cites Charlie Parker, and a “Eurological” one, represented by John Cage; the terms denote cultural locations, not origins.34 Pepl's home-studio music draws on both: it swings and tells stories, and at the same time it is an experiment with technology and time. Related paths, Giacinto Scelsi's improvisations on tape and Pat Metheny's “Orchestrion”, are described on the Real-time Composing page.
Time as a core theme: the moment, time-lapse, opposites
The paradox of simultaneity does not stand alone in Pepl's work. Time is one of his core themes, in his titles as much as in his own writings. In 2000 he wrote “Zeitraffer” (“Time-lapse”) for the percussion ensemble STUDIO PERCUSSION graz, and prefaced its premiere with a text that reads like a key to the home-studio recordings: “Compressing time is the watchword of our time: acceleration and the simultaneous unfolding of several events.” And further: “I am a child of our time: time-lapse is my watchword too. Real-time composing (my working method): total improvisation in the pull of the speed of the moment. Result: a play of waves and tides.”35 Heckel recognises in this play of waves and tides Pepl's phrasing, the fine fluctuations of tempo and dynamics within a phrase.36
In the moment in which I make music or compose inspired […], I believe in the absolute: in the truth in which all opposites coincide.
The moment returns again and again in Pepl: “What happens in the moment of creation remains untouched”, he wrote of his instant composing.5 Opposites are the second leitmotif. In his work composition and improvisation underwent a “rare, paradoxical fusion”, and in 1998, talking to the Austrian music magazine Concerto, he called himself “a person of opposites”.38 Many titles also circle around time and duration: “Über Kurz oder Lang, Von der Weite und der Enge” (“Sooner or later, of breadth and narrowness”) for the Artis-Quartett (1993), “3 Days Before” (1989), “Fünf Uhr früh” (“Five in the morning”), “Flow” (1996), “Frischwärts” (“Freshwards”, 1999) and “The Last Bars of Mankind” (1989), in which the bars of music meet Karl Kraus's drama “The Last Days of Mankind”.39 Writers on music have taken this up: Andreas Felber titled his 2004 liner notes “Die Überzeitlichkeit des Augenblicks” (“The timelessness of the moment”), and Heckel translates instant composing as “Komponieren im Ohrenblick”, composing in the blink of an ear.40
The home-studio recordings can be read in this light. If, in the text for “Zeitraffer”, Pepl describes the simultaneous unfolding of several events as the signature of his time, then in the Lonely Single Swinger Band he creates exactly that: simultaneity out of nothing but succession. The paradox would then be no side effect of technology but the expression of a theme that runs through his entire work.
What can be heard, and what remains to be researched
Daniel Pepl's comparison with the Wayne Shorter Quartet is a listening impression, not a finding. A measurement of the formal curves finds in both a music without a rigid grid that thickens out of a few voices; on its live albums “Footprints Live!” (2002) and “Beyond the Sound Barrier” (2005), however, the quartet mostly heads for a late climax, while Pepl shapes an arch with its peak in the middle.41 Daniel Pepl's listening impression, however, names exactly what research would have to explain. Music psychology studies how ensemble musicians adjust their timing to one another within fractions of a second, through anticipation and continuous correction.42 In an ensemble everyone adapts to everyone. With Pepl the adaptation ran in one direction only, from each new track to the old ones. If the result is nonetheless heard as mutual, we have a natural experiment of a kind that could hardly be staged in a laboratory.
Shape of the form, not a judgement of quality. The quartet played live and simultaneously in front of an audience; Pepl played alone, one track after another, in his home studio.
- Harry Pepl: the six multitrack pieces on “Volume One”, recorded alone and one after another (without the two piano solos)
- Wayne Shorter Quartet: six live tracks from “Footprints Live!” (2002) and “Beyond the Sound Barrier” (2005)
Loudness
Density
Where is the densest point?
Measured, in figures
- Densest point, median: Pepl 41%, quartet 89%
- Last tenth: Pepl −3.0 LU, quartet +2.8 LU
- Pull-backs per track, median: Pepl 3, after all instruments have entered 1.5; quartet about 8
- Similarity of the two average curves (correlation): loudness 0.27, density 0.34
- Shared: no rigid grid (pulse r at most 0.06 and 0.09)
Own measurement, signal analysis, October 2026. Pepl: WAV masters of the six multitrack pieces on “Volume One” (2020), “Nach Saalfelden” (2002) as a ring. Quartet: official uploads on the YouTube channel “Wayne Shorter - Topic” (Universal Music Group), without the last 12 seconds (“Over Shadow Hill Way”: 20 seconds) because of applause. Only the shape of the form is compared.
Measured values as a table
| Tenth | Pepl loudness (LU) | Quartet loudness (LU) | Pepl density | Quartet density |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 10% | −4.3 | −2.3 | 0.49 | 0.70 |
| 10 to 20% | −1.1 | −2.1 | 0.82 | 0.73 |
| 20 to 30% | +0.6 | −0.6 | 1.00 | 0.83 |
| 30 to 40% | +1.5 | +0.3 | 1.32 | 0.92 |
| 40 to 50% | +1.5 | +1.5 | 1.33 | 1.13 |
| 50 to 60% | +1.0 | +0.2 | 1.15 | 0.92 |
| 60 to 70% | +0.6 | +1.0 | 1.07 | 1.03 |
| 70 to 80% | +0.7 | +2.3 | 1.06 | 1.20 |
| 80 to 90% | −0.4 | +3.2 | 1.10 | 1.33 |
| 90 to 100% | −3.0 | +2.8 | 0.66 | 1.22 |
| Track | Recording | Music | Densest point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated To Michel Noiret's Stockhausen | Volume One (2020) | 3:52 | 87% |
| Meckis Dm Special | Volume One (2020) | 3:13 | 64% |
| Piano Drums | Volume One (2020) | 6:14 | 39% |
| Scratchmo | Volume One (2020) | 9:14 | 33% |
| Git Trio 2 | Volume One (2020) | 6:30 | 33% |
| Git Trio 3 | Volume One (2020) | 4:15 | 43% |
| Nach Saalfelden | 2002 | 5:27 | 36% |
| Footprints | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Footprints Live! | 7:38 | 53% |
| Masqualero | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Footprints Live! | 8:11 | 87% |
| Sanctuary | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Footprints Live! | 5:16 | 91% |
| As Far As The Eye Can See | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Beyond the Sound Barrier | 6:08 | 86% |
| Over Shadow Hill Way | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Beyond the Sound Barrier | 12:13 | 99% |
| Joy Ryder | Wayne Shorter Quartet, Beyond the Sound Barrier | 11:02 | 99% |
How different the eight tracks are in detail is shown by four key figures: loudness range, pulse, stereo image and the number of pull-backs. The measurement finds a regular grid in none of the tracks.
- Volume One (2020), multitrack piece
- Volume One, piano solo on keyboard
- “Nach Saalfelden” (2002)
- Wayne Shorter Quartet: range of the six tracks, square = median
Loudness range
Pulse
Stereo image
Pull-backs
Own measurement, October 2026. LRA according to EBU R 128; pulse: highest autocorrelation of the onset envelope (10 ms) for lags of 0.25 to 1.5 seconds; S−M: side against mid signal; pull-back: 5 seconds at least 5 LU below the median, excluding the first 15 and last 20 seconds.
Measured values as a table
| Track | Music | LRA (LU) | Pulse (r) | S−M (dB) | Pull-backs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Dedicated To Michel Noiret's Stockhausen | 3:52 | 10.9 | 0.06 | −7.7 | 3 |
| 2 Abstract World | 2:41 | 9.5 | 0.03 | −6.4 | 2 |
| 3 Meckis Dm Special | 3:13 | 4.7 | 0.04 | +9.8 | 0 |
| 4 Piano Drums | 6:14 | 9.3 | 0.04 | −7.3 | 4 |
| 5 Scratchmo | 9:14 | 7.3 | 0.05 | −5.5 | 5 |
| 6 Git Trio 2 | 6:30 | 5.9 | 0.03 | −3.3 | 1 |
| 7 Git Trio 3 | 4:15 | 8.7 | 0.03 | −11.2 | 3 |
| 8 The Crow | 3:17 | 12.0 | 0.03 | −6.4 | 2 |
| Nach Saalfelden (2002) | 5:27 | 9.4 | 0.03 | −5.1 | 2 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, Footprints | 7:38 | 10.1 | 0.05 | not compared | 9 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, Masqualero | 8:11 | 13.1 | 0.05 | not compared | 7 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, Sanctuary | 5:16 | 14.3 | 0.05 | not compared | 2 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, As Far As The Eye Can See | 6:08 | 9.1 | 0.04 | not compared | 0 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, Over Shadow Hill Way | 12:13 | 14.6 | 0.09 | not compared | 10 |
| Wayne Shorter Quartet, Joy Ryder | 11:02 | 12.6 | 0.09 | not compared | 13 |
The material for it survives. The recordings exist as separate tracks, drums, bass, guitar and piano, and Pepl rated many of them himself with stars.43 They would allow questions that reach beyond Pepl. Which auditory cues carry the impression of simultaneity: shared entries, microtiming, dynamics, density? How do we hear that one part answers another, and how does the impression change when the tracks are shifted against each other? And does Pepl's own judgement in stars match what listeners experience as especially close interplay? And the individual tracks could show whether the order of entries in the finished piece was also the order of recording. Information on access for research projects is on the page For research and archives.
The measurement in detail
The full signal analysis, with all charts, measured values and the method, is available as a PDF download: Deutsch, English, Français.
How it was measured: the lossless WAV masters were analysed second by second with the freely available software ffmpeg. Measured were loudness according to the broadcast standard EBU R 128, spectral flux as a measure of how much new material sounds in each second, the levels in three frequency registers (low below 200 Hz, mid 300 to 2500 Hz, high above 5 kHz) and the width of the stereo image. From these come entries, thickenings and pull-backs; for the form curves each track was divided into ten sections of equal length. The measurement captures the overall sound, not the individual tracks, and hears no instruments, only frequency ranges; who plays when comes from Daniel Pepl's listening analysis. The PDF keeps what the figures show apart from what is interpretation, with all definitions and measured values.
Literature
- Philip Auslander: Liveness. Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London and New York: Routledge 1999.
- Derek Bailey: Improvisation. Its Nature and Practice in Music. Ashbourne: Moorland Publishing in association with Incus Records 1980 (revised edition 1992).
- Paul F. Berliner: Thinking in Jazz. The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1994.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row 1990.
- Glenn Gould: The Prospects of Recording. In: High Fidelity 16 (1966), no. 4, pp. 46 to 63.
- Stefan Heckel: Instant Composing. Das Spätwerk des Jazzgitarristen und Komponisten Harry Pepl [Instant Composing: the late work of the jazz guitarist and composer Harry Pepl]. Doctoral thesis, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna 2024.
- Vijay Iyer: Embodied Mind, Situated Cognition, and Expressive Microtiming in African-American Music. In: Music Perception 19 (2002), no. 3, pp. 387 to 414.
- Mark Katz: Capturing Sound. How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley: University of California Press 2004.
- Peter E. Keller, Giacomo Novembre, Michael J. Hove: Rhythm in Joint Action. Psychological and Neurophysiological Mechanisms for Real-Time Interpersonal Coordination. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 369 (2014), no. 1658, article 20130394.
- Nikolaus Kohler: Harry Pepl. Ein Porträt des Musikers und Komponisten [Harry Pepl: a portrait of the musician and composer]. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2006.
- George E. Lewis: Improvised Music after 1950. Afrological and Eurological Perspectives. In: Black Music Research Journal 16 (1996), no. 1, pp. 91 to 122.
- George E. Lewis, Benjamin Piekut (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press 2016.
- Ingrid Monson: Saying Something. Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1996.
- Thomas Porcello: “Tails Out”. Social Phenomenology and the Ethnographic Representation of Technology in Music-Making. In: Ethnomusicology 42 (1998), no. 3.
- R. Keith Sawyer: Group Creativity. Music, Theater, Collaboration. Mahwah (New Jersey): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2003.
- Alfred Schütz: Making Music Together. A Study in Social Relationship. In: Social Research 18 (1951), no. 1, pp. 76 to 97.
- Matthew Setzler, Robert Goldstone: Coordination and Consonance Between Interacting, Improvising Musicians. In: Open Mind 4 (2020), pp. 88 to 101.
- Albin J. Zak III: The Poetics of Rock. Cutting Tracks, Making Records. Berkeley: University of California Press 2001.
Notes and sources (43)
- Daniel Pepl on the home studio in: Thomas Hein, Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; Heckel 2024, pp. 154 and 158 (recorded “in der täglichen Routine im Klanglabor”, in the daily routine of the sound laboratory); “Ich geh jetzt ins Bergwerk”: Harry Pepl’s own turn of phrase, not a name for the studio, according to Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026. ↩
- Information from Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026 (eight mono tracks or four stereo stems before hard-disk recording from 2002) and 17 October 2026 (drums, bass, guitar, piano); ADAT as the recording medium also in Heckel 2024, pp. 62 and 84. ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 158 and 259 f. (interview with Martin Bayer); Kohler 2006, pp. 133 to 135; information from Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026 (often the drums first; which track came first in a particular piece can no longer be established). ↩
- Harry Pepl in conversation with Nikolaus Kohler, Kohler 2006, p. 133 (interview 1-55), translated from the German. ↩
- Harry Pepl, text on the commission for the Kronos Quartet, quoted in Heckel 2024, pp. 12 and 61. ↩
- Harry Pepl in conversation with Nikolaus Kohler, Kohler 2006, p. 134 (interview 2-32), translated from the German; lifelong, obsessive practice until this phase: Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026. ↩
- Kohler 2006, p. 133 (interview 1-55). ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 33 f. ↩
- Listening comparison by Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026; his work as sound engineer: Daniel Pepl in Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; from 1995/1996 according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
- Harry Pepl, “Nach Saalfelden”, Lonely Single Swinger Band, from the Christmas CDs of 2002, also on SoundCloud (published 25 December 2016); course of the piece based on measurement made for this archive (signal analysis: loudness according to EBU R 128, spectral flux, frequency bands, stereo image), October 2026; measurement data on request; line-up and entries by ear: Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026. ↩
- Listening analysis by Daniel Pepl, 18 October 2026 (line-up, entries and changes of tone of all tracks on “Volume One” and of “Nach Saalfelden”); Daniel Pepl as sound engineer: Concerto 2/2009, p. 44. Comparison with the measurement in the PDF of the signal analysis. ↩
- WAV masters, measurement made for this archive (signal analysis: loudness according to EBU R 128, spectral flux, frequency bands, stereo image), October 2026; measured values and method in the PDF of the signal analysis (section “The measurement in detail”). ↩
- Berliner 1994; Monson 1996 (see Literature). ↩
- Sawyer 2003. ↩
- Lewis as cited in Heckel 2024, pp. 32 f. ↩
- Matthew Setzler and Robert Goldstone, “Coordination and Consonance Between Interacting, Improvising Musicians”, Open Mind 4 (2020), pp. 88 to 101, doi:10.1162/opmi_a_00036 (open access on PubMed Central; PDF copy on harrypepl.com, licence CC BY 4.0). 28 pianists, 50 interacting and 86 one-way duos. ↩
- Vijay Iyer, “Embodied Mind, Situated Cognition, and Expressive Microtiming in African-American Music”, Music Perception 19 (2002), no. 3, pp. 387 to 414 (version on Iyer's page at Harvard University, with audio examples). ↩
- George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, 2 vols., New York: Oxford University Press 2016 (vol. 1, vol. 2); Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, published at the University of Guelph, Canada. ↩
- Schütz 1951, reprinted in: Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers II. Studies in Social Theory, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1964. The ideas are paraphrased. ↩
- Porcello 1998. ↩
- Harry Pepl in conversation with Nikolaus Kohler, Kohler 2006, p. 134 (interview 2-32), translated from the German. ↩
- Heckel 2024, p. 13 (note 6), pp. 135 and 158; Csikszentmihalyi 1990. ↩
- Gould 1966 (full text in the Glenn Gould Archive of Library and Archives Canada); reprinted in: The Glenn Gould Reader, ed. Tim Page, New York: Knopf 1984. ↩
- Heckel 2024, p. 106 (after liner notes by Andreas Felber) and p. 242 (conversation with Wulf Müller). ↩
- Katz 2004; Zak 2001. ↩
- Kohler 2006, p. 142. ↩
- Auslander 1999. ↩
- Victor 27485, recorded in New York on 18 April 1941; Discography of American Historical Recordings, matrix BS-063785. ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 32 and 61; Lennie Tristano, “Lennie Tristano” (Atlantic, mid-1950s, including “Line Up” and “Turkish Mambo”); Bill Evans, “Conversations with Myself” (Verve, 1963). ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 33 f. ↩
- Bailey 1980. ↩
- Kohler 2006, p. 135. ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 21 f.; on the history of the term see Real-time Composing. ↩
- Lewis 1996 (online at Jazz Studies Online); reprinted in: Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music, ed. Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, New York: Continuum 2004, pp. 272 to 286 (cited from there in Heckel 2024, pp. 32 f.). ↩
- Harry Pepl, programme text for the premiere of “Zeitraffer” for percussion ensemble and tape (Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria, Austria, 1 April 2000), reproduced in Heckel 2024, p. 208; excerpt also on p. 61; translated from the German. ↩
- Heckel 2024, p. 99. ↩
- Bernhard Günther (ed.), Lexikon zeitgenössischer Musik aus Österreich, Vienna: music information center austria 1997, pp. 824 f.; Kohler 2006, p. 135. Omitted is the aside “which for me is the same thing”. ↩
- Harry Pepl, manuscript “Instant Composing” (1989), quoted in Heckel 2024, pp. 12, 20 and 61; Martin Schuster, “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen”, interview, Concerto 2/1998. ↩
- Catalogue of works on harrypepl.com; on “The Last Bars of Mankind” and other titles see Wordplay. ↩
- Andreas Felber, “Harry Pepl. Die Überzeitlichkeit des Augenblicks”, liner notes to the 2004 CD edition, after Heckel 2024, pp. 106 and 119; Heckel 2024, pp. 19 and 51. ↩
- Ibid.; compared with six tracks from the two Verve albums (including “Footprints”, “Masqualero” and “Sanctuary”, recorded in 2001 at the Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain). Only formal curves are compared; recording, mixing and performance are fundamentally different. ↩
- Keller, Novembre and Hove 2014, doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0394 (free to read on PubMed Central). ↩
- Heckel 2024, pp. 84, 154 and 159; star ratings: Daniel Pepl in Concerto 2/2009, p. 44; rating system of one to five stars in ring binders according to the family (Daniel Pepl, 17 October 2026). ↩
Last updated: 18 Oct 2026