Improvisation from 2007-07-05

This is the first piece I'm posting on here. Not that that means anything to anyone but me... Meh.

This is an excerpt from a longer improv session at my keyboard.

It starts out a little rough, when I'm still hesitant to let the improv go in this direction, but it does smooth out later on.

It's actually very tonal, but the progression of chords themselves are quite random. In other words, I just sort of let my hands fall on the keyboard randomly and tried to make that fit in.

As a whole, it's nothing more than improv. But there are individual harmonic ideas that I might tease out and do something with.

Note: The midi is ugly... it is, quite literally, a live recording. But, seeing as it falls under the guidelines/requirements for posting, it's here. (It also seems that the midi got quantized a little bit.)

MP3 (which sounds much better than midi, or GPO, or whatever): Improv: 2007-07-05-002 - 04.52

FYI: This is not at all like how my other improv goes, this was a one time thing.

2007-07-05-002-ex.mid

Hi,

impressive piece - particularly for an improvisation. I have never understood how people improvise atonal pieces - I usually have trouble improvising anything that doesn't have a conventional chord structure. I particularly liked from about bars 20 to 50 (in the midi file) - I don't know whether this piece has "sections" but I particularly like that bit. After that I thought you lost direction a bit (but I think you can be forgiven seeing as though its an improvisation)... I thought maybe you could vary the rhythm a bit more. I did like the ending section though (for some reason I thought I noticed a change suggesting that you were about to finish the piece). Well done.

Hi JMitchem, I really enjoyed this improvisation, very good work! Out of curiosity do you have a Roland? This piano sounds a lot like mine. I have a Roland F-100.

Welcome to YC. I also enjoyed this piece.

There are a few of us here that improv on the piano. Listen to some Of Derek's works and I think you will be impressed.

Here is one of mine ( mine are a bit more atonal)

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/ramblings-old-man-7851.html#post106222

Thanks for listening.

@Derek:

Yes, I have a Roland. Fantom X8 to be exact. Photo here.

It's almost a shame that most everything I do is just piano improv on it, seeing as it's capable of so much more, but it is nice to know I can do more if I wanted to. I just pick the right piano patch (I have several of them), press the record button, and save it.

@finrod:

As for the lack of structure, it was very much made up as I went along. At about 1:47 in the mp3 (not sure of the measure number right now), it's still a little rough but after that it starts flowing a bit easier... the visual imagery could be watching a leaf fall from a tree into some river, and watching it navigate down the rapids and mini-waterfalls and stuff. Something like that. ;)

That was similar to what was going through my head the first time I played it back.

I'm still learning a lot from listening and reading around here, but I still think the piece is relatively tonal, but doesn't follow most of the normal western harmonic "grammar". I dunno, maybe I'm not quite understanding the concept.

Improvising atonally seems to be more difficult than working in the normal tonal patterns seen especially in Classical-era music. It's hard in that you want it to still sound... "good"... and you don't totally know what you're doing. You don't have much for working patterns or cadences to fall back on, so you just have to intuit your way through it. And I don't like it when it just sounds random.

As for the rhythm, yes, I know it's pretty uninteresting, and if you simply look at the patterns played, especially in the left hand, it's quite simple. A lot of that was because my attention was diverted into trying to make the harmonies work right, and it's a lot easier to do harmonic improvisation when rhythmic and technical patterns stay more or less constant.

However, I may end up pulling some things out and trying to actually compose a "real" piece from this.

Was there anything that stuck out as being "neat" musically that any of you suggest that I try to elaborate on?

So, you just played something, I do that too sometimes, and the result is also something like this.

I can definitely feel your emotion with these kind of pieces. I can't really give a comment on such music, but I want to suggest more disharmony with chromatic chords. Like an octave C / C#. That's just my taste though.

Heh ... it almost starts out with a walking bass idea. The section 3:50-4:00 seem to resemble melodically some ideas by Ravel (and then when you have some of that come back 4:35ish). Are you a Ravel lover? What you have here is something that is both mellow and disturbing! What I think it lacks is more of a focus on the overall melodic line from beginning to end but obviously in an improvisation that is not expected to be as coherent as in a planned composition.

What do you do when you sit down to improvise? Do you set down some rules for yourself? Do you have a couple 'modes' of improvisation?

Sorry I took so long to get back to you.

I actually wasn't familiar with any of Ravel's piano works until a week ago. All I heard was some of Bolero, and got bored, and that was the extent of my knowledge. However, I took another listen, and thanks for that. I had missed out on a lot (and it makes me feel better that Ravel even considered Bolero relatively trivial).

Surprisingly, listening to a lot of my other ideas from earlier improv, and then listening to a lot of Ravel, it sounds as if Ravel "stole" some of my ideas. (Not necessarily in this improv recording, however.) Obviously that's not the case, but I find it interesting to hear several of my ideas in his music (in fact, there's a couple melodic lines in "Alborada del gracioso" that are literally exactly what I've played and recorded, a few years back.)

When I sit down and improvise, I just play. Sometimes I completely zone out and the music just flows, however listening back on those times, it's pretty bland and boring background music. Other times I usually have something in my head, or something my fingers happened to play, and then just go with that, and keep messing around until I find something interesting, and try to build on that, until something else shows up, and play with that. I'll do that for usually 10-20 minutes at a time. It's very much exploratory; I try to completely avoid familiar patterns I've played before.

And every once in awhile, I'll get maybe 30 seconds of really good ideas, and it's all coming together, and then I make one little mistake and lose it. However, since I record every improv, I can always go back and figure out what I played.

Usually when I get bored with an idea, I'll try doing more random stuff, and sometimes I just end it there, if nothing shows up, and then I stop.

Anyway.... that's what I do.