Meddlings: Movement II (Post 2)

Progress with Progressions

Hello everyone! Sorry for the kind of late post. Here's your reward for waiting so patiently!

So this week/cycle/period of time (the unit of time between posts is beginning to get confusing), I have been focusing on chords. Since improvisation has no real set melody, it relies on keys and chords as its skeleton - they basically denote which notes sound "right" or "good," and which notes sound "wrong" or "dissonant."

Until this point in time, I've primarily improvised under the context of a progression referred to as I - iii - IV - V (I have deviated from this a bit when I play however... either because I stylistically choose to or because I play the wrong chord in the wrong order and need to improvise a new progression. That often ends up with mixed results). Anyway, for those of you who may be a little bit confused, I'll do my best to give a brief explanation of music theory in relation to these chord progressions.

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So a chord is a series of two or more notes that is played together. They can be spaced in different intervals, and pitched in different keys. Additionally, you can play chords that are minor and major without changing key signature. Below is a picture of thirds (chords spaced so that the notes are on every other key) pitched in C Major. You'll notice that each chord is labelled with a Roman numeral. This numeral represents which note of the scale it is derived from (I is rooted on the first note of the scale: C. ii is rooted on D, the second note of the scale, etc.), and whether it is upper or lower case denotes whether the chord is a major chord (uppercase) or a minor chord (lowercase).

Major chords are the "bright," "cheerful," and "happy," chords you typically here in songs. Minor chords are often incorporated in as contrast, or to create a completely different sounding song. They are typically described as "dark," "gloomy," "spooky," or "sad." In one key signature as the chords go up the scale, the positioning of the notes makes it major or minor. This is based on the root of that chord's scale. I think an example would help illustrate this a little better.

In the image above, the second chord in the line up, the ii-chord is minor, and it starts on D. When played in C Major, in which there are no sharps or flats, the chord is played as D-F-A. However, if you were to play a D chord in D Major, it would be played as D-F#-A. You'll notice that in the key signature D Major, the F has a sharp (#). So by playing that same basic structure of the chord in a different key signature, the F is lowered a half-step and the chord is made minor.

Chord progressions are exactly what they sound like - series of chords that follow a pattern to create a certain feel in the music, usually ending each cycle of the pattern with a resonating chord (usually the V chord).

Chord progressions are also an important for transitioning in keys, which I'll be focusing on later in the project. Something interesting I do want to point out is the Circle of Fifths (below), a musical diagram that progresses from C Major (or A Minor) by fifths in either direction, and showing how all the keys are connected through chord spacing.

Pretty cool huh? Even if you didn't quite understand all that, the Circle does provide a pretty cool representation of how many patterns can be found in music theory. I'm barely scratching the surface here.

So that's kind of a brief explanation of the basics of basic chord theory and progressions.
If you managed to make some sense of my attempt at teaching basic music theory - congratulations. If not, I'm sorry - I'm not that great at explaining music theory. Regardless of whether you understood or not, if you want to learn more, check out this site:
Chord Maps: This provides very in-depth information on chord theory from the basics to some of the (slightly) more complex techniques/variations. I used this for a lot of my research on chord formations, progressions, and variations.

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So going back to what I practiced/focused on this week, I ended up coming up with a few nice-sounding progressions:

I - iii - vi - I - iii - V and
I - iii - vi - IV - V

They've both got a lot of major chords that sound really nice, and the minor chords provide nice contrast that leads into ear-pleasing resolution with the V chord. After consulting with some sheet music that was laying around my piano, I cam across another chord progression I ended up utilizing:

iii/I - IV - I - V (The first / means that the left hand played a iii-chord, but my right hand improvised as if it were playing a I chord)

As per request, I also dabbled into some jazz improvisation. Jazz is actually the first style of piano improvisation I had ever tried, but it was a bit mangled, repetitive, and unstructured. I followed a (little) more closely to the classic 12-bar blues style of :
I7 - IV7 - I7 - I7 - IV7 - IV7 - I7 - I7 - V7 - IV7 - I7 - V7
(The  7 just means that the sevenh note of the chord is added to the three-note basic chord, and then lowered a half-step. This makes it sound "jazzy").
I also varied the "turnaround" or final 2 bars as:
I7 - IV7 - I7 - IV7 (Each chord for half a bar/measure).

In addition, I incorporated inversions and slash chords.
Inversions: When I rearrange the notes of a chord (i.e. play them in a different order).
- Ex. C - E - G can be re-arranged into the inversions E - G - C and G - C -E. Each inversion has a slightly different sound.
Slash Chords: When I play the notes of the chord with both hands over different octaves.
- Ex. The I7 in C Major (C - E - G - Bb) can be split between two hands - the left hand playing, let's say... C - Bb, while the right hand plays E - G - C. This creates a bit of a 3-dimensional sound to the chord.

Finally, I was a bit at a loss at what to do for maybe a third song, and I considered only posting two videos... but I ended up deciding on doing a bit of twist on a classic song.
Heart and Soul by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser
I basically did some improvised variations on the song, using the melody as as inspiration for the majority of the improvised melodies, and utilizing the main chords of the song. Additionally, sticking with my theme of using varied chord progressions, I ended up playing some sections of the song with the old I - iii - IV - V pattern that I had used in the past, and it ended up not sounding half-bad. Even with the chord variations, I think that I managed to keep the Heart-and-Soul-feel going.

Moving on...
Hardship wise, I think that I shared my fair share of hardships in my last post. Again, finding the time to sit down, noodle around on the piano, and record a good decent session, and also edit it into a video that could be posted and embedded was hard, what with other activities. today, I'm actually participating in a band concert (on trumpet) that's been rehearsing after and during school, and that has drained a lot of my time. Additionally, I learned the piano tuner is coming to to fix the key and tune the piano up on Monday. My solution until then: use this synthesizer that was sitting upstairs in my parents' room collecting dust. It's an old Roland JV-30, and is hooked up to this Aiwa CX-NA111 stereo because we don't have an amp for it. Check out this sweet setup:

And... if you look carefully... you may see it on the left side... yes.
A camera and a tripod. A HDR-CX190, if you were curious.

This is another thing that held me up - for the sake of providing a little bit more novelty, convenience, and/or entertainment to my viewers. It also made me a lot more conscious about my piano form (wrist movement, finger movement, angle, etc.). I'm going to be paying more attention to that now as well. If you look on the right side of your screen, you'll see a poll. If you would kindly take the time to do that, it'd be much appreciated.

And now... for the recordings. They are the reason that you've put up with all my ramblings for the past couple minutes you've been reading.

First up: Using the chord progression I talked about first: Morning Sunshine (titled by: Mom). This bright, cheery song in D Major is reminiscent to waking up in a good mood - happy, full of energy, and ready to start the day. Something like this (<- click for a link to a video clip. Sorry, I didn't realize the hyperlink color would be so similar to the text's normal color).

Next: The jazz song requested by Catelyn Huang in a comment for the last Movement post, and by a few other people verbally to me, in person, at school. It's called: Genius Hour Blues (Because this is the Genius Hour Project, and this work can be long, tedious, and blues-inspiring... It's a really clever name. Hehe...) It's in C Major. The fast run of notes at the end is called a cadenza - it doesn't really follow any time or tempo - so I can just play whatever. And playing fast like that is kinda fun (and it seems to impress some people). Also, I made the video black and white because, well... it's jazz.
*Does Jazz Hands*

Finally - the Heart and Soul variations tune: Soulful Hearts (super creative name). It's basically variations on the main melody and chord progressions of the song in C Major.

Well, that about concludes this post. I hope you enjoy the recordings. If they're not already up, they should be added to the blog playlist very shortly.

Back to the grindstone! (For school. And band. And this project. Sigh....)

(Sorry - this is a repost - the version I posted about an hour ago got reverted to an old draft by accident. Sorry!)

Meddlings: Cavatina III

Hello! Here are some of the blogs I've commented on recently.
They have some quite fascinating updates and topics. Go check them out!

Trevor: Flying Planes (Simulator)
- He finally posted a video of him flying! Pretty cool!

Eric: Whittling
- He's whittling the 4 card suits - neat!

Alycia: Modernist Cuisine
- Fancy! This week's post: sous vide!

Nicole: Ballet Choreography
- Choreographing and transcribing Pentatonix's cover of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy."


Meddlings: Movement II coming out later today! (As soon as I finish processing and uploading the videos).

Meddlings: Ritardando

Hello everyone!

This post is a bit of a quick update everyone.

First of all I hope that you enjoyed Movement I's recordings. I'm pretty happy with the way that they turned out, and overall I received some pretty positive feedback. I also hope that you like the installation of the playlist bar at the top of the screen (sorry mobile users).

Now, I had originally planned to post Movement II today at some point, but unfortunately, I've run into some technical problems that may delay the post to tomorrow. To make this post a little more interesting however, and to give you readers something to enjoy while you wait for Movement II, I'm going to give a brief rundown of the process I undergo to record my improv sessions.

So first of all, I've been playing on a 37-year old Story & Clark upright piano. It was my mom's when she was younger, and it has been maintained quite well over the years, as it still sounds pretty good today.

I originally had trouble finding a way to mic the piano, but luckily I found a Logitech USB microphone. It had originally been a part of a Disney: Sing It! Wii Game that my family never played. So I re-purposed it, and by hanging it down the back of the piano and connecting it to my laptop, I've been able to record a pretty good sound.

The laptop I use is a school-issued Dell Latitude 3330. I use the program Audacity to record the sound. Since Blogger does not support posting audio files alone, I have to convert them into videos. For editing ease, I email, upload, or in some other manner transfer the audio files (saved in mp3 format) to my home iMac, where I put pictures to go with the music on iMovie. Finally, the whole thing is exported to mp4 format, uploaded to YouTube, and subsequently embedded on the blog.

And that's about the whole recording, processing, converting, uploading, and embedding process.

I face several problems going into the afternoon, the time I had originally planned to record. My first concern has been using a different laptop (mine was in the tech office, being repaired, and the loaner was a little buggy at first), but that has seemed to have resolved itself after a restart and a re-connect to my home WiFi. My bigger concern now is with the piano.

The piano, as I said earlier, is in fact 35+ years old, and it has seen its share of re-tuning and repairs. As of recent, one of the hammers on one of the important keys, E natural (one octave above middle C, 4th space up on the treble clef), is loose, and makes a very loud clicking noise when it plays, which can be heard no matter how much I adjust my microphone's settings. To be honest, it's been clicking for quite some time now, but only now is it loud enough to be picked up so easily on a microphone. If you listen carefully to Bring Me Home, you may actually be able to hear it click every now and again.

The piano re-tuning guy will hopefully be around here next week, so this week I may have to... improvise a bit. Yes. I made that pun. While Movement II is behind schedule, I do plan to have something out in the near future.

Oh! That's right. Here's a quick video I found of a guy doing some piano improvisation. I thought it sounded really good. Improv like that is one of the things that made me want to learn more about improvisation in the first place. A lot of the things he's doing in the video are things I hope to learn/dabble in over the course of this project - varied/complex rhythms in both hands,  multiple keys (and key changes), multiple chord progressions, and an overall pleasing sound.

Hope you enjoy, and I'll see you guys soon!

- Josh

Meddlings: Slur

Hello everybody!
I have some exciting technical news with the blog interface!
So if you haven't noticed, at the top of the page there is now a black bar running along the length of the screen, much like a slur running over the top of a musical phrase. This bar is a playlist that I will be continually updating. It will basically play all the songs that I have recorded thus far, so you can listen to them across pages without interruption, without having to change videos, and without having to scroll through my pages to find the YouTube videos.

The site I used to create this playlist is called Playlist.me, and you can basically input YouTube and Mp3 links or SoundCloud tracks on the Set-Up Wizard, choose a skin, and it will give you the HTML code for the playlist. Then, you can copy and paste the code into your blog's HTML code. This works for just about any personalized website or page that you can edit the HTML code for.

I think that it's a really cool feature, and I plan to keep my playlist updated with my latest recordings. Hope you all enjoy!

- Josh

Note (Pun intended): This playlist appears to not work when accessing the blog on a mobile device. To utilize the playlist, you must be on a "full sized" computer.

Meddlings: Movement I (Post 1)

Keys are one of the keys to better improvisation

Hello everyone!
I want to start off quickly by apologizing - I realize only now that I completely forgot to introduce myself. So... uhh. Hi, I'm Josh. But I guess it all kind of works out now, what with this being my first blog post documenting actual project progress.

So let's get down to the brass tacks.

This week, as mentioned earlier, is the week I'm going to be focusing on improvising in more varied key signatures. Key signatures have a huge impact on the overall sound of the piece. They generally denote the mood of the piece, in addition to supplying the roots for the chords I play. Up until the start of this project, I generally improvised in the keys of C Major (0 sharps or flats) and D Major (2 sharps). To expand my range, I decided to try my hand at improvising in keys up to 3 sharps (A Major) and 2 flats (Bb Major).

Playing improv and recording it is somewhat of a challenge - it's all kind of spontaneous, so if you make a mistake on a recording and want to make changes, you have to start over completely. Additionally, no two solos are exactly alike, so it's not like I can go back and practice a certain phrase - it's done on the fly. As I got more comfortable, it became easier, but I still found that putting forth something that sounded satisfying took a considerable chunk of time. This may prove to be a roadblock later on - but it hasn't set me back too far. Yet.

Continuing on, I've found also that improvisation seems to become more and more complex by itself. This is kind of in regards to become more comfortable playing a in a certain key, or with certain chords, or with certain rhythms, but I feel as though the experience just kind of piles on and helps add to new compositions. For example, through experience, I've learned that when I hit a note in the wrong key or with the wrong chord, I can (sometimes) pass it off as intentional dissonance by resolving it in the next beat or so. (You'll be sure to hear a few odd notes in my recordings...)

Anyway... this cycle's pieces are in Bb and A Major keys. I didn't really use many other resources to fuel my progress - introducing a new key to play in is rather straightforward if you know your basic music theory. For some ideas on melodies and chords, I did use a few things for reference.

Auto-Chord:
This site basically gave some suggestions for chords that can be played in different keys for different genres. I didn't necessarily take after any specific genre - I just took into consideration chords that resonated well with or sounded nice in the key.
Pandora Radio:
Pandora offers a lot of piano stations - I used contemporary, classic, and solo stations as means of inspiration for melodies, emotions, styles, etc.

Next week's goals, involving new (variations of) chord progressions or patterns, is going to be a bit more complicated - so I'm going to be searching online and throughout my house for some more music theory about chords. I'll be sure to explain a little more in-depth later. Chords are something I don't have a ton of experience with (my piano teacher didn't directly teach me too much, she just assigned simple theory worksheets and had me complete them), so I look forward to expanding more knowledge on them!

And now, having endured my rambling, the moment you have been waiting for: the recordings!
The first two, "Moon" and "Stars," are keyed in Bb Major. They were named by my sister (age 11) based on her first impressions of the pieces. The second one, "Bring Me Home," is keyed in A Major, and was named by my mom based on her first impressions of the piece. Overall, I'm relatively satisfied with how they turned out (though you may hear a little "intentional" dissonance). Hope you enjoy, and see you next cycle!

(Since I can't upload audio files - I've converted the audio into video files and added some pictures with Ken Burns transitions, and because those videos were too big for Blogger to upload, I've embedded them as YouTube Videos. Sorry for any inconveniences this causes.)

Pictures: 
Google Images
salon.com
ubanrabbits.eu
artofthesouth.com/Thomas_Kinkade

Meddlings: Cavatina I & II

Hello everybody!
Introducing Cavatinas!
Cavatinas are short, simple melodies performed by a soloist that are part of a larger piece.
Likewise - these types of posts will be short and sweet, and a secondary in importance to my main posts. As students, we are also required to comment on our peers' blogs. Each cavatina corresponds with one cycle/week's worth of comments. As I feel like I am a bit behind on schedule - here are two cycles' worth of comments! Make sure to check out all of their blogs as well!

Cavatina I :
Brett: Making an Atlas (of Pennsylvania)

Trevor: Flying a Plane (Simulator)

Dani: Animation


Cavatina II:
Jess: Writing Mandarin

Nicole: Choreography

Catelyn: Learning Piano


Notice:
Meddlings: Movement I is scheduled to come out later today!

Meddlings: Prelude (Intro)

Prelude to a Project

The piano is more than just an instrument - it's a tool for self-expression and an emotional outlet for the stressed. At least, that's how I see it.
As a sophomore of about 16 years of age, I've been playing the piano for almost 11 years now, and I recently have found a new way to express myself using my experience - piano improvisation.
Just for a quick bit of context, up until I stopped piano lessons following the end of 8th grade, I was taught almost exclusively classical music. I was aching for a change - a genre of music that was more free and more varied. Improvisation provided that route.
Improvisation is almost purely spontaneous composition, and its free-form style allowed me to play however I felt like playing. As my interest grew, so did my desire to improvise in more and more complex ways. That's where this project comes in.
In school, we are being given the opportunity to practice whatever passion we want over the course of around 6 weeks, culminating in a TED-style talk. I have chosen to take this time to improve my improv - and I'll be tracking my progress here on this blog.
My goal is to incorporate a new component to my improvisation repertoire each week. I'll record an improvised piano solo utilizing each component to be posted with each blog post.

Goal 1 - Improv in keys up to 3 sharps or 2 flats
Goal 2 - Improvise in 2 new chord progressions (ex. I -IV - V - I)
Goal 3 - Incorporate more varied left hand accompanying rhythms
Goal 4 - Be able to transition between keys or chord progressions mid-song
Goal 5 - Ultimately, I will improvise a solo that encompasses all of the above components.

As of now I don't really have any overbearing obstacles, other than maybe time deadlines. I have yet to discover how long it will take me to learn and effectively incorporate new techniques into my improvisation.
       This concludes the Prelude to a Project. I hope you enjoy the main event!