Piano Forum

Piano Street Magazine:
Watch the Chopin Competition 2025 with us!

Great news for everyone who loves Chopin’s music: Piano Street’s unique Chopin Competition tool is now complete. With all 1,870 recorded performances from the Preliminary Round to the Final, you can conveniently sort, explore, and watch both videos and piano scores at your fingertips. Read more

Topic: Off the top of my head  (Read 2161 times)

Offline ranjit

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1495
Off the top of my head
on: January 09, 2017, 04:51:42 PM
I've recently learned the Dorian mode. Here's a little tune that I improvised.
P.S. This is one of my first improvisations.

Offline quantum

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 6292
Re: Off the top of my head
Reply #1 on: January 21, 2017, 08:44:05 AM
From your other posts on PS, it seems like you have only been playing a short while.  Good on you to study improvising! It is also a great way to practice new theoretical concepts and make music out of them, as you have shown here.  

Sometimes when we improvise, things don't always go to plan or we could get stumped on what to do next.  Try to make music out of those situations, instead of pausing to think let the music take you somewhere.  Creating a fluid sense of transition from one thing to the next will aid your improvisation work.

Made a Liszt. Need new Handel's for Soler panel & Alkan foil. Will Faure Stein on the way to pick up Mendels' sohn. Josquin get Wolfgangs Schu with Clara. Gone Chopin, I'll be Bach

Offline ranjit

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1495
Re: Off the top of my head
Reply #2 on: January 21, 2017, 02:06:40 PM
Thank you so much for the advice.
I'm overwhelmed that you took the time to listen to my (admittedly bad) improvisation, and respond.

Again, thanks!!

Offline ted

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 4030
Re: Off the top of my head
Reply #3 on: January 22, 2017, 02:49:44 AM
Don't worry about good and bad too much in the initial stages of improvising, plenty of time for self-assessment in the decades ahead of you. The first thing is just to get some sort of reliable flow going and enjoy yourself, and as you obviously have an intuitive feeling for phrase and rhythm, inhibition will not be the problem it is with many players. You can acquire a huge keyboard vocabulary and technique at your own pace, that isn't as necessary as most people think anyway, and it certainly isn't sufficient. Other people, even famous ones, cannot tell you what sounds you like, only you can decide that for yourself. That is a seemingly obvious fact which startlingly few people realise. We are never more ourselves than during deep improvisation.

Please keep posting your improvisations here, I look forward to hearing your music develop.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce
For more information about this topic, click search below!

Piano Street Magazine:
Women and the Chopin Competition: Breaking Barriers in Classical Music

The piano has held a complex place in music history for women, offering both opportunity and constraint. From 19th-century salons to today’s concert halls, it reflects progress alongside enduring challenges. Read more
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert
Customer Reviews