Piano Improv
Freeform tracks recorded on my digital piano.
The perfect background music playlist!
To close out the final season, a medley of themes from this year's improv weeklies. I will be.. One more before the finale. There are actually two distinct themes in this one, for a change! Alone, in a world where time has no meaning... I rarely do improv in 12/8 time, but I thought 12/8 would be a good day to try it out. Again! :) Still haven't mastered the "grabbing tissue with spare hand" routine, but I'm working on it. The unofficial start of the holiday season. The highly-anticipated sequel to "A Musing", recorded in my new room. Includes one of the themes... My last one in this room. Get it? Because I press F a lot in this one. Also, who recognizes the themes at the end? Riffing on some spooky-ish triplet swing themes for the Halloween season. I was a younger man, with more energy in me, when I decided to make these twenty minutes each. Start of the eighth, and probably last, season of Improv Weekly. For the season finale, a medley of material from the soundtrack to my summer project:... Title says it all this time. How long can it take to watch a hundred hour-long videos?! Which means back to pre-recording... "But I didn't have a setup after all..." Those are the lyrics to the A theme of this improv,... Three years ago today, I put on my first solo piano concert, where I spent the last half-hour... Musing in the key of A. Okay calm down, at least I thought of the pun AFTER doing the recording. Ever heard the lick in context? I used my phone's mobile data to upload this video. I ain't missing a day because of some stupid wifi. Been a crazy week. Long story short... the audio skips might be gone now? Going in for my second shot today; hopefully I won't regret not pre-recording next week's installment. Riffing on a friend's signature chord progression. A spicy season finale to send in an already record-setting summer. Whatever you think the issue is, it's not that. I have nothing but Photo Booth running, my HD,... The axis system says that the pitches in a diminished chord (e.g. Cdim7) can all be thought of... Just when I think I've run out of chord progressions, I find precisely one (1) new one in the... 26 May 2015 was the date of a pivotal "behind the themes" improv recording that defined my... Just punching the clock again... My first improv since finishing my latest full-length piano piece, which was ten minutes of 4/4... Eventually these improvs are going to be nothing but callbacks to previous improvs... No barbers were hired in the making of this episode. Did you know that the dorian mode is just the union of two pentatonic scales? Also shoehorned... Did you know that the circle of fifths is just the chromatic scale with tritone substitution? Kicking off season six with a diverse medley centered around a call-and-response style swing motif. Phew! Another very experimental one for this season's finale. A lot of prior practice went into... This one draws some inspiration from the opening to the fifth movement of Ravel's Mother Goose -... I forgot to do my sound check again, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that my audio input... Got fresh sweaters and I'm makin' the newsletters. The recurring sequences of ascending sevenths in this one are a nod to an instrumental intro of... Once again revisiting a couple themes from an old personal improv recording. Don't know how I go through pedals so fast; this one's only three months old and it's already... Celebrating 100 YouTube subscribers! Thank you so much to all of you who been tuning in each... I did my 6 May 2020 improv weekly using only the white keys, and for a while I've been pondering... There was a multi-year stretch in my life where basically everything I wrote/improvised was in... I was planning for this to be a calmer, more quiet one overall... until around 8 minutes in,... If I had known the last one would get 400+ views I would have recycled more obscure 2020 riffs... New year, new setup! Dozens of themes and motifs from all of this year's improv weeklies are reprised here in this... This all-new arpeggiated octaves technique (starting around 5:40) might be too powerful for my own good. Kinda waiting for it to snow now so I can start pre-recording the ones I'm gonna release on snowy days. Been very into parallel thirds and fourths lately; you can really do some interesting stuff with them. Been a while since I've tried one in a swing rhythm... Another painfully average and derivative one. No excuses this time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I remembered (heh) all too late that I was thinking about doing a left-hand-only improv this... Every week I find a new and even more obvious way to subvert my signature lick. I should stop starting these in C, because I never escape... I may have... jacked the opening theme from somewhere :D You all thought 11/8 was too easy? All righty then... Starting off season 4 with a throwback to my now two-year-old piano piece Insomnia - in... Wrapping up season 3 of Improv Weekly! This one was rather well-rehearsed, because I had done... Feels good to have the pedal back... You might notice something out of place in the bottom right of the frame this time... The return of the tritone! Trying out a different setup this week, with a bit nicer lighting. The beginning motif is... I tried to make this a more relaxed one but I've apparently lost the ability to come up with... Again drawing inspiration from a 15-year-old song of mine for the opening theme - the same one... I rarely do improv in 12/8 time, but I thought 12/8 would be a good day to try it out. The theme at 10 minutes in is from a dream I had a few days ago, where I was playing piano for a... To my half-dozen long-time viewers, see if you can figure out what made me burst out laughing at... I should probably get back to recording these before my two-hour improv streams, rather than... As you can see, my fanbase just doubled... I'm back! Took last Wednesday off, both because I was already uploading the Canada Day Improv... Friendship ended with VI-i; bV-i is my new best friend. Nearing the end of season 2! Time for my monthly excursion to the black keys again... The main theme in this one is from a short song I wrote when I was eight years old, which for... Fresh off a 4-hour live composing stream, thought I'd go for the trusty left hand arpeggios... My sleep schedule decided to screw me over big time today, and I had to record this right after... Found a new favourite cadence! Also scattered throughout are fragments from my piano piece... This time, I gave myself the additional challenge of not using any black keys. As you might be... Maybe this is when I finally retire that octave ostinato crap I do with the right hand all the... A somber one in light of recent local events... This one is very experimental; not sure how to feel about it. The recurring themes are from an... May have needed to actually set my alarm today to do this one. So much for prerecording... Might have gotten my recordings mixed up; I'm hoping this is the right one. Might have went a bit ham on this one. No regrets :) COVID-19 is giving me plenty of time to pre-record these now. One day, I'll actually familiarize... I realized, while chatting in a music discord server, that the word "tiresome" is made out of... Been cooped up in my room for over a week now, sleeping during the day, due to illness. Maybe my... Went with a tried-and-true strategy: pick two random chords and just run with 'em. Had a four-hour jam session on the 15th and I guess I've been dry ever since. Time to take a... I gave up the fast tempo about halfway through - it's exhausting haha. I legitimately couldn't remember the source of the tune at 2:18 until I listened back to the... A calm, relaxing one to round off a very eventful month. Getting over a cold, keeping things pretty low key. Eventually I'll get over my addiction to the low/high notes I now have at my disposal. Second in the weekly series! First in a new series! Wish me luck :) Taking my own days off this year. Get into the holiday swing! A slow, tense ostinato builds into a variety of extravagant developments. A sesquicentennial celebration in septuple meter. My most ambitious medley yet to finish off 2016. Callbacks to both the past and the future in this rhythmical medley. Celebrating a year's worth of musical exploration. A nostalgic theme from high school is remembered and reimagined here. My first improv track, recorded as a demo tape in preparation for busking.Improv Weekly
More Info
"Grand Finale" | Improv Weekly: 29 Dec 2021
"Acceptance" | Improv Weekly: 22 Dec 2021
"Drifting" | Improv Weekly: 15 Dec 2021
"Mach Twelve Revisited" | Improv Weekly: 8 Dec 2021
"No Sick Days" | Improv Weekly: 1 Dec 2021
"First Snow" | Improv Weekly: 24 Nov 2021
"B Musing" | Improv Weekly: 17 Nov 2021
"Leaving Westphal" | Improv Weekly: 10 Nov 2021
"Paying Respects" | Improv Weekly: 3 Nov 2021
"October March" | Improv Weekly: 27 Oct 2021
"Divergence" | Improv Weekly: 20 Oct 2021
"Late to Rise" | Improv Weekly: 13 Oct 2021
"Home Stretch" | Improv Weekly: 6 Oct 2021
"The Hackenbush Suite" | Improv Weekly: 29 Sep 2021
"Phrygian Phantasia" | Improv Weekly: 22 Sep 2021
"Waiting for Someone" | Improv Weekly: 15 Sep 2021
"Back to School" | Improv Weekly: 8 Sep 2021
"I Thought I Had a Setup" | Improv Weekly: 1 Sep 2021
"Fizzy and Fruity" | Improv Weekly: 25 Aug 2021
"A Musing" | Improv Weekly: 18 Aug 2021
"Extrapolicktion" | Improv Weekly: 11 Aug 2021
"Hop Skip Step" | Improv Weekly: 4 Aug 2021
"Calm After the Storm" | Improv Weekly: 28 Jul 2021
"High Sierra" | Improv Weekly: 21 Jul 2021
"Pianimusic" | Improv Weekly: 14 Jul 2021
"The Schulz Changes" | Improv Weekly: 7 Jul 2021
"Heatwave" | Improv Weekly: 30 Jun 2021
"Accidental Remix" | Improv Weekly: 23 Jun 2021
"Shot in the Arm" | Improv Weekly: 16 Jun 2021
"Isotonic Exercises" | Improv Weekly: 9 Jun 2021
"Sporadica" | Improv Weekly: 2 Jun 2021
"Rewind the Themes" | Improv Weekly: 26 May 2021
"Factory Reset" | Improv Weekly: 19 May 2021
"Septemantics" | Improv Weekly: 12 May 2021
"Buckwild" | Improv Weekly: 5 May 2021
"Self-Trimmed" | Improv Weekly: 28 Apr 2021
"Defibrillation" | Improv Weekly: 21 Apr 2021
"Shirreff Shuffle" | Improv Weekly: 14 Apr 2021
"Spring Forward" | Improv Weekly: 7 Apr 2021
"Sonic Zoom" | Improv Weekly: 31 Mar 2021
"Serpent's Tale" | Improv Weekly: 24 Mar 2021
"Aural Aerobics" | Improv Weekly: 17 Mar 2021
"Ain't Nothin' Thicker" | Improv Weekly: 10 Mar 2021
"Push and Pull" | Improv Weekly: 3 Mar 2021
"Chasing Gravity" | Improv Weekly: 24 Feb 2021
"Night Shift" | Improv Weekly: 17 Feb 2021
"Walks of Life" | Improv Weekly: 10 Feb 2021
"Piano 1.5 Hands" | Improv Weekly: 3 Feb 2021
"Clouded Memories" | Improv Weekly: 27 Jan 2021
"The Filled Julia Lick" | Improv Weekly: 20 Jan 2021
"Eleventh Heaven" | Improv Weekly: 13 Jan 2021
"Hindsight" | Improv Weekly: 6 Jan 2021
"2020 Finale" | Improv Weekly: 30 Dec 2020
"Parallaxation" | Improv Weekly: 23 Dec 2020
"Rock Bottom" | Improv Weekly: 16 Dec 2020
"The Sting" | Improv Weekly: 9 Dec 2020
"Lonely Orbit" | Improv Weekly: 2 Dec 2020
"Ternary Search" | Improv Weekly: 25 Nov 2020
"Vogue" | Improv Weekly: 18 Nov 2020
"Running from the Future" | Improv Weekly: 11 Nov 2020
"Marco Polo" | Improv Weekly: 4 Nov 2020
"Contemplation" | Improv Weekly: 28 Oct 2020
"Outside the Box" | Improv Weekly: 21 Oct 2020
"Gaussian Groove" | Improv Weekly: 14 Oct 2020
"Sleep Paralysis" | Improv Weekly: 7 Oct 2020
"Sugar Rush" | Improv Weekly: 30 Sep 2020
"Oasis" | Improv Weekly: 23 Sep 2020
"Dry Run" | Improv Weekly: 16 Sep 2020
"Grawood Rhapsody" | Improv Weekly: 9 Sep 2020
"Two Up Twice" | Improv Weekly: 2 Sep 2020
"Yearning" | Improv Weekly: 26 Aug 2020
"Wartzment Sideways" | Improv Weekly: 19 Aug 2020
"Mach Twelve" | Improv Weekly: 12 Aug 2020
"Fountain Pass" | Improv Weekly: 5 Aug 2020
"No More Worlds" | Improv Weekly: 29 Jul 2020
"Birthday Blues" | Improv Weekly: 22 Jul 2020
"Summer Seaside" | Improv Weekly: 15 Jul 2020
"Nikolai's Lullaby" | Improv Weekly: 8 Jul 2020
"Season's Cadenza" | Improv Weekly: 24 Jun 2020
"Tracing Trollope" | Improv Weekly: 17 Jun 2020
"Cooking with Gas" | Improv Weekly: 10 Jun 2020
"Title X" | Improv Weekly: 3 Jun 2020
"No Strings Attached" | Improv Weekly: 27 May 2020
"Harbour Feelings" | Improv Weekly: 20 May 2020
"Anniversary Avenue" | Improv Weekly: 13 May 2020
"Colorblind" | Improv Weekly: 6 May 2020
"April Showers" | Improv Weekly: 29 Apr 2020
"A Tribute to Tragedy" | Improv Weekly: 22 Apr 2020
"Uranus" | Improv Weekly: 15 Apr 2020
"Lockdown Licks" | Improv Weekly: 8 Apr 2020
"JumbIed Beginnings" | Improv Weekly: 1 Apr 2020
"Frequency Modulation" | Improv Weekly: 25 Mar 2020
"Toxic Tides" | Improv Weekly: 18 Mar 2020
"Tiresome" | Improv Weekly: 11 Mar 2020
"Blue Noise" | Improv Weekly: 4 Mar 2020
"Quantum Steps" | Improv Weekly: 26 Feb 2020
"Old Home Tones" | Improv Weekly: 19 Feb 2020
"Fireworks" | Improv Weekly: 12 Feb 2020
"Ballad of Bloodshed" | Improv Weekly: 5 Feb 2020
"Precessions" | Improv Weekly: 29 Jan 2020
"Pieces of Eight" | Improv Weekly: 22 Jan 2020
"Midnight Waltz" | Improv Weekly: 15 Jan 2020
"Operistonio" | Improv Weekly: 8 Jan 2020
"Jumbled Beginnings" | Improv Weekly: 1 Jan 2020
Specials
Woodlawn Lament
Christmas Improv
Halloween Improv
Canada Day Improv
Thanksgiving Improv
Mother's Day Improv
New Year's Eve Improv
Remembrance Day Improv
Father's Day Improv