Improvisation -- 2.20.11

[m1469]

Okay.  Well, what I would like, is to post here as a kind of new person, almost as though I don't have a past posting here.

So, in the spirit of fresh experiences, here I post an improvisation of the day because I nearly couldn't NOT.  This had ideas, I can hear, both in the larger line as well as the smaller line (and some recycled materials), but is largely instinctual as I think I more or less let one idea take me to another.  It bothers me though because I feel it's based on mainly one kind of sentiment ... something like baroque writing, perhaps, in a sense .  What I want most of all is to broaden my ability and, yes, to develop.  

[edit]Well, I think I have actually some unintentional near quotes in here   -- okay, at least some influences of music and playing that has touched me BUT!  including some of my own[edit]

[Bob]

Okay.  Well, what I would like, is to post here as a kind of new person, almost as though I don't have a past posting here.

[edit]Well, I think I have actually some unintentional near quotes in here   -- okay, at least some influences of music and playing that has touched me BUT!  including some of my own[edit]

Weren't you a new person before?

...

You know... It sounds a little like Twin Peaks in the low parts.  I think it's just some of the notes and not the mood though.

[m1469]

Weren't you a new person before?

Well, I'm not sure you mean what I would agree to ... heh ... but, some of my former improvs haunt me a bit.  Honestly, with some of them, I have no idea how I did them and I don't know if I'll ever do anything like them again.  And, that bothers me because I feel like I should be getting better and more developed and improvising and composing all these things (and, in that sense, NOT doing anything like them again).  Maybe I'm just better off being somebody who barely knows how to do anything and is okay with posting baby things, at least for now.  AND, so, I feel like I have to start fresh, as though those aren't hanging over my head.  So, yes, I need a fresh place to move forward from.

[Bob]

Haha...

Check out the motive in tracks 2 and 10.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B000002LMM/ref=pd_krex_dp_a

Spooky m1469 Fox.     ... Or Special Agent Spooky m1469 Fox?


Although this is exactly what really pissed off a piano teacher of mine years ago.  "Just because it has a similar motive and the composers have the same nationality doesn't mean it's the same style!"

[Bob]

It's sound a little like Debussy's Gardens in the Rain and George Winston too.

[m1469]

Special Agent Spooky m1469 Fox?

Yeah .  You can spot my tracks in the snow, 'cause I'm a fox ... a sneaky fox.

I decided that I have realized ( ) that I have to let more in and do some more actual digging -- I feel like I need to open more deeply.  I think that if I really want to be in touch with compositions and improvisations inside of me, it takes just playing, yes, which I perhaps need to spend more time doing.  But, also, some conscious efforts that I haven't been doing.  Instead of really thinking about some things on some sort of different mental grounds, I've been more so in a kind of state of wonderment and just accepting that I don't know how it works, exactly, or that if I don't have ALL the answers, I must not have anywhere to start.  I've been a little like "hey, man, why aren't things just floating out of me?" ... heh.  All this talk about instinct, it's something, yes, but then I also can't get angry just because profound music isn't effortlessly flowing from me like an eternal fountain.

[furtwaengler]

Hi m1469, welcome to Pianostreet's improvisation board.

...or that's the line intended. I heard one note and I knew it was your unique voice, the same unique voice we've  loved on this forum for years. But this is as if we'd been a passenger in your car on a road trip, and your silence was not silence...the car did not stop...but we took a nap and woke up in a different state, with different scenery and a different climate, but in the same car with the same driver. It's always like a journey. We never want to arrive because we never want the journey to end. 

We would all like to be a new creation, but you've always been pure and authentic m1469, (whether it be K or m1469). And it has always been new, and there has always been this sense of walking into the space of eternity. I don't think there's a end to your ideas...not in that you have infinite ideas, but that a single idea takes on an infinite domain - and it seems to just flow out of your soul. I've in truth had nothing to compare you to...the only unique m1469. And this, which I'm so happy to listen to is one solid, extended, intense transition which only leaves the question, where will you take us next?

Welcome back, m1469.

[m1469]

Furtwaengler, thank you so much for an extremely generous post; that truly means very much to me.

[pianowolfi]

Of course a m1469 Improv gets me out of my temporary seclusion. Yes me too recognizes your voice, of course! And this voice makes me happy like it did earlier. I honestly don't hear any other references or quotes than some of your own, and most of them I recognize And you are developing them further and not just quoting them. I am happy you didn't lose them on your path!

[m1469]

Hi Wolfi, thanks for stopping by and making a surprise visit .  I decide afterall that I do care for this improv enough.  I don't want it to be my last, and maybe not everyday, but I want to start putting more time in.  I feel like not only does it help me personally, but it's actually really good for my playing of compositions, too.  

*changing attitude*

Something that is peculiar to me at the moment is in realizing that improvs seem to have a mind of their own when they're happening, even aside from what I think about composition and improvising and my own mind when I'm not improvising.  And, I guess maybe they have their own purpose, as well, which I don't fully understand.  At this point, I'm not sure what exactly I "expect" from them or from partaking in them, aside from I feel it does tend to free something within me up a bit.

Well, cheers .  

[richbatsford]

wow Marla, thats some powerful stuff

Rich

[littletune]

That's really great m1469!   Your improvisations are so... like... thinking about life... or like looking at life from somewhere above... I think...  and like knowing some things about the universe that others don't know   
I'm really glad you posted it!   

[m1469]

wow Marla, thats some powerful stuff

Rich

 

Thanks, Rich!

That's really great m1469!   Your improvisations are so... like... thinking about life... or like looking at life from somewhere above... I think...  and like knowing some things about the universe that others don't know   
I'm really glad you posted it!   

Thanks for listening and for your comments, Littletune.

[utterlysneaky]

Well to me this was a new experience as I haven't heard you before, and I am definitely liking it.
Most to my liking are the parts with lower tremolo octaves, they awoken in my mind this picture of some spiritual netherworld, something in the fabric of life that we don't always see or hear.

If this was one of my own improvs(which it of course ain't so forgive me for iff:ing a bit , I would have probably concluded that it needs to end around 4:50, repeat those last things you do at around that time a few times, and let it fade away from your mind, but INTO the listener. Sometimes less can be more. In countless of my one improvs and compos I have simply deleted the ending(sometimes an originally 8mins piece became 2 mins), because I felt, that musically speaking I was repeating myself during those 6mins, and the essence of what I wanted to say was more powerful stated only once or twice, without repetition. It seems to me from your replies to some replies here, that you feel entrapped by this one "style"?! Trust me I've felt that same thing for years..Once you start making your own music, we quickly discover what works for ourselves, what sound we are able to come up with easily and good at producing.

However if you want to evolve, to become a diverse improviser, you have to step out of you box. What I did was, I had about 150 recorded own tunes and impro's on my digital, and I simply listened through them during a few days, and deleted about 100 of them! Because they were repeating the same old musical formula I had become accustomed to!So I would say go ahead and discard pieces you've become tired of. Keep only the best, whatever the formula is.
A second step is to stop playing the piano for a while. Only listen to other people piano music for a month, 2 hours every day. Check out Scriabin(Op11, vers la flamme, his sonatas), Messiaen, Ives, Keith Jarrett..But also Jazz, u might like Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra? Well of course that is up to taste, but the idea here is to find something you haven't heard before AND like, to widen your musical horizons of what is possible to do beautifully at this instrument.
And last keep in mind that these days, there are no mistakes or no-no's, meaning if it works it works, who says modern piano music has to be tonal, for instance? or it can blend diatonality and atonality, as I often do. But I liked it! Hope you keep posting!

[Derek]

volcano   ...of souls. after a while only steam is billowing into gentle clouds above the volcano. Sorry, I'm terrible at imagery...but I gotta try... maybe I'd describe it as a song to the birth of an island or something like that.

utterlysneaky, if you listen to m1469's other improvs (er, pre-m1469...heh), I think you'll conclude she has never been in a box. And that's a good thing.  

[utterlysneaky]

where can I find them? searching for what username? But I'd like to disagree in the sense that we are all more or less in boxes here, myself included..I just realized my own music has about 7 different "styles" to it, no more..Out of the box would be for the truly great composers and so
Definitely looking forwards to hear more of you guyz music around this site! Peace n Love!

[Derek]

The "index of improvisers and improvisations" is organized by username alphabetically, look through there. I need to update that soon, there've been quite a few new threads since I updated that.

I suppose you're right, we're all in some state of entering one box while leaving another. I like to hide in a box occasionally but I usually try to jump back out. I don't agree that only great composers can think outside the box...if we allow ourselves to think that way there will never be another Beethoven or Rachmaninoff etc. for future generations.

[ted]

All in all an interesting and promising return to the improvisation room, Mrs Fox. I hear a protracted, slowly changing transition, based on a couple of classical cells, which are expanded into an almost Philip Glass like event, full of foreboding, and resolved only with much compromise. Its form, containing ripples within long waves, reminds me very much of the earlier concerts of Jarrett without the jazz influence.

It might pay to lower your recording volume slightly as there is minor distortion in the first section. We can always amplify in Audacity if we wish, but we cannot go the other way.

I really don't think you have any show of assuming a new identity with the old hands here. No need to mention the tag-wrestling bouts in fishnet tights with Susan, Bernhard, me and the excited student, followed by consumption of Bombay Sapphire and Remy Napoleon.

We don't seem to do that any more. Perhaps we're all getting old and morose.

[m1469]

Well to me this was a new experience as I haven't heard you before, and I am definitely liking it.
Most to my liking are the parts with lower tremolo octaves, they awoken in my mind this picture of some spiritual netherworld, something in the fabric of life that we don't always see or hear.

I'm glad if you like it, thanks for listening .

If this was one of my own improvs(which it of course ain't so forgive me for iff:ing a bit , I would have probably concluded that it needs to end around 4:50, repeat those last things you do at around that time a few times, and let it fade away from your mind, but INTO the listener. Sometimes less can be more. In countless of my one improvs and compos I have simply deleted the ending(sometimes an originally 8mins piece became 2 mins), because I felt, that musically speaking I was repeating myself during those 6mins, and the essence of what I wanted to say was more powerful stated only once or twice, without repetition.

Yes, I don't disagree with you if I were to actually make this into a composition.  At this point, despite the fact that I've sometimes thought about turning some of my improvs into compositions, I don't know that I will.  Maybe at some point, but that would involve a lot of editing, most likely, and some real thinking about what it is that I'm actually trying to express, etc.  For now, I'm actually trying to not put compositional expectations on my improvs.  I think I have come to a place of feeling, for now anyway, that they do indeed serve different purposes, even if at some point what comes out of me in improv is actually a suppressed composition ... haha.  

It seems to me from your replies to some replies here, that you feel entrapped by this one "style"?! Trust me I've felt that same thing for years..Once you start making your own music, we quickly discover what works for ourselves, what sound we are able to come up with easily and good at producing.

Yes, there is some of this for me.  But, actually, since I've started reading here, listening here, and have posted this improv finally, my mind has been changing a little.  I have posted in maybe some various styles in the past, but I am coming to realize there is a sound deep within me that is haunting me, and I think much of my musical activity is focused on trying to get this sound out ... and, unfortunately, it's bigger than I know how to make.  I would like to bring some kind of conscious formality to my harmonies (perhaps), but I'm not exactly sure what I'm really looking for.  As I was improvising the one in this post, I was aware of choices that I could make which I chose not to make because I just didn't connect with those choices based on the sound that is in me.  I'm not sure what to do about that though and maybe soon things will change.  

However if you want to evolve, to become a diverse improviser, you have to step out of you box. What I did was, I had about 150 recorded own tunes and impro's on my digital, and I simply listened through them during a few days, and deleted about 100 of them! Because they were repeating the same old musical formula I had become accustomed to!So I would say go ahead and discard pieces you've become tired of. Keep only the best, whatever the formula is.

Yes, I have done this to some degree.  I mean, I have ... numbers of tracks that I've never listened to after I've improvised them.  Maybe I should?  But, there are some that definitely have stood out to me, and those I will keep probably forever.

A second step is to stop playing the piano for a while. Only listen to other people piano music for a month, 2 hours every day. Check out Scriabin(Op11, vers la flamme, his sonatas), Messiaen, Ives, Keith Jarrett..But also Jazz, u might like Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra? Well of course that is up to taste, but the idea here is to find something you haven't heard before AND like, to widen your musical horizons of what is possible to do beautifully at this instrument.

While there is probably some logic to your suggestion here, I don't foresee stopping playing.  Yes, I enjoy improvising and I actually believe it's quite important on a deep musical and personal level, but it doesn't overshadow my love for repertoire.  I genuinely love the Classical repertoire and thus far have lots to keep me busy along those lines.

And last keep in mind that these days, there are no mistakes or no-no's, meaning if it works it works, who says modern piano music has to be tonal, for instance? or it can blend diatonality and atonality, as I often do. But I liked it! Hope you keep posting!

Well, what I am realizing more is that improvisation *can* be more of a stream of consciousness (or subconscious, if you please) than I have been allowing it to be.  If I have been trapped into anything lately, and I guess at other times in my life, it's when I start expecting it to take on a certain form that it may not be meant to take on.  Right now, I am starting to accept that I can improvise just for the sake of exploring sound and just for the sake of having that kind of flow going through me, even if it doesn't amount to much, or even if I repeated the exact same pattern over and over for an hour.

[m1469]

volcano   ...of souls. after a while only steam is billowing into gentle clouds above the volcano. Sorry, I'm terrible at imagery...but I gotta try... maybe I'd describe it as a song to the birth of an island or something like that.

utterlysneaky, if you listen to m1469's other improvs (er, pre-m1469...heh), I think you'll conclude she has never been in a box. And that's a good thing.  

Hi Derek, thanks for listening and for your comments -- all of them!

All in all an interesting and promising return to the improvisation room, Mrs Fox. I hear a protracted, slowly changing transition, based on a couple of classical cells, which are expanded into an almost Philip Glass like event, full of foreboding, and resolved only with much compromise. Its form, containing ripples within long waves, reminds me very much of the earlier concerts of Jarrett without the jazz influence.

I'm glad it's a promising return!  You know, you helped me get out of a box that eventually led to the improvs of the past which have intimidated me today ... haha.

It might pay to lower your recording volume slightly as there is minor distortion in the first section. We can always amplify in Audacity if we wish, but we cannot go the other way.

I will try to figure out how to do that.  I have a recording device that I haven't been using because it lost its adapter and eats batteries, and then I have to transfer the data ... yadda yadda.  So, I've been using a pretty ridiculous microphone (that goes with a cheap webcam) and just recording straight into my computer into goldwave.  I don't know the first thing about adjusting the intake, but I'll investigate a bit and hopefully find the right thing.

I really don't think you have any show of assuming a new identity with the old hands here. No need to mention the tag-wrestling bouts in fishnet tights with Susan, Bernhard, me and the excited student, followed by consumption of Bombay Sapphire and Remy Napoleon.

We don't seem to do that any more. Perhaps we're all getting old and morose.

Well, firstly, it's fun that you remember that stuff .  But, secondly, I think I decided quite awhile ago that I'm just "allowed" to be here among a number of individuals who seem to have a different purpose here, and one which is not part of my day-to-day understanding.  So, yes, I have progressed in years, but that's not all .

Thanks for stopping by and for your comments .

[utterlysneaky]

even if at some point what comes out of me in improv is actually a suppressed composition ... haha.  

Well I'd like to draw attention to the opposite, what comes out of us as "composed" is actually suppressed improvisation What is the difference between these two anyway? We know that Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu was supposedly improvised on the fly by our beloved Fryderyk..The name itself means improvised fantasy..And still we know that there are at least 2 versions of this piece that differ quite a bit from each other, not talking about p,f,ff markings but vastly differrent notes in the right hand in at least two different sections..So an impro turned into compo?! But what defines that happening? The fact that you notate it?-in those days yes..But how about today? Doesn't the fact that we record our stuff and put it up online for everyone to hear precisely turn them into compositions aswell?!
 

[utterlysneaky]

"I would like to bring some kind of conscious formality to my harmonies"

Whenever I have tried that, thinking beforehand about harmonies and sh*t like that, I have noticed failing miserably at expressing anything, and worse, making "mistakes"..At least I can never think about my playing while playing The thinking and idea finding comes after an impro/compo for me. After listening for hundreds of times to my Pangaia, the idea of idealism and altruism, common human roots and such came to me..Then I could come up with a name that at least remotely implies those ideas..So for me what works is to trust my subconscious, sometimes I'll just hit rec., close my eyes and play. But we are of course all different in that creative process.
Just as an idea, you might want want to get some harmonic analysis done at one your ready pieces..It might amaze you to discover that there is a formality to those harmonies, you simply weren't aware of it? Least that's what's happened to me a dozen times..But I'm not so interested in theory..Music is music..Analysis of music is something different

[m1469]

Well I'd like to draw attention to the opposite, what comes out of us as "composed" is actually suppressed improvisation What is the difference between these two anyway? We know that Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu was supposedly improvised on the fly by our beloved Fryderyk..The name itself means improvised fantasy..And still we know that there are at least 2 versions of this piece that differ quite a bit from each other, not talking about p,f,ff markings but vastly differrent notes in the right hand in at least two different sections..So an impro turned into compo?! But what defines that happening? The fact that you notate it?-in those days yes..But how about today? Doesn't the fact that we record our stuff and put it up online for everyone to hear precisely turn them into compositions aswell?!

First of all, thank you for your thoughts because this is helping me very much to clarify some matters for myself.  I enjoy your drawing my attention to the opposite, that what comes out as "composed" could actually be suppressed improvisation, and there is certainly a level to that which I do fully agree on.  When I'm playing repertoire that I truly have a handle on, it turns into something of an improvisation and that same spirit comes out in me (which is extremely fun ).  Interestingly, that doesn't have to exclude prescribed materials, either!

I have so many thoughts rolling around who are trying to all be one thought!  Right now, there is a certain characteristic to the sound of improvisation (especially a few of the recordings here which I have listened to recently, as well as a certain sound I've heard in years past), where I might describe it as a kind of free flow.  I sense that I hear the improvisor connecting to a kind of flow which is as though the improvisor hopped into a river raft and got onto this river and is going for a ride.  Even though form may surface, and even though choices may be getting made, what comes out for the listener doesn't *have* to be much of anything, necessarily besides this kind of flow, yet it *could* include a great deal.  An improvisor may be in this flow and that is something which can be felt by others, but textually speaking, there may not be any significant events to speak of (though there also might be).  The same could be said of certain compositions, yes, but with the improvisations of my own which I choose to keep, they are the ones which stand out to me as having something of an event within them.

When it comes to composition, I tend to agree with what I understand to be Rachmaninov's thoughts, in that there is one main climax in each piece, though not to exclude the fact that there can be other important points, as well.  In my opinion, if there is one main event taking place within the text, everything else is somehow either leading up to it or leading away from it, even if within that everything else there is pulse and beauty and so many other characteristics.  Now, I 'get' that there doesn't have to be necessarily a big event within the text in order for it to be a composition, but this is where my own personal thoughts and feelings on music tend to come into my life.

What I feel IS very eventful, and it's as though this kind of eventfulness needs definition, it needs to come out.  Yet, strangely, it could be nearly represented in a single note.  To hint at it, what I feel/hear within me is something like taking both your arms and dropping them onto the piano keys and evenly striking every single note into full tone at once.  That would be a piano-reduction though ... hee hee.  What I feel/hear is just this huge wave of sound, color, and what seems to be every morsel of existence (all that seems to be sound and even all that doesn't), all that ever did exist and all that ever will exist, but as though it is all occurring at once.  It's something like being in a pitch black room and somebody suddenly opening the curtains to a blast of white light, and that white light just completely knocking your senses silly and changing your entire world.  And, once the person has acclimated to the white light, there is this calmness in real time, just this awareness of breath ... and that's as though every individual on the planet has instrument in hand, poised and waiting to play in symphony together, the birds and the mountains and the seas, all the animals are also poised and listening and ready to be a part of this.

And then, it's like ... okay, so ... uh ... what do we play?  haha.

oops, I lost the thread of what I'm trying to say!  My point is, it seems to me, that the "point" and purpose of improvisation is more to feel that flow and can even be meant more for the improvisor than for an outside listener.  Whereas, the point or purpose of a composition is to reveal events, but ideally includes a kind of flow found within improvisation.  Perhaps this is all just my perception which *might* be the exact thing making me feel like I'm in a box, I don't know, and therefore it needs to be altered.  Or, maybe I just need to better define all of this in sound.  I'm not sure!  But, what I have decided is that even if I have this huge sound in me, even if I have a sort of ideal somewhere in some distant land, it's OK for me to do things which don't necessarily fully communicate this.  That's what I feel I most need to realize right now.  Yes, I'm always working in my playing to be better defining these things, but it's okay if everything I do isn't expressing the most huge sound I can imagine right now ... I mean, I should be allowed to still play even if it's not, and most likely I've got learning to do and footsteps to take in order to communicate properly.

[m1469]

What I feel IS very eventful, and it's as though this kind of eventfulness needs definition, it needs to come out.  Yet, strangely, it could be nearly represented in a single note.  To hint at it, what I feel/hear within me is something like taking both your arms and dropping them onto the piano keys and evenly striking every single note into full tone at once.  That would be a piano-reduction though ... hee hee.  What I feel/hear is just this huge wave of sound, color, and what seems to be every morsel of existence (all that seems to be sound and even all that doesn't), all that ever did exist and all that ever will exist, but as though it is all occurring at once.  It's something like being in a pitch black room and somebody suddenly opening the curtains to a blast of white light, and that white light just completely knocking your senses silly and changing your entire world.  And, once the person has acclimated to the white light, there is this calmness in real time, just this awareness of breath ... and that's as though every individual on the planet has instrument in hand, poised and waiting to play in symphony together, the birds and the mountains and the seas, all the animals are also poised and listening and ready to be a part of this.

And then, it's like ... okay, so ... uh ... what do we play?  haha.

I think that actually this is something like what Beethoven had in mind with the 9th symphony.  I have been feeling as though I may have this/these sounds in my "ear" and intellectually, I am thinking I'll never get to hear it here on earth, and that made me super sad!  But, I actually felt this without the words the first time I ever listened to the full symphony from Beethoven, and so I listened again for the second time yesterday, and I feel as though I got to hear what I wanted to hear (or, at least a version of it).  I think there's more than one symphony to write for this ... hmmm ... that just made me think ... in a sense, you could say that the very symphony orchestra itself is a kind of "reduction" of the universe acting in harmony.  I mean, of course it is ... or more or less "of course" ... does everybody think of it that way and I am the last to know?  I don't know!  And, the piano and its evolution is a kind of reduction of the symphony orchestra.  But, Chopin was like ... "hey, okay, but listen to this!  See what the instrument can do as its very own thing?" ... and then Debussy was like (raises his musical lightsaber) "oooohhhh ... yes, wonderful Chopin, hat's off to you!  Now, listen to this, too!".

But anyway, Beethoven's 9th symphony, and it's as though mankind has this amazing experience together, and then all of mankind progresses a huge step in being because of that experience.  You can feel mankind at first having this kind of intensity, getting used to the sound of this emmense symphony, and then it's like we're all feeling each other's experience as one, grand, mankind expeirence.  Like "wasn't this hard sometimes?  Yeah.  But, look, we're all in it together!  I'm so happy about that!" ... and then throughout we're just growing in our race's being.

I like Beethoven.  Yesterday, when I was listening, it was like being in really great company.  Thanks, Beethoven, for caring about us all so much .