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Topic: "Cross" - Improvisation  (Read 2186 times)

Offline m1469

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"Cross" - Improvisation
on: December 31, 2012, 02:23:20 AM
This is from just a bit ago.  I am posting especially because this is a new style for me and it's fun to have that represented here.  There is one disturbance when a door opens ... sorry about that!
"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving"  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Offline ted

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Re: "Cross" - Improvisation
Reply #1 on: January 01, 2013, 08:41:55 AM
This style could be quite a fertile direction for you. Influenced partly by Derek perhaps ? A couple of your motifs here are catchy. Slow stuff in two voices almost always imparts a bare effect by its nature, but in this case it suits the melody, rather like a Gregorian chant. I hope you continue to develop this idiom as it suits your concise approach to improvisation. Just because a style is very old does not imply that everything has been said in it which can be said. Neither is there any prohibition of putting your personal stamp on it, of extending it, not in iconoclastic fashion but by a process of slow morphing toward your own personality. This is what I did with my ragtime pieces. It is not compulsory to either stick like glue to Bach's sound (or Joplin's) or leap into bifurcated modernism. Slow development of one's musical character is an option.

A good start, and I look forward to hearing your next pieces in this promising direction.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Offline m1469

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Re: "Cross" - Improvisation
Reply #2 on: January 01, 2013, 11:49:25 PM
Hi, Ted,

Thanks for your thoughts!  Yes, there is definitely some influence from Derek's videos.  Even though I haven't actually truly studied what he's presented, he is so clear to me and I find his thought-patterns/directions quite compatible with mine, that it's already helped just having watched them once.  Also, some things you've said to me have stuck with me, too, from years past!  I can't believe how many years it's been now, since we've all been around here :).  
"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving"  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Offline ted

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Re: "Cross" - Improvisation
Reply #3 on: January 02, 2013, 02:05:08 AM
 I can't believe how many years it's been now, since we've all been around here :).  

Yes, it does give one pause. I like to think I have given more to people than I have taken from the forum. One thing about being here is that I quickly learned the meagre extent of my measurable musical abilities, and at the time I needed that correction. I don't feel so bad spouting about the creative aspect because I think that comes from a different part of the brain and doesn't actually require much training, but classical music for instance is way beyond me.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Offline furtwaengler

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Re: "Cross" - Improvisation
Reply #4 on: January 03, 2013, 12:03:32 PM
This sort I think takes a lot of skill to pull of as well as you do. I wonder if there is any inspiration from Derek's baroque discussions? Not in actually content as much as the suggestion.  What can I do with two voices?

I have never minded such intrusions as a door opening (and was there dog's feet?). To the contrary it fascinates me. In some way it relates things to time and space and makes the experience more real and special.
Don't let anyone know where you tie your goat.

Offline Derek

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Re: "Cross" - Improvisation
Reply #5 on: February 13, 2013, 01:23:19 AM
Sorry I was gone for so long. I just finally listened to this. I'm happy that my videos helped suggest some new things to try! I really like the counterpoint you've got going on here.

I, too, am amazed at the passage of time. It's been like 10 years now hasn't it?
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