Members blue2blue Posted December 17, 2012 Members Share Posted December 17, 2012 Here's a (raw) right hand keyboard improv (using a strings and winds sample set I fancy) I did a few hours ago that I'd like to figure out how to do something with. No one need feel like they have to listen to the whole drudgey 7 minutes (especially since my current balance in the critique bank is low from my elsewhereness). But... I thought the pictures turned out kinda nice. [Yeah, 8 minutes to make the music. 30 minutes to create the video montage. And 2 hours to get the video settings right and render it. ] [fixed some audio issues, nuked one note]My keyboard was out and I was actually going to look for my favorite rhodes setup. I still had something in my left hand as I started noodling. The first thing I played seemed pretty cool so I took the chance of stopping to hit record on the sequencer and, of course, the next wasn't nearly as right, but I kept on playing anyway (my new rule) and this is what came out. I must have been in the moment, well, some kind of moment, because I didn't actually put down what was in my left hand until after I'd stopped playing. I recorded to MIDI and did delete two fatfinger notes and extend the duration of one as well as turning up the reverb, but what's here is basically what I heard while I was trying to pluck some music out of my somewhat pensive holiday mood.I find it easy (enough) to come up with noodly little instrumental bits but never seem to find the ambition to edit or stitch them together or even map them out to MIDI time -- which seems like the first step for a musical preterliterate like myself. (Forget about improvising to a metronome; let's just say, my muse takes a powder at the first tok of the grid. As soon as I here the comforting slavery of robotic rhythm, I start thinking in terms of block chords and not letting down the other robots. Or something. Anyhow, I'm more 'creative' (yes, those are air quotes) when I'm off the grid, for better or worse. (And usually both.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members j0el Posted December 17, 2012 Members Share Posted December 17, 2012 i like it. no need to quantize, i actually listened to the whole thing and thats saying something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members j0el Posted December 17, 2012 Members Share Posted December 17, 2012 up the attack on some notes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Marshal Posted December 17, 2012 Members Share Posted December 17, 2012 Love the visuals. The music has a nice movie-track quality to it. Though, on it's own, the music kind of meanders around in the same moody place. I was wanting some rise and fall to it. Some repeating redeeming melodic respite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted December 17, 2012 Moderators Share Posted December 17, 2012 I feel sad and chilly... That's pretty cool Mr. Blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LCK Posted December 17, 2012 Members Share Posted December 17, 2012 This is great. I listened to the whole track. It kept my attention the whole way. Very Windham Hill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members grace_slick Posted December 18, 2012 Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 I really like this too, Bluey. Hey LCK, love your new pic there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 18, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 Joel -- thanks, man. I'm going to play with articulations after I get it mapped out. The mapping out isn't so much to get it to play on the grid as to see if I can come up with musical rhythmic definitions that make sense. Obviously, there's a combination of sloppiness and idiosyncrasy in what I captured. If I can figure out the latter, I figure the former should be easy to deal with. (My DAW sequencer is kinda basic but it does let you map existing sequences to notation definitions independent of real time values. So you can define the 'official' rhythm while keeping the performance rubato. I think.)Marshal -- I hear you. I'm going to think about that as I try to rhythmically analyze this thing. Lee -- me, too. That was what it was all about. LCK -- excellent! Thanks. Probably kept your attention because of the idiosyncratic and often downright dodgy rhythm. But, you know, whole package and all that. Thanks, Grace!= )Thanks for giving this a listen. I was having a hard time sorting out whether I'd created something only a mother* could love... or even get through. * Not my mom. She loves Mario Lanza and Amy Grant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members oldgitplayer Posted December 18, 2012 Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 I am out of my depth to comment on material such as this. Suffice it to say - very nice, and agreed, very Windham Hill. I understand your decision not to include a boogie bass line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rsadasiv Posted December 18, 2012 Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 Originally Posted by Lee Knight I feel sad and chilly...That's pretty cool Mr. Blue. +1I don't think it needs to be anything more - fine as is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 18, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 Originally Posted by oldgitplayer I am out of my depth to comment on material such as this. Suffice it to say - very nice, and agreed, very Windham Hill.I understand your decision not to include a boogie bass line. The boogie bass line was never far from mind... I just couldn't figure out how to get the stride thing going with just my right thumb for basic bass duties. Originally Posted by rsadasiv +1I don't think it needs to be anything more - fine as is. Thanks, Ram. I'd still like to get the structure mapped out so I could print out a score for it. Not, of course, that I could do anything more than laboriously decypher it -- since I will quickly forget what it all means, a probable process with frequent stops to look up symbols I've forgotten. But one of my old friends who was classically trained was trying to explain the difference between my varioius 'automatic' piano musings and real compositions and, in exasperation, she said, Well, real compositions have scores of some kind, don't they? An then she said something about having an aesthetic framework that the composition can be analyzed from within and I passed the bottle her way and we had a last swig and went off to the punk rock show we were seeing that night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rsadasiv Posted December 18, 2012 Members Share Posted December 18, 2012 Originally Posted by blue2blue The boogie bass line was never far from mind... I just couldn't figure out how to get the stride thing going with just my right thumb for basic bass duties. Thanks, Ram. I'd still like to get the structure mapped out so I could print out a score for it. Not, of course, that I could do anything more than laboriously decypher it -- since I will quickly forget what it all means, a probable process with frequent stops to look up symbols I've forgotten. But one of my old friends who was classically trained was trying to explain the difference between my varioius 'automatic' piano musings and real compositions and, in exasperation, she said, Well, real compositions have scores of some kind, don't they? An then she said something about having an aesthetic framework that the composition can be analyzed from within and I passed the bottle her way and we had a last swig and went off to the punk rock show we were seeing that night. Argh. I tried some performance MIDI to score conversion in BIAB and Finale and discovered that it doesn't produce readable scores (for those who, you know, could read it - paging ShortChord). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.