Leon Salcedo
Gesture, Mechanism and Improvisation: A Narrative in Six Explorations
This page presents the artistic axis of my doctoral research at the University of Aveiro (Portugal). Six audiovisual explorations — improvisations for guitar built from gestures derived from études by Villa-Lobos and Brouwer, presented alongside AI-generated visual animations inspired by works from the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C and using the Guitar Improviser Web App.
Can a technical gesture become material for musical creation?
Exploration 1 — Study No. 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos / Chapter 1
This audiovisual exploration occupies a particular position within the artistic trajectory of this research, as it preceded the systematic formulation of many of the concepts and procedures that later structure the thesis. It can be understood as a manifestation of the artistic intuitions that motivated the project.
The improvisation takes as its starting point Study No. 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos. After an initial performance of the original material, the improvisatory discourse is constructed through the exploration of three main aspects: the mechanical action of the right-hand arpeggio pattern, the intervallic organisation of the sonorities in the opening bars, and the internal melodic relationships derived from chromatic approach movements. Through processes of fragmentation, inversion, reordering and transformation, the technical material ceases to function solely as an interpretive resource and becomes a generative source of new musical possibilities.
The visual dimension is inspired by Little Men Study #4 (c. 1967–1969) by Vivian Browne, from the permanent collection of the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. The analogy is not literal but processual: just as Browne dissolves the figure from within — through pastel strokes and colour that tenses until it becomes expressive — the generated animation works on the disintegration and reconfiguration of visual form in correspondence with the transformation of mechanical gesture in the guitar.
Visual animation: Runway.ML. Editing: iMovie.
How can an improvisation inhabit a structure without ceasing to transform it?
Exploration 2 — Studies No. 11 and 12 by Heitor Villa-Lobos / Chapter 2
If the first exploration represents the intuitive starting point of this research, this second exploration marks a first moment of greater awareness of the dimensions of gesture that Chapter 2 articulates conceptually. The improvisation adopts a form reminiscent of the jazz standard: Study No. 12 is performed literally up to minute 1:45, gives way to a central improvised section until 6:35, and returns at the end to close. This structure enacts the tension that runs through the chapter — between the work as a closed object and improvisation as an open process, between fidelity to the text and the freedom of the performer.
The improvised section is built in two parts. The first emerges from the three-plane texture of Study No. 11 and its melodic movement — dominated by thirds and minor seconds — explored in a free two-voice counterpoint with an inner voice acting almost constantly as a pedal. The second part is organised around a gesture extracted from bar 17 of the same study: parallel major thirds in the bass, opposed to repeated pedal harmonies. This texture gradually leads back to Study No. 12.
The visual exploration continues working from the same reference as the first exploration — Little Men Study #4 (c. 1967–1969) by Vivian Browne (Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.) — but with a different logic. Here the animation and the performer do not overlap: they alternate. When Study No. 12 is literal, only the performer appears; when improvisation takes over, animation and performer take turns in a slow, measured rhythm. This visual structure makes perceptible the distinction between the given and the explored.
Visual animation: Neural Frame. Editing: iMovie.
How can a gesture transform itself without losing its identity?
Exploration 3 — Study No. 8 by Heitor Villa-Lobos / Chapter 3
This exploration marks a turning point in the artistic trajectory of the research. Unlike the two previous explorations, here there is no literal performance of any section of the study: the discourse departs directly from the analysis and projection of gestural content. The improvisation takes as its starting point the opening melodic gesture of Study No. 8 — the first four bars, built on the pitches B, G# and C# — a structurally central gesture in the work: it appears first in the low register, over a dense harmony charged with tritones, and reappears from bar 17 in the upper register, over more open and transparent minor seventh chords.
The improvisation works with those two initial intervals — minor third and perfect fourth — both in their melodic direction and character, and in their capacity to generate new developments from their intervallic content. In a second zone, the exploration shifts toward the harmonic sonorities of the study itself: minor triads with extensions (add6, add9) and minor seventh chords (9, 11, 13), whose configurations on the fingerboard were explored using the Guitar Improviser tool. At minute 2, a literal quotation of the opening gesture of Study No. 8 appears; at the end, a series of natural harmonics evokes the close of the original work.
This is the first moment in the series where the method described in Chapter 3 operates recognisably: the practice is no longer guided by the form of the work, but by the understanding of the internal logic of the gesture — its mechanical, intervallic and expressive dimensions — and by its potential to feed a musical imagination that unfolds in real time.
The visual dimension was constructed from two paintings from the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. Blue (1958) by Sam Francis operates through accumulation of calligraphic gestures — marks, strokes, transparent layers — that individually are fragments but together build an enveloping totality. Untitled (Harvard Mural sketch) (1962) by Mark Rothko presents two red bands that irrupt vertically in a dense blue field: the tension between the containing mass and the traversing line evokes the relationship between the seed melodic gesture and the harmonic background that creates different levels of density.
Visual animation: Runway ML. Editing: iMovie.
What new possibilities emerge when gestural transformation can be systematically organised?
Exploration 4 — Studies No. 7 and 11 by Leo Brouwer / Chapter 4
This audiovisual exploration marks the moment when the Guitar Improviser tool acquires an explicit role within the research. While the previous explorations focused on the creative possibilities of gesture and its transformations, here the attention shifts toward the procedures that allow generating, reorganising and projecting materials derived from an initial gesture. The improvisation puts into practice several of the resources developed in Chapter 4 — parameter modulation, exploration of alternative mechanical configurations, the use of the IC vector as a structural guide — showing how the tool can function as a mediator between continuity and innovation. In this sense, the exploration does not illustrate the method: it constitutes one of the spaces where the method is tested and reformulated through artistic practice.
The music is built on the opening gestures of Studies No. 7 and No. 11 by Leo Brouwer, and follows a formal structure that, although free in its execution, can be analysed retrospectively as an A-B-C-B'-A' form. The first section deploys solutions of the opening gesture of Study No. 11 — introduced as a seed in Guitar Improviser with the modulating sliders at 0, essentially preserving the mechanical and intervallic structure of the gesture — and incorporates toward minute 1 the sonorities of the opening gesture of Study No. 7. The second section introduces a significant harmonic transformation: the opening gesture of Study No. 11 is modulated using the Harmonic Distance slider at intensity 4 and an advanced filter selecting solutions with IC vector <244461>. The third section is built as a free two-voice counterpoint with internal pedals on open strings 2 and 3.
The visual dimension was constructed from three works from the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.: Heavenly Bodies (1946) by Rufino Tamayo, August, Rue Daguerre (1957) by Joan Mitchell, and Number 14-1953 (1953) by Alfonso Ossorio. As works of abstract expressionism, all three share with the improvisation a logic of open gestural development. The visual exploration does not seek to illustrate specific musical materials, but to construct a perceptual field where different modalities of transformation — gestural, textural and chromatic — can coexist and dialogue with the processes of variation developed through the methodological framework proposed in this chapter.
Visual animation: Runway ML. Editing: iMovie.
What happens when a research procedure becomes fully integrated into artistic practice?
Exploration 5 — Study No. 1 by Leo Brouwer / Chapter 5
This exploration occupies a singular place within the set of audiovisual explorations of the thesis: Study No. 1 by Leo Brouwer accompanied the research process from its earliest stages and was present in several concerts, workshops and lecture-recitals carried out within the doctoral project. Yet the approach to its material was never the same. Each time I returned to improvise on it, the point of departure was the same but the result was different, because the method and the understanding sustaining it had been reconfigured. In that sense, this exploration is not the first nor the only version of this material: it is the one that corresponds to a moment in the process when concepts, tool and strategies have found an articulation that can be considered stable.
The improvisation maintains the characteristic texture of Study No. 1: melody in the bass with accompaniment on strings 2 and 3, with occasional shifts toward a melodic position in the upper voice. The harmonic framework preserves the Dorian mode of E and explores toward the Lydian of F, with insertions of gestures derived from the Em add6 chord generated using the Guitar Improviser tool. The rhythmic grouping of 3+3+2 in the bar of eight quavers sustains an almost ostinato pulse that gives coherence to the discourse, while over that stable background emerge linear gestures built from the exploration of intervallic content — including a section of quartal harmonies derived from the expansion of Em to Em11 in quartal voicings. This coexistence of the rhythmically constant and the harmonically variable is, in itself, a manifestation of the methodological framework: mechanical structure as support and intervallic exploration as the engine of development.
The visual dimension was constructed from two works from the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.: Vigil (1948) by Adolph Gottlieb and Brown Shapes White (1941) by Alice Trumbull Mason. Both paintings share a structural tension between the rigidity of the grid and the organicity of the forms that inhabit it: Gottlieb constructs with biomorphic symbols over a grid that contains them without neutralising them; Mason synthesises geometric forms with organic elements that escape slightly from systematisation. This same tension runs through the improvisation: the rhythmic ostinato functions as a grid, and the linear gestures derived from intervallic exploration are the organic forms that emerge from within that structure.
Visual animation: Runway ML. Editing: iMovie.
Where does the identity of a work reside when its surface has disappeared?
Exploration 6 — Studies No. XIX and XX by Leo Brouwer / Chapter 6
This exploration closes the series with a gesture that, in some sense, inverts the logic of all the previous ones. In the preceding explorations, the material of the original work functioned as an explicit point of departure — whether as initial literalness, as an intervallic seed, or as a recognisable mechanical gesture — and the improvisation developed from there. Here the opposite occurs: the improvisation comes first and the work arrives at the end. During the first two minutes and twenty seconds, the discourse is a pure exploration of the slur mechanism derived from Study No. XX; between minute 2:20 and 3:10, derivations of Studies XIX and XX are combined; and only in the final forty seconds does the improvisation recapitulate almost literally a passage from Study No. XX. What seemed free turns out to be, retrospectively, a preparation for the origin.
This inverted form illustrates the central argument of the thesis. The method enables the performer to construct a coherent improvisatory discourse without needing to lean on the surface of the work; the work can appear at the end, as confirmation that everything that was explored had an internal logic that was always there. The physicality of repetition in this improvisation — its rhythmic, minimalist, moto perpetuo character — synthesises the corporeality of gesture as a physical-cognitive unit (Johnson, 2007; Leman, 2007), the accumulation of transformations that arise from examining the interiority of the mechanism, and improvisation understood as a process-product unit (Pérez, 2012) in which each gestural transformation is simultaneously practice and knowledge.
The visual dimension was constructed from three works from the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. that share an elimination of all figurative reference in order to concentrate on the most essential elements: colour, form and space. Blue Black (1972–1974) by Ellsworth Kelly works with monochromatic panels that interact with space itself, making colour a physical presence. Fox I (1972) by Anni Albers employs the repetition of triangles to construct a rhythmic structure that elevates geometric pattern to autonomous expression. Orange and Red on Red (1957) by Mark Rothko presents colour blocks with edges that seem to float, seeking an emotional response that transcends form. Just as the Mechanical Gesture develops by examining its internal logic rather than building an outward discursive development, these works operate from reduction — of figure, gesture, form — to arrive at something that is fundamentally expressive. The elemental is not the simple: it is what remains when everything unnecessary has been eliminated.
Visual animation: Neural Frames. Editing: iMovie.
When I began this research, the question was practical: how to improvise from what I already know how to play? Having completed it, the question has become deeper and harder to answer with certainty: what exactly is it that I know when I play?
The research has led me to understand that a performer's musical knowledge does not reside solely in the mind, nor solely in the fingers: it resides in the relationship between them, in the gesture that connects them and the listening that guides them.
To improvise, in that sense, is not to invent from nothing. It is to discover what was already there.
— León Salcedo / University of Aveiro, 2026