Frustration !

[ranjit]

A free form improvisation I ended up with when I was feeling very stressed out.

[quantum]

I sense in this piece that you are more at ease with articulating your ideas.  Music can be a wonderful space of expression when stress creeps in.  In these situations try to make note of what you were doing with your artistic voice so you can build upon it in the future: it might be a theme, melody, idea, rhythmic pattern, etc.  Add it to your sketchbook of ideas.  The stress will pass, but there may be a time where you want to evoke a certain emotion or sensation in future improvisations.  This is the time you can reach back into your sketchbook of ideas.  Sometimes our best ideas appear at a time when we are not expecting.  Awareness is a very important aspect of improvisation, and it will only continue to help you as you build your repertoire of expressions.

[ranjit]

Thank you so much for listening and taking the time to post!

I sense in this piece that you are more at ease with articulating your ideas. 

Could you elaborate what you mean by this?

[quantum]

I sensed a directness in this piece, that right from the start you were expressing something of specific intent.  You did not seem preoccupied about any technical or musical deficiencies, and proceeded to let your creative idea guide you.  See my reply in your other post.
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=65897.msg695370#msg695370

Although, I should ask, did you feel anything different about this one in regard to your flow of ideas? 

Just listened again, and to me it does have a different sense of internal specificity than a number of your other recent posts. 

[ranjit]

I agree completely that I was expressing something of specific intent here. The other improvisation was indeed very meandering in nature, rather like blobs of paint thrown on a canvas. There is a reason the title I came up with for it was "where the wind blows" -- it was referring to musical landscapes. I decided to name it something which represented how "random" the ideas were. The reason I thought it was cool was because some of the individual ideas were interesting, as opposed to the piece as a whole, which clearly lacks coherence.

There is definitely something different here in the flow of ideas. I remember how I felt while I sat down at the piano that day. I was very frustrated and uncertain about the future, while having a limited ability to improve upon the situation. I wanted the music to have that kind of feeling of building up to something, and then that grating feeling when you hear a resolution coming but never really get anywhere. I'm afraid that's the best I think I'll be able to express it. I can remember the feeling listening back to the piece -- a kind of pent up frustration.

Listening back, I think the first minute kind of accurately conveys what I was going for. I really like the "sharp" arpeggio I came up with at around 0:45. I think that once I started getting over the feeling a bit, the intensity dropped off.