Mind Reader marks the beginning of the unleashing of Alan's innate talent for free improvisation. At first he saw improvisation as a precursor to a composition. He’d mess around on the piano until a good idea came along that could be worked into a song. If he particularly liked a section, he transcribed it in full and added to it to round it out. The point of improvising, he said, was "to make compositions out of them." Over time, Alan found that there were drawbacks to this approach.

That's when he decided to take improvisation to another level. He said, "This was a year’s process but what I eventually got into was making up compositions on the spot. Not just snippets that I could later rework into fully developed pieces, but songs with a beginning, middle, end, climax point, and resolution. When you improvise without thinking about transcription, it frees you up creatively. And because I was finding the transcribing part so tedious, when I went to play the finished composition, the boredom came through in my playing. So there's also the advantage that the recording of the initial improvisation is fresh and interesting each time you listen to it."

In 2002 Alan began to explore the collaborative possibilities between the piano and other instruments. To get a handle on it, he jammed and studied with saxophonists Ian Babb and Peter Cancura and bassist Ken Kanwisher. After he moved to Toronto in 2004, he continued with bassists Steve Wallace and Tyler Wagler.

The experience was less than satisfactory. His complaint was not with the musicians but with the instruments and tradition. He said, "When I started playing with a bass, I thought – what am I supposed to do with my left hand. The bass took over what I used to do with my left hand and all I did was play accompanying notes or comp. And when I played with the horns, I was left accompanying them because they are so overpowering. I am used to playing solo and carrying both the bass lines and the melody. My bugaboo is that for almost a century, jazz horn instruments have all but wiped out the melodic capabilities of the piano and jazz bassists have all but wiped out the left hand of most jazz piano players."

The bass not only played havoc with Alan’s strong left hand but it also clashed with his unique sense of rhythm. He said, "When I’d try to play my piece – to get my rhythm going – the whole time I felt like I had this train bearing down on me from behind. I haven't yet found a jazz bass player who will follow me. They’re trained to lead."

The rule of thumb where Western music is concerned, is ‘in time.’  The crux of the problem is that Alan has other ideas.  From day one he has butted heads with the rule that music has to be played in time to one time signature. He says, "I don’t really have a time signature. I almost create my own time. I don’t think in terms of time signatures. I think in terms of sound. What does this thing sound like? I give the music space to breathe. Time signatures are pre-made. Traditionally sound has to fit in the time signatures. The notes have to be in a certain place at a certain time. I build the signatures around the sound. Not the sound around the signatures. It’s not one size fits all. I give the musical phrase or idea room. You can’t talk that way, why should you play music that way. If you’re not thinking about beats, you concentrate on the musical line. The lectures I got! – You’re playing out of time. I wanted to play out of time. Is it chaos? You have to remember that chaos is a series of small instances of order. It’s really not that big a jump from swinging your eight notes – clipping a little off one eight note here to add it to another somewhere else. I just do that with time signatures – well, a bit more than that."

The other issue was that Alan didn’t want to work from jazz standards or charts.  He wanted to do free improvisation.  All week he slogged at the piano coming up with new ideas, which he was raring to try in free improv jams with other musicians.  But free improv as he envisioned it – with no standards or charts – was not the way jazz worked.  He was ready to improvise completely off the top of his head – not "off the page or chart," which is the jazz term for playing a jazz standard from memory and then improvising off of it.

With horns and bass eliminated, Alan started scouting around for another instrument to team up with the piano.  The fact that drums don’t play pitches made them an attractive fit. In the summer of 2007, he started working with drummer Adam David. Alan said, "It all started in July of 2007 when I found out that my neighbour on the corner was a jazz drummer. I had just moved to Toronto in 04, and I had played off and on with various Toronto bass players and drummers with little success – at least in playing the way I had in mind. So, I thought what the heck, this chap lives just down the block, why not have him over and see what comes of it."

His experiences with the bass, had given him a better idea of what he was looking for in an improv partner.  He said, "I wanted a 'rhythmically open concept' drumming style. What that really means is that I wanted the drummer to be able to read my mind!!! The objective was to produce instrumental music that was coherent, melodious, rhythmically stimulating and innovative, without being restrictive for either of us. Where the brain goes, the piano follows, and where the piano goes, the drummer follows."  Fortunately, Adam David proved to be a flexible musician and they worked well together all that summer.  There were a few occasions when David had to be reminded, " You can do that out there, but here, there are no rules except that it feels and sounds right."  It was a huge challenge for David. There was nary a chart in sight. He had no inkling what Alan was going to do until it was already done.  But then neither did Alan.

There was a second objective. Alan had by this time over fifty of his own compositions, which he wanted to experiment with. Seven were chosen for this CD. The concept was to play the piano part with a languid and sparse feel while the percussion part, in contrast, played with an aggressive testosterone fueled adolescent feel. He said, "The idea was to lay down a rhythmically contrasting drumbeat to the piano part that would establish and complement the rhythm of the composition without overpowering it, and yet remain interesting and innovatively free." 

Adam David and his custom designed drumkit.

The question was, would David be able to pick up on the fly Alan’s unique rhythmic sense and not get in the way of it?  Alan said, "One of the first things I learned from my jazz teacher, Dave Hildinger, was to swing eighth notes – shaving a little bit off an eighth note to add on to another to get the ‘swing’ feel.  I like to do the same thing with the rhythm of a song. I’ll make adjustments to the rhythm to get the ‘feel’ I hear in my head.  Sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes it’s on a grand scale.  Adam was so quick to catch the changes in rhythm that sometimes I felt he could read my mind."

Adam David turned out to be a musician who can think – and play – outside of the box. His father, Harold Ginsberg, was a drummer and David grew up with drums and drumsticks. Drumming is as natural to him as talking. Although the majority of his professional and studio work is in mainstream jazz, he quickly adapted to Alan's style. Each drumbeat, each stroke falls on the heel of each note, each chord milliseconds after Alan plays it on the piano. The effect is breathtaking and natural. A quick bio on Adam David: "Adam has kept the beat with such greats as Ray Charles, Vince Gill, Tommy Newson, Michelle Wright, Charles Brown, Shirley Eikhard, Oliver Jones, Tommy Hunter, and Morgan Davis. He's also an accomplished actor, with regular parts on such hit TV series as Degrassi High. And he's been the Toronto District School Board's percussion specialist since 1979." What started as an experiment, quickly progressed into an exciting musical collaboration. By early fall, Alan was contemplating an album. Like most musicians today, he has a small home studio where he can record his improv work in case he later wants to develop some of his ideas into compositions. He said, "When I listened back to what Adam and I were creating, I thought we should take it into a professional studio." At that time, Alan’s home studio was not equipped for that level of recording.

At first, Jim Morgan of Acrobat Studio, was a little leery of taking on a rookie. Cutting a CD is not a cheap proposition. Morgan, an engineer /producer with 33 years of major studio experience, cautioned that Alan’s inexperience might prove an expensive gamble. Alan said, "He was worried that I might not be happy with the end product since how I would perform in the studio setting was a total unknown to him and to me, having never done it before." Of particular concern was the fact that a lot of the material to be recorded was improvisational, which is not a sure thing in a pressured environment such as a recording studio. Alan reassured Morgan that he was going to approach the experience strictly as "educational" and wasn’t worried if he got no definite results. With that reassurance, Morgan decided to risk it. A jubilant Alan said, "We recorded an hour and six minutes of music and 58 minutes of it was usable. I'm told that's good. Adam and I did 7 of my compositions and 4 improvs. Although Adam had jotted down some ideas during our practice sessions for the compositions, there were no written drum parts so he had to improvise the whole time!!"

September 19, 2007 – The BIG DAY – Alan said, "My first studio experience. Jim Morgan, far right, owner of Acrobat Studio, made it so easy that it wasn't much different than playing at home in my studio. That's Adam, far left, in solitary confinement, setting up his amazing wood drum kit. Unlike me, he's an old hand at studio work."

At one point during the recording, the stress got to David and he exclaimed, "I don’t know what I’m doing. I seem to be all over the place." He had just finished a brilliant percussion part to one of Alan’s composition. He was quickly reassured, "If you know what you’re doing and feel in control then you’re doing the wrong thing!!"

By October, Alan was thinking up names for his and David’s collaborative team. He said, "Now we're looking for a name for our duo. Family and friends have come up with a bizarre collection of monikers. Let's see, there's "Ragweed", "Tripod" (no sexual connotations there - ??), the "East York Chucks" (apropos "Dixie Chicks"). Then there's a bunch of names that play off the fact both of our initials are A.D. One suggestion was "ADlib". Another was the A.D. coup d'état". And because I'm half Portuguese, "1128 A.D." That's when Portugal became a political entity. My brother who's studying medicine at McMaster University was in total med mode and suggested "The Bedpans". Eventually they settled on "darragh and david unlimited", thinking that it reflected the unlimited potential for improvisation between piano and drums.

Alan reflects, "So far nobody has given my music a definitive label. They seem to agree that it's melodic but has an unusual structure. I don’t have any specific influences, but I am drawn to the sound of the acoustic guitar. I try to bring that texture to the piano. I also like the harp and I’ll push my technique to make the piano sound like one. Ditto for the organ with its incredible cascade of resonance. My favorite comping rhythms are drawn from listening to the acoustic guitar and electric bass. That said, one thing I know for certain, I’ll never be able to play any other kind of music but my own. I’ve battled that out and there’s no other way."
Alan Darragh is a member of SOCAN and ASCAP.