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Not sure how many players here do improvisation, but it would be cool to hear some free improvs. Like songs created spontaneously. In the vein of Keith Jarrett and his solo concerts. That is the pinnacle but same idea.

I'm thinking 1-3 minutes, short motifs.

I'll try to do some and put them up.

I've posted some of mine on my blog.

http://angoloimprovviso.wordpress.com/

I really like the "free form"

alberto I like your style of playing.

I record hundreds of those. I hadn't noticed much enthusiasm for that sort of thing on this forum so I stopped posting any. I have uploaded one from last week here:

CD77, track1

Three minutes would be pushing it though; I have only just managed to get them under the hour. It takes me ten minutes to get things flowing and I still find beginnings and endings a nuisance.

Thanks Wize.

Ted, your link is broken...

The first file was apparently too large and was cut off short of the end, so I reduced the quality to 192kbps. You must have just caught it as I was replacing the file. It should be all right now.

True, now the link works. Very nice playing Ted. In some moments really really inspired.

Thanks for listening Alberto, I am pleased you like it. I have listened to two of your pieces so far. The opening of the "Where comes the sorrow" one is very effective through its use of those insistent, slightly separated cells. Many players think that improvisation is all about complicated chord sequences, but I think flow, phrase and rhythm are what impart life in the end. The final piece on your link has a superb romantic outburst at 9:13, but gains force by its juxtaposition with the contrasting cellular sequences preceding and following it. I have long been of the opinion that improvisation ought not to emulate compositional forms of the past, however skillful that process, but deserves, and should create its own organic forms from the musical data. When a good mind improvises, a number of dynamic feedback loops are established, rather like mathematical chaos. It seems to me that musical life in improvisation takes off within a critical balance of stability and instability. Too much stability, negative feedback, results in nice, possibly accomplished, but uninteresting music. Too much positive feedback results in randomness, which is equally uninteresting.

Over the last few years, therefore, I have put a great deal of work into finding those consciously directed dynamic forms - not static structures of the past - which are most likely to result in transporting improvisation. The actual style of the cell content can of course be anything at all. Inspiration is simply that mental state where the music takes on a life of its own and the player feels as if he is merely observing an inevitable process taking place. Nowadays I can reach that state quite deliberately, but I couldn't always do it when I was young. It still seems to take me about the first ten minutes to get there, but I am trying to reduce that time.

Thanks again for listening.

Definitely, it is a kind of weird feeling seeing and feeling the music just take on a life of its own, but as you say finding that flow can be difficult.
Nice playing btw.

Here is one of mine ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFMqWR88OG8

good playing from everyone! I made a new thread with songs, as I altered it abit and put in themes from well known pop artists. Fun start. Have a listen and tell me what you think:

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...eme%20this%20song%20is?.html#Post1935682

The sound quality sucks because I had to plug in my keyboard to the computer. so not the ideal setup. I would prefer to record acoustic piano but don't have a mic.

Hi WiZeM@n~

I do a fair amount of it - there are many samples, along with a few standards and classical pieces in the Piano Audio link in my signature. A few samples not in the link:

About Last Night
https://www.box.com/s/4e887f4e09ee3b4b257b
Contemplative
https://www.box.com/s/6ac42e5a03e877064536
Morning Greets the New Day
https://www.box.com/s/zck5cxbj326odaprve7q


Beeboss - that is a fantastic video! I very much like the dense voicings you utilized. Very enjoyable.
Ted - I listened to all 28 minutes - wow! Very impressive, indeed.
Alberto~ Blue in Green is very nicely done. I like your stylings. Very nice

Glen

Very transporting music, Beeboss. I like your generation of internal phrases through the non-uniform nature of your right hand finger work. The old ideal of glassy smooth finger work cannot do that. Heterogeneity is much more likely to produce accidental take-off points, musical DNA, if you like, than smooth, homogeneous passages. The mind then latches onto these "hooks" or instructions, and uses them as the musical matter in subsequent cells. Then those cells produce unforeseen DNA, instruction, giving rise to new musical data, and the process extendes indefinitely.

I like your chords too - several quite joyous changes of harmony. Interesting you brought in a few double notes at the end. Double note finger work is well worth the technical effort of developing - might take a few months of work but the harmonic and phrasal possibilities they afford are wonderful. Again though, not used continuously as the classical masters used them in their famous, smooth examples, but in heterogeneous groups, separated by microsleeps to form rhythm cells.

I am starting to enjoy this thread.

Thanks Ted. I had no idea thats what I was doing but I like the way you put it.
Here are a couple more ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbTAwwwNKE0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJU0XnkVNBM

I do some of this everyday but rarely record it.

Nice stuff Glen

Maybe it might pay you to do so. I record and listen to most of mine these days. It sounds solipsistic, and probably is, but the benefits outweigh such matters. I delay the listening for 24 hours because I invariably think my playing a lot worse than it actually was immediately after the event. I have no idea why, but others have reported the same effect with their own playing so it seems a common reaction.

I wouldn't advise a beginning improviser to be too self-critical lest it disrupt future flow, but all improvisers develop attractors over the years. Whether these are positive personal characteristics or just vacuous mannerisms of habit is sometimes hard to assess. Listening helps with this judgement, or so I have found.

Glen:

You have a very attractive touch. An economy of notes, very clearly articulated. Proving yet again that we do not require torrents of notes played at ninety miles an hour to achieve musical effect. I especially like your little swing sections and could easily have listened to more of those. Your swing phrasing reminds me very much of Mary Lou Williams; just the right accents in just the right places with nothing extraneous to the idea. I have tried to do that for years but I am keenly aware it has escaped me. It's a question of "how" rather than "what".

Beeboss:

Those last two demonstrate your wide command of idiom, and no doubt you have much more up your sleeve. I kept thinking of Frank Bridge actually, a very underrated creator of piano music in my opinion. Whatever patterns, conscious cells, you were playing had that same numinous effect on my brain that late Bridge does. Not that you were probably imitating anything I imagine.

Wiseman:

An acute sense of rhythm, which I suspect would assert itself even more in a longer session. I'm afraid I wouldn't have the faintest idea about popular tunes but your playing sounds well enough without that knowledge.

Let's try to keep this thread going and hope that more join in. A good balance of personal idiom is emerging.

hey Ted, thanks for the comment. I've been trying to work on my rhythm and develop that inner beat. I play mostly solo piano so you can tend to drift or wander off sometimes.

Another idea would be to take some standards or tunes that we all know and pick one to do an improv on, giving lots of freedom to stretch or alter the melody, harmony, rhythm as you like.

The plus is that we would know the song and get a better sense of what each person's style and approach is.

Here's a few tunes:

Round midnight
My funny valentine
Nearness of You

feel free to add your own and we can try it out.

I've tried to post a reply before, but something went wrong.

Btw, Don't u think that if we start from some tunes, we can't call those "free-improvisations" but "freely-interpretations"?

I have noticed a larger than usual number of downloads of my previous recording so here is another track; I must have many hundreds of them by this time. I have been working on my technique and playing pieces lately but only with a view to bettering improvisation. As usual I start pretty slack but after the first few minutes it doesn't seem too foul.

CD77 track 2