Improvised

A catalog of my progress in learning piano improvisation. By day, I am a Ph.D. student at the MIT Media Lab. My projects My personal tumblr

[stupid-littl3-girl]

[lesnyc1983]

Script!

[miroirs]

I was just looking at these the other day as references for my hand-drawn slides!

[miroirs]

[xiaosquared]

Watched Moonrise Kingdom on the plane ride back from China and am more than a little obsessed with the Benjamin Britten piece that opens the film. The movie itself was delightful as well, but I think I’m pretty late to the game considering that every hipster couple ever dressed up as the main...

[miroirs]

This is the first post of the year from my main blog. One of my big goals for 2013 is to update weekly with more substantial posts than I have been before. I've decided to merge content on this blog with my main one. Much of the new content will be about music, and I will still post improvisations.

Check out that first post that I reblogged above. Followers of this blog, it would be lovely if you can go follow xiaosquared. 

(When you followed this blog, it might have been called xiaosquared instead of miroirs. I swapped the names of the two blogs a few weeks ago)

[miroirs]

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Definitely influenced by the Chopin I've been working on recently...

[miroirs]

I found my thrill On Blueberry Hill On Blueberry Hill When I found you The moon stood still On Blueberry Hill And lingered until My dream came true The wind in the willow played Love's sweet melody But all of those vows you made Were never to be Though we're apart You're part of me still For you were my thrill On Blueberry Hill The wind in the willow played Love's sweet melody But all of those vows you made Were never to be Though we're apart You're part of me still For you were my thrill On Blueberry Hill 

[miroirs]

I love this guy.

[miroirs]

started learning this song from the video while cooped up at home during the hurricane

[miroirs]

Aftermath of Hurricane Isaac. Thick and humid evening in the Bywater under a searing moon in a sky finally clear. A piano and guitar duo by candlelight, the former with exposed hammers, the latter missing its D string, singing their hearts out to this song.

[miroirs]

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Chopin Prelude in G minor, Op. 28 No. 22

Still a ways to go but certainly improvement over last month.

[miroirs]

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This how I feel today.

[miroirs]

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Just got this memorized. Working on:

- Powerful sound that is not harsh

- Breathing, phrasing

- Intensity, bravura, presence

[miroirs]

Goals

I'm going to try to be a bit more disciplined about what I'm practicing. Each week, I'll try to focus on a few specific goals and keep track of how much I progress in those areas.

For general technique, here's what's at the forefront of my focus:

- better tone overall

- more evenness and strength of left hand

Specifically, I'm working on the following pieces:

- Chopin prelude Op. 28 No. 22, g minor

- Chopin etude Op. 25 No. 7, c# minor

- Bach 2 part invention #14 in B flat

- Bach 2 part invention #5 in E flat

- Daft punk!

Of course I'm still improvising vignettes here and there, but in addition to posting those, I'll also post some recordings of my progress in the pieces.

[miroirs]

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Piano cover of "Something About Us" by Daft Punk

This is a sentimental piece for me, and I've been trying to play it since the end of last summer. At first, I didn't have enough rhythmic sense to even imitate some of the lines, but I've finally worked myself up to be able get into a groove. Actually, even a month ago I wouldn't have been able to keep the beat.

It's still not perfect, and there are little glitches in the beat here and there, but a year ago I did not even have the ability to discern these little split second glitches.

Anyway, happy to be making progress :-D

[miroirs]

[miroirs]

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a waltz of sorts. b flat minor again.

[miroirs]

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B flat minor makes me think of shades of dark green

[miroirs]

transcribing this