The Anygma office had a MIDI keyboard lying around. Today I was hanging around at the office, and in my boredom I decided to look for the parts necessary to hook it up. A half hour later, I had a piano set up!
I haven’t played for two weeks, so this is a little rusty, but it’s okay. A 25 minute free improvisation. I also extracted the middle section which I thought was the strongest in case 25 minutes is too much. I’m actually quite fond of the latter.
Oh yeah, this was an interesting exercise, too, since this keyboard doesn’t have a sustain pedal.
I just watched the masterpiece film “There Will Be Blood” for the second time. Here is an improvisation it inspired (and continuing my effort to move away from my placid, rubato style and reintroduce rhythm into my music): Daniel Plainview
Last week I picked up a book of short stories by Orson Scott Card. Two of them (so far) have inspired improvisations:
The Maker is an uptempo and very dissonant, built on augmented chords and a random alternating bassline.
Songbird is one of the most complex pieces I have improvised so far. It is harmonious (it stays diatonically in one scale almost the whole time), but there are at least three voices that I can identify. While improvising this one, I kept thinking to myself that I should end it soon before I mess up, because I can’t keep up the complexity… but I didn’t. I just kept going until the song wanted to end. In my opinion, this is one of my best improvs to date.
Oh, I should say something about “Mikal’s Songbird”. This is a jewel of Orson Scott Card’s work: great story, beautifully written, captivating to read. I highly recommend it.
Here are four improvisations:
They all kind of sound the same; it must have been a mood I was in. I think midnight is my favorite.
Here are some improvs which I recorded over the last few days.
