Improvising Classical Variations..... In public! :(

[ahmedito]

Every year, at the Reina Sofia school of music, there is an improvisation concert in which all the pianists participate (kind of a tradition, since its not really curricular). Most of the school turns up for this event, to see the pianists make fools of themselves, except for a couple of guys who are incredible improvising. Actually there some videos taken of Volodos participating in this thing, as well as Kirill Gerstein, and some other ex-alumni who made great careers.

Anyways, to the point. For every one of those, there are also normal and sub-normal people (like me) who find this a horrific experience, and make a complete fool of ourselves.

How does the concert work?

You draw styles out of a hat. There are about 30 or 40 different styles you can get in there (some of them are just ideas, not really styles). Then 2 people in the audience say 2 different notes and you have to begin your improvisation (and when applicable, base it) on those 2 notes and improvise from 8-15 minutes. Doing this in front of the whole school takes some guts, since the whole audience is made up of musicians who are not easily impressed and pretty much can tell everything you do.

I drew "VARIATIONS IN THE CLASSICAL STYLE", which is one of the dreaded styles, although a Baroque Fugue, or Sonata form is much much harder. Other styles drawn that day were: A post-romantic Waltz, A Nocturne by an early romantic, film music in the style of John williams, A set of Baroque dances (Gavotte, Sarabande, etc), Jazz, Stupid latin pop music and the dreaded Fugue in the Baroque style.

Here are my variations, they are terrible and good for a laugh. Please, tell me your comments.



https://www.savefile.com/files2.php?fid=9038269

[ted]

That's quite good though. I don't think I could do that in front of a heap of people - at home perhaps, although I don't know enough about those strict forms to know what I was supposed to do. It's really as much a test about knowledge of forms as it is about improvisation.

It also probably seems worse because it's exceptional, in that most people never improvise at all. The ones who are good at it no doubt have built up the habit over a long period because they enjoy doing it all the time anyway. If such events happened every week, or if they were curricular, all the players would get pretty clever at it.

I also think I would find two notes a lot harder than four or five because they wouldn't form a distinctive enough phrase and they'd soon get lost in the crush.
Somehow you managed to play in clearly defined sections and kept an overall structure. I would find conscious structure particularly difficult as I fly off on every  good idea because I can't resist it.

Well done, thanks for posting it.

[ahmedito]

heh heh,

Well, thanks for the optimism. What I tried to do before I began, was to think of a 24 bar harmonic structure and to try to keep it in mind the whole time. So most of the time Im busier trying to remember what the hell comes next. Thats the hard thing of doing it in the classical style, the form has to be clear, balanced and structured. These are anything but that though

[principe7613]

hey,

not bad... i do this often as a encore. Indeed the hardest thing is to remember always again the theme and not suddenly start really strange new harmonies :-)

did you by any chance also record the poor fugue-victim? i've often tried to improvisate a fuge (really on the spot) and that's the hardest thing ever!! so i'm curious to hear other peoples efforts!

grtz,

Joost

[ahmedito]

I recorded the whole concert, but Im sure that the other guys wouldnt like me posting it.

Pity, because the Fugue is amazing. More amazing still is the Movie music thing, that guy is going to be famous. Funny, because the latin pop guy actually made up words and sang while he played.

I only did this kind of thing once for an encore, at a concert which I hated, i improvised an avant guard piece.

[tompilk]

Great stuff... ledgendary improv. if it was off the top of your head...

[stevie]

it sounds better than my fart, lets put it that way.

[perfect_pitch]

it sounds better than my fart, lets put it that way.

Well gee...  Let's ask the question - Why would we want to listen to anyone (especially you) fart??? What is it with your fixation on expelling wind from the body - (god I even hate to say that f word now...)...

Anyway, as far as I know... when doing Variations.. Always remember the incredibly obvious variation changes...

Change Time Signatures....
Change it to the opposite (major to minor or minor to Major)
Syncopation
A slow variation
Exactly the same theme but elaborated with extra notes
LH taking the theme instead of RH... etc.....

any others??? I mean the incredibly obvious ones???

[ahmedito]

1- Yes, theyre of the top of my head.

2- The most certainly sound better than your fart, although, Im not sure what you mean by that.

3- I was playing the Beethoven trio op. 11 at the same time as this concert, so some of the variations are a lot like the variations from the trio. I keep stopping before each variation because Im not always sure what kind of variation to do next.

As far as I can remember, my variations were as follows:

1. Theme
2. No recognizable theme, just arppegios and scales with the harmony
3. Imitative (Cannon-like)
4. Ornamented and in triplets.
5. Beethoven-like funeral march (minor obviously)
6. Crossing hands, with fast accompainment.
7. Broken octaves in both hands in thirds.
8. Trill pedal like in the end of so many Beethoven Variations.
9. Shift into 6/8 time.
10. Ridiculous Coda, where I dont know what to do.

[Derek]

Wow that's very impressive. I hope eventually I'll be able to improvise complete compositions...I think I'm getting fairly close, actually. I dunno if I'll bother to imitate a particular style that well though. That sounds like a really neat music school you go to! Where is it located?

[ahmedito]

The Reina Sofia? It's in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Spain. A small town 15 minutes from Madrid.


Im glad you like them, although the more I listen to them, the more embarassing they seem.