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
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