As in, things that aren't my rock opera. That'll come later...
My piano shredding on the other hand has been productive for not one but two albums to be on the horizon. I've decided to do a sort of concept work based around manic depression and everything it implies, based on my own history with bipolar disorder, as well as my start as a composer came from needing an outlet to channel all my ups and downs and restore some semblance of normality.
I've also noticed I've been drifting between two styles lately, one fast, heavy and bombastic, and the other really laid-back, pensive and ambient. This time I decided to focus on both independently and distill each one to its essence.
I have a total of 5 recordings to share this time! 2 completed demos and 3 snippets of demos.
Ecstasies The happy album. Or the wild one. Fast songs featuring me breaking the BPM barrier over and over again. Tons of swings from placid to energetic and back again. Maybe a few lucid moments here and there. I'll most likely record each individual song with more takes than usual because at no point in the ~55-minute span of this album do I want to sound tired or exhausted.
Everything I just said above is in this song, the title track of Ecstasies. It's the latest in a series of songs stretching back to Invincible on my Nightlust album (which is no longer up... I need to remember to re-up my first three albums on Bandcamp in the near future). If you liked Soar, you'll love Scar-Ecstasy.
Another flaming riff followed by a melody, followed by another melody, all coming together (with another melody just past the endpoint of this recording) to form something that gives me this feeling of something just straight-up running into me.
Skeletons The not so happy album. Things take a lot longer to happen in each song. Some of the songs have an actual climax. Some don't; they just fade away as indecisively as they started. This is my least spammy album to date. Other than a one-minute span in two songs (one of which is below), my left hand doesn't move any faster than a brisk walk, and I try to make use of the absence of sound in addition to (as usual) making use of the sound itself.
Demo: Ruminations Listen to it here:https://soundcloud.com/mikhail-garrievitch-soumar/ruminations-demo This would be the exception. I'd add a song that better exemplifies the sound of Skeletons, but they're either too long or I haven't recorded them yet. This one still has most of the telltale signs though, and is a more pensive song than my usual fare.
This song starts a bit similar to Ruminations. That said, I want to take it in a completely different direction. Purely atmospheric, no climax. But I don't have much done past this initial melody.
That's everything I have on my plate in the near future. Hopefully with the summer, the only things interfering with my composing process are going to the gym and going to work, so whatever I'll get done, I'll get done much more quickly.
Final note - the 5 and 6 covers are just placeholders. They're nicer to look at than my default MS Paint pic.
Enjoy! If you have criticisms or think a certain idea doesn't work or just completely sounds bad, let me know.
This is the kind of ambient music I really like when I'm studying, except I don't know any artists or albums to listen to. I know nothing about piano, by the way, but from as a layman I think it sounds pretty good :D
On May 16 2016 08:37 banjoetheredskin wrote: This is the kind of ambient music I really like when I'm studying, except I don't know any artists or albums to listen to. I know nothing about piano, by the way, but from as a layman I think it sounds pretty good :D
Glad you think so!
I recommend the Braid soundtrack if you've never heard it before, it's otherworldly:
Hopefully this does not offend you, but I'd be interested in seeing a video of you playing some of this.
This isn't to detract from your compositions, but if you're physically playing this first track, I would be rather surprised. For one, the notes are played in essentially perfect time. Unless you're a human metronome, this seems a bit...off, almost stale. There's no detectable rubato at all, not even in the softer sections where it might benefit.
Normally I wouldn't ask for such a thing, but your signature claims that you're "playing" these pieces. I can tell you that this would be met with a healthy dose of skepticism on some of the piano-oriented forums out there. One can read about Joyce Hatto if one wonders why we're such a suspicious bunch. Just my 2 cents
On May 17 2016 11:44 tenklavir wrote: Hopefully this does not offend you, but I'd be interested in seeing a video of you playing some of this.
This isn't to detract from your compositions, but if you're physically playing this first track, I would be rather surprised. For one, the notes are played in essentially perfect time. Unless you're a human metronome, this seems a bit...off, almost stale. There's no detectable rubato at all, not even in the softer sections where it might benefit.
Normally I wouldn't ask for such a thing, but your signature claims that you're "playing" these pieces. I can tell you that this would be met with a healthy dose of skepticism on some of the piano-oriented forums out there. One can read about Joyce Hatto if one wonders why we're such a suspicious bunch. Just my 2 cents
My plugin cleans up the timing issues (I don't claim to play as perfectly as the final recording), but I'll provide a video as soon as I get the chance!
Thank you for your reply! Hmm, I guess I would ask, why use this plugin? Like Autotune, it basically removes a core part of the human element of the performance. How can we 'feel' your compositions if the recordings lack the nuance of human imperfections? Otherwise it just sounds like a MIDI file with a nice patch.
On May 17 2016 22:13 tenklavir wrote: Thank you for your reply! Hmm, I guess I would ask, why use this plugin? Like Autotune, it basically removes a core part of the human element of the performance. How can we 'feel' your compositions if the recordings lack the nuance of human imperfections? Otherwise it just sounds like a MIDI file with a nice patch.
Convenience mostly. Rubato makes things harder to quantize and subsequently clean up. I record with a metronome at full volume and pound things out until I synchronize as closely as possible to the clicker, and my plugin does the rest. And I guess to some level the imperfections piss me off. It applies to imperfections in the composition too - I'll listen to my album later on and cringe everytime I should've hit a different note or had a different progression or a cleaner solo. Add in imperfections, and a lot of imperfections, in performance and it'll drive me completely nuts.
I have other things that I have recorded/am recording/will record the old fashioned way (my opera's going to have a crapload of dirty solos, keyboard ones included), but Ecstasies and Skeletons are not among them.
Rubato makes things harder to quantize and subsequently clean up.
...record with a metronome at full volume...
...pound things out...
Fast songs featuring me breaking the BPM barrier...
I play keyboard really fast!
Again I don't mean to offend, but I have to question the artistic merits of statements such as these. On the composition side, the apparent preoccupation with speed, clockwork synchronization, and number of notes mutes the emotional impact of the work. There are arpeggios and chords, generally fast, and with binary dynamics (either loud or soft). I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling.
Horowitz, Rubinstein, Zimerman, Pollini, Gould, etc. are among the all-time greats not because of how fast they can hammer out notes to a metronome, but their ability to connect with their audience. You seem more concerned with how fast the notes are coming out, rather than the impact they are supposed to have on the listener.
Again I don't mean to offend, but I have to question the artistic merits of statements such as these. On the composition side, the apparent preoccupation with speed, clockwork synchronization, and number of notes mutes the emotional impact of the work. There are arpeggios and chords, generally fast, and with binary dynamics (either loud or soft). I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling.
Horowitz, Rubinstein, Zimerman, Pollini, Gould, etc. are among the all-time greats not because of how fast they can hammer out notes to a metronome, but their ability to connect with their audience. You seem more concerned with how fast the notes are coming out, rather than the impact they are supposed to have on the listener.
This is actually why I split my playstyle into two. Ecstasies follows and takes to its extreme the trend where I intend to overwhelm the listener with speed and sound, huge buildups and bombastic conclusions. It's meant to exhilarate One of my biggest gripes about the piano is that it doesn't "fill" sound very well as a string orchestra might, and I spam notes as possible in an attempt to create this "fill". There is absolutely nothing subtle about what I intend to do here.
I disagree on the part about binary dynamics by the way; while I fluctuate a lot, there's definitely more dynamic variability than you imply.
Little side note - I actually started trying to approximate the sound and feel of power metal on a piano. Whether or not I succeeded is a matter of debate, but the rigid, fast tempos and the note spam for the sake of note spam is derived directly from the same elements in power metal.
My other album would be the style you're looking for. It's a lot more restrained and "natural"-sounding. I'm also trying not to rely on quantizing as much (in the finished songs), and where i do use it, I'm manually adding back some of the lost elements - the rubato, the phrasing, the little discrepancies between the way I lay on some of my fingers and not my other ones, and so on - to at least approximate the style I originally intended it to be.
I think your criticisms about the disconnect between my playing and the audience listening is at least in part valid though, and I want to improve on that. Part of it is laziness, and scheduling around my other projects permitting, I'm going to spend more time making all of the songs at least a bit more "organic" as it were.
EPT
