Improvisations room sticky candidate?(regulars: please thumbs up or post ideas?)

[Derek]

Here are some simple guidelines intended to help make this forum more inviting to newcomers.

Please discuss below if you have any ideas, or at least give it a thumbs up. If I can get some support from the regulars at least maybe we can sticky this?

• Share as much music as you can.
• Beginners are WELCOME! Even the simplest noodling in C major is absolutely welcome. There are lots of great people here and if you want some tips on how to get started, this might be the best place in the world to learn. Just gotta put yourself out there.
• Negative criticism is discouraged. Improvisation is such a vast form of music that it is hard to find two people with precisely the same aesthetic. (in other words, where negative criticism would actually be valuable)
• Any style is welcome.
• Do not expect an immediate response, or for that matter any response at all.
• Listen to and respond to others' music. Respond when you feel a genuine response or feeling of enjoyment from listening. It doesn't have to be detailed or intellectual, a player will always appreciate a simple "I enjoyed this!"
• When responding, be specific. An effective way to let a player know what you liked is to download and listen to their mp3 in a player which reports minutes:seconds and point out a moment or range of time that you liked. Try to explain why. What feelings did you have? What about it was interesting to you?
• Try not to be a "one hit wonder." This forum is about learning from one another, and more importantly, enjoying new music that comes from the heart, not a source for a quick fix of praise.

Please discuss! I will modify this original post as per suggestions. I don't want the list to be long, maybe it should be even briefer than it is.

[ted]

Being specific ("I liked the peculiar floating effect you produced through those double notes in the bass at 2:15") is probably more helpful than being general and vague, however laudatory ("amazing improvisation, move over Jarrett"). The more specific we are, the more we can build one another up, get to the bottom of what works for most people, what works for a few and what doesn't seem to work for anybody. Also, unlike generalities, how a very specific effect was produced can usually be explained easily and objectively, and while habitual and unconscious to the player, might be a most useful revelation to the listener, who can then practise it.

[chopinatic]

More people commenting, as ted mentioned, more specifically about technique or ideas of improving. But I feel alot of the 1 hit wonders could be saved if more people replied, afterall the main reason to post online is to share and hear others thoughts, if no one replies is can sometimes act as negative feed back.

Maybe some form of insentive for posting, or some kind of competition, Id love an internation improvising competiton! although I know that could also put some people off! 

I think a more vocal community, I.E like the improvisation section could be not only people posting improvs but asking for advice without feeling abliged to post

[lostinidlewonder]

One issue I have with improvisations is the time length. Probably 90% of my improvisations go for over 1 hour and I have only ever posted snippets of these or posted only my short ones. I think that most of us do not have enough time to listen seriously to pieces that run for 10+ minutes.

pianowolfi mentioned in one of my threads that it might be a good idea to have a thread where we post very short improvs such as the ones I did in my microwave improvs which last less than 1 minutes each. I think that this makes listening to improvs a little more accessible to those who are new at appreciating them and challenging for the improviser to "say what they want to say" in a short space of time.

I like involving many to solve a single challenge, for example:
Perhaps it would be nice to also start a group effort to improvise on a particular world issue either current, present or future. For example everyone improvises a piece about ..... Venus passing in front of the earth and sun or something like that

I remember this thread where there was a simple melody and then everyone expanded upon that. This was a great idea.


It may be surprising that not many classical musicians improvise, I find this a common pattern. however when you meet "Jazz" pianists they all can improvise at a whim. Classical improvisers are very rare in my opinion and because of that not many people actually know about classical improvisation. This of course makes appreciating any output of improvisations much less than "normal" piano music (which is under appreciated also!)

Also, don't just respond to improvs you like but respond to random ones as well. I do this often in audition room, just randomly open one which hasn't many responses and comment. Too often people like to respond in threads which already has a lot of comments which I think is a little sad as other miss out who deserve just as many comments.

[Derek]

How can we respond to improvisations we don't like? That would seem dishonest to me. Maybe that exercise is best for those for whom music is a profession.

I guess part of the trouble is just how few people care about this room. So I'm not sure if this should be stickied or not, really.

One thing that could help the "be specific" idea is to incorporate a feature like soundcloud where it is easy, while listening, to tag a particular spot or range of an improvisation and make a comment, in the moment.

Another idea I had lately to help interest others in improv is for all the regulars to collect a bunch of "poignant moments" from their improvs---a lot of people start to listen to an improv, and think "this is random crap," and they never listen long enough to hear when we take off and play something that's well, not random sounding, something intense (I don't mean loud or fast necessarily, just something that has a form of intensity, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, etc. etc., something that would make most lovers of piano music enjoy what they are hearing)

That's sort of similar to doing the short improvs idea.

Actually that's kinda making me think...maybe the regulars of this room should form some kind of campaign to get more people to try it. Not much chance of that I suppose, but one can always dream/hope.

[ted]

Quantum tried that some time ago but it resulted in discussion among those already improvising and did not tempt newcomers to try the art.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=40929.0

In general, it is not possible to tell whether one is listening to a previously unheard composition or to an improvisation; this fact was proved in a truly surprising thread on Pianoworld a few years ago. More astonishing was the insecurity and antagonism of many highly trained musicians upon being confronted with this truth. This latter aspect still puzzles me.

Therefore, and surprisingly, aversion to improvisation in listeners in the musical sense has nothing to do with the actual sound of the music, but more to do with an ingrained idea that improvisation is a vastly inferior substitute for written composition and performance - a "poor man's composition". As was proved in the Pianoworld thread, nobody had the faintest idea which they were listening to. This endorses my own experience when playing and improvising for groups of people. Some have insisted I was improvising when I wasn't and others have claimed I was playing compositions when I was improvising.

Combine this antipathy, what amounts to a social stigma about improvisation, with some common but totally absurd notions about what is taking place in the improviser's mind, ego-bolstering statements of well known improvisers, who have little professional interest in demystifying the act, endlessly tedious and aggressive diatribes about chords from the jazz brigade, and it is quite understandable that all but a handful of players are turned off, usually permanently.

Every player I have helped improvise, without exception, has approached me first, never the other way around. Therefore, and unfortunately, I fear a certain intensity of desire to improvise must exist in the first place.    

[pankrpec]

I don't know if I can be considered a regular, but this forum is important to me, and of course more improvisers = more joy from listening to improvisations, so here it is.
If we want more people to come and post here,we have to think about why they come here.
I think there are four major groups :
0. People who improvise and want to share it. Come here please! We want you to post here!
1. People who like improvisation and when they notice there is a section for it here they visit it. They don't really want to try improvising, they just like listening. These people are not our target group.
2. People who are dubious about improvisation but they are interested. These people will be immediately captivated by the excellent improvisations that are available here. The index of improvisations is a great thread for them. They might eventually belong in the 3rd group.
3. People who want to improvise, but are unsure of how. These people are the target group. But when they come here, there is no helping hand for them. All they see is this mass of great improvisations. Which is good, but not very helpful for them! They want to play improvisations like that, not just listen to them. So what should be stickied would be some thread on how to improvise. Making a thread like that is obviously quite a daunting task. But some time ago there was a great conversation about how to improvise. Ted even posted there a recording, a sort of 'lesson' which was awesome. If you want more people to post improvisations, that's what we need.
More threads about how to improvise.
(The thread I mentioned https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=40744.msg452086#msg452086)

[ted]

I had completely forgotten I had done that. It's not too bad I guess, but listening now, I think I am inclined to go too far too quickly, even in that short section. I have done similar things privately for a considerable number of people on forums and in person over the last ten years with varying degrees of success, "success" being defined as making the recipient a confident, creative pianist in his or her own right, and not an imitation Ted, which outcome I would view as a failure.

Also, improvisation is such a peculiarly personal endeavour that there are severe limits on the validity of any approach which purports to understand the minds and processes of all creators. In the nature of art such a thing cannot exist because creating spontaneous music is not like bolting together a Meccano model from an instruction booklet, although some academics seem to think it should be, and worse still, teach it as if that were the case.

I am quite happy to participate in a thread about how to improvise. These days we have the help of recordings and videos which can be made easily and transmitted in minutes. However, there might be very real drawbacks in any creative tuition which has input from too few minds and is received by too few minds. Also, some of the most interesting improvisers here, who could undoubtedly contribute much knowledge, are very busy musicians with busy lives, in varying degrees professional, and not retired amateurs like me.

Let us first see how broad the field of interest in such a thread is.

 

[ronde_des_sylphes]

I very much agree with the original post.

A few small observations:

Considering the fact that improvisation is only practised by a very small percentage of classical musicians, I think the improvisation sub-forum actually gets above the amount of responses one might expect. There are often plenty unreplied to threads in the main audition room, so if something doesn't get replied to in a sub-forum which gets much less traffic, it's only to be expected. It doesn't help that some classical musicians appear to look down on improvisation (which doesn't say much for their historical knowledge).

I think it might help if improvisers gave an idea of what style they are working in. People only have so much time in the day, and like it or not, I know that when I listen to music I gravitate naturally to familiar idioms. I know this is lazy and not especially constructive, but I think it's the way most people work. My point is that in the main audition room, most people probably listen to and comment on Romantic music far more than on Baroque, and vice versa. In the improvisation room, if you click on a random thread, you have no idea what you're getting beforehand. (Of course maybe this is good!) BUT.. maybe people would be more inclined to listen to something with a description which preindicated a congenial style rather than a title which may mean something to the creator of the improvisation but probably doesn't to anyone else.

[Derek]

I'm personally giving up on this. This is a great room and I love the people here and their music, but the sad truth is there really are only a tiny handful of people who really get it. The vast majority of pianists are kind of like members of a religious sect with the great composers as the Gods. It's human nature. Kinda hard to get away from. Kinda rare for people to focus on that "inner" light rather than seeking it from an idol or a God of some sort. Improvisation requires you to have a "blank slate" when you listen. How many people actually do that? Usually tears start streaming from someone's face before the first note even hits in a popular classical piece, is that tear really from the music itself or an extremely overblown, almost religious zeal for the greatness of the composer? (real answer: probably a little of both---but enough of the zeal that people never realize it might be possible to create moving sounds of one's own)

So I think, long term, makes sense for people to just post when they feel like, comment when they feel like, but not get too excited about trying to have some sort of robust sticky guide or something until we have say 50 or more people regularly posting improvisations (like that's gonna happen. Gotta work really hard every day on being exactly like millions of other robots out there)

[ted]

 In principle, ronde_des_sylphes's idea is very good and some posters might possibly find it easy to summarise their playing in words. The trouble is that almost all of mine resemble no known styles or forms except their own. Even listening to a small section would give little indication of what might occur elsewhere in the same piece. It would be totally impossible for me to give any sort of meaningful written description of most of my own stuff.

Improvisation is close to everything for me in piano music now, but I have long since lost any crusading zeal to push it onto anybody else. If someone of obvious drive asks me for specific help with it I shall respond to the best of my ability, but I will never initiate anything and never have done.

I am certainly not an iconoclast but I do agree with Derek about the "Magisterium" of piano music though. And truth to be told, nowadays I rather relish being a musical Iorek Byrnison.

  

[nick_op]

I certainly couldn't be considered a regular here. In fact, I've only post one improvisation - this was a direct result of listening to the lesson that Ted posted.

Ted, maybe you did go too fast for people who have never improvised before, but I found myself enchanted and inspired by the possibilities that you made seem accessible. Though I had improvised before to fairly strict structures, you made a completely free improvisation seems far less daunting, and for that I must thank you.

Though I improvise for my own pleasure (as I imagine we all do), I think I would contribute to the forum more if there were weekly themes - a musical motif, a chord progression, a poem, a painting, even a single descriptive word. I think that would allow people to produce something personal, but the common theme would promote more interaction.

[Derek]

Welp, I think I'm done making my own attempts to create that sort of environment. It's up to somebody else now. In the meantime I'll still update the index now and then.

[ted]

Though I had improvised before to fairly strict structures, you made a completely free improvisation seems far less daunting, and for that I must thank you.

I am pleased to have been of some use. Over the last few years I have made a large number of recordings, and more recently videos, for specific people about improvisation. However, it is becoming more apparent to me the more I try it, that the highly personal nature of improvisation places very real limits on the general efficacy of such recordings to more than one person. One can make all sorts of general observations, but by its nature the detail of a recording is highly specific. This detail is at once an asset and a liability; asset because of its clarity of demonstration, liability because it can be taken as "the way" rather than a small sample of my way at a particular moment.

In the first half of the twentieth century a course of books, the Shefte method, attained enormous popularity. Its object was embellishment of popular swing tunes with various chord and scale figures. To this end, it was unbelievably successful, and with due practice thousands of players managed to teach themselves. (Unlike other systems it never claimed anything was easy) It is the only course I know of that frequently advertised type which really did work. The trouble was that all Shefte players sounded roughly the same; very pleasant to listen to, I hasten to add, giving joy to very many people, but the same nonetheless.

Thus in posting a greater number of these "lessons" (don't like the word) I would run a high risk of having my specific, personal detail, my idiosyncratic musical response, interpreted as  general rules, a result far from ideal.

However, as I have stated, I am quite ready to help any given individual on a personal basis with recordings or videos.

[nick_op]

Derek

Maybe once I've posted a few more improvisations of my own and commented on other's I'll try to get the ball rolling.

Ted

I understand what you mean about interpreting something as "the way". I tend not to make judgements of right and wrong these days, different things are just that - different. Perhaps once I've resolved some issues of discomfort at the keyboard and have got back to improvising more frequently I will take up your offer for help.