Hi! I used to record at least one improvisation a day, trying different things, whatever did *not come to my mind at the time I was sitting at the piano, and I tried to play that :-P haha.
Weirdly, both recording last 5:52/5:51 almost the same, that's a weird "coincidence".
Do you follow a similar practice? Sometimes I blank out as soon as I push the record button, and I thought the fix for that would be to get used to recording everything, any ideas?

Any feedback is appreciated. Please note I don't actually have a clue of what I'm doing. :-)

http://soundcloud.com/danieltkach/sets/pianoforte/

Thanks.

Daniel, these are wonderful improvisations. First thing I was wondering though, what are you using to record this?

Is there an actual microphone for the piano (if so, what kind and what software did you record with) or was it direct in? The recording quality is damn good is why I ask. Also, how is your sight reading ability?

Secondly, I think it's a great idea to record improvisations such as this. I haven't been playing piano very long, about 2 years, but I have been playing guitar for about 10. Awhile ago, when I first started playing I got into the habit of recording improvisations of myself everyday on guitar. I think it helps you improve quickly, since you get real time feed back as to what you're sounding like everyday, without having to play and hear it. It also is a great way to keep track of random ideas, progression and motifs you would like to use in songs. The biggest benefit of recording yourself in this way though is that it let you see the very best of yourself, it makes it easier to recognize patterns in your playing, and whenever you play something truly exceptional, it will stick out all the more and you will know it will be worth remembering.

I am jealous of your piano improvisation ability, I improvise ok on Piano (much better on guitar) but you can tell you are very comfortable with it, and I like your aesthetic sensibilities, both the serialism sounding stuff, and the impressionist beautiful lush sounding stuff. We have similar influences I would assume. Any piano exercises you would recommend?

My thoughts on both improvisations
The first one: The beginning reminds me a lot of late Alexander Scriabin piano works, slightly serialist, but never becoming unpleasant (shows where my tastes are). Some of it reminded me of Debussy as well. Very nice, a lot of thing that I enjoyed.
The second one: reminded me a lot of C. Debussy's second Arabesque, when it first started. And I REALLY enjoyed the progression that starts at 2:10, it would have been cool to see this developed, instead of leading into the atonal waterfall that sprouted after it (that sounded nice as well dont' get me wrong), perhaps build on that progression?

Great stuff over all. Good job.

I'm playing on a Casio DPC-100 :-) I found the keyboard on this one better than a $3000 Roland or Yamaha, though you cannot say the same about features or sound... Anyway, I connect the keyboard to the line-in jack in my computer, and click on "record" on a free sound recorder program that basically just does that haha

I thought YOUR sound was d*** good and I wanted to ask you the same question.
I think my sightreading ability is fairly good, that's why I don't memorize much. Anyway, I've just came back to the piano after years of not playing at all, and now, I prefer to memorize everything and when I feel like it I get easy things to read and I just sit at the piano and read for an hour or so. I used to like reading easy Bach pieces from WTC I (I can sightread most of the preludes by now ha), and lately I started using pop music like Queen to enjoy reading. If the piece is not fast I can usually play it at first sight. Why do you ask? I believe that there's a relationship between improvisation skills and sightreading skills, right?


I had thought about how to extract motifs worth working on, but I think I never actually did it. I should follow your advice and give it a try. I find it difficult to organize all the recordings, and sometimes it's impossible for me to play it again in a meaningful way as it was improvised and the motifs once extracted don't sound the same… I think you understand.


Wow! It feels good for my ego receiving such a compliment from someone obviously more knowledgeable, so thanks :-D My "training" is mainly classical and traditional, so Czerny School of Velocity is what comes to mind, I think that's op 299 and 740 and others I don't remember, but I have a book that comes with 60 or so etudes for different types of skills and I learned a few of those, I think they are basic and essential. I'm not sure I can recommend more "exercises" than that, which anyway shouldn't be played as a muscular activity, but a brain activity, I mean, "musically".
I truly recommend Hatha Yoga and Reiki, getting a good Reiki master that can teach you how to work on your creativity chakra and how to meditate. I'm not able to improvise much if my meditation is weak or if I'm not practicing much Reiki, so I recommend you try different Reiki masters until you get someone you see you can trust.

For what you say we love the same type of music, though when I recorded those I hadn't heard any Scriabin I believe, nor played any Debussy (haven't had actually until now that I'm starting with Debussy's preludes returning to the piano). I started playing like this after I went to a concert which said it was on Piano Contemporary Music and it was all atonal stuff (I'm not sure that's an accurate term) but my first thought was "I can definitely play like this or better" "I can play this bad" hahaha Then I did some research and for what it seeams, actually composing atonal music is really complex and not easy to understand.



I will listen to Debuss's Arabesque.
I know what you mean about the progression at 2:10, I still remember what came to my mind when I was improvising that part, when I started I heard it was something I liked and the moment I thought that, it's like I lost the "connection", I had meant to play without thinking but the moment I thought about what I was playing I messed it up so it's like I left something unfinished and I had to try not to think again and keep on playing… funny you realized that. So I can blame myself for thinking and for not listening without thinking, I did not let the music lead me, I tried to lead the music. I hope this makes some sense :-)
By the way, this set of improvisations is different, you wouldn't say I'm really crazy if I played like this lol These are more normal:

http://soundcloud.com/danieltkach/sets/eli/

Thanks!