Embrace the Noodle

I'm back.

Mindless, seemingly random picking away at the keys. Akin to doodling for artists, noodling wanders around the keys looking for a hook.

To be clear: when I sit down to play, there is no sheet music, no preconceived lines; what comes out comes out. While purely improvisational in nature, the music is shaped to resemble a "finished" work. You'll understand, I hope, when I get lost in the music and find myself restarting.

If the music, at first, sounds like classical piano, that's my training. As a Gemini myself, I enjoy the duality of the piano and forte, classical and rock/jazz rhythms, slow and fast. And as a classically trained musician, I marvelled at those who can take a note or two and fill an entire evening, and aspired to gain this ability.

This was my first attempt under the microphones, so I excuse myself. I also cringe when I hear myself losing it toward the end. Nice save, though! Mics were pointed through the open top of the piano. Upon repeated listening, I surprise myself. (April 20, 2007)

for those of you listening through iTunes.

I've decided to make available several cuts, entitled Didn't Make the Cut. Oftentimes, I noodle around for a while, not satisfied with the results. On second hearing, though, these do have merit. To those perfectionists out there, if I waited to post these musings until they were perfect, you'd still be looking at a blank page.

With these excerpts, you can listen in on my practice sessions...

for those of you listening through your iTunes software

I used to play piano. People who knew me then tell me that I was pretty good. I should have been. I began my lessons at the age of 4 with my mother, a professional classical musician, and continued on with a pair of the finest classical piano instructors in the Philadelphia area. At the age of 9, and again at 12, I won the Philadelphia Orchestra's young performer competitions and was honored to play a movement of a Haydn concerto (age 9) and a Kabalevsky concerto (age 12) with the orchestra. To tell the truth, I barely remember either event now.

High school. So long ago. Somewhere around 16 or 17, I was discovering popular music and creating my own arrangements. I had noticed that I couldn't play a note without a piece of sheet music in front of me. Jazz musicians amazed me, and I couldn't conceive of just making stuff up on the fly... I had been trained to follow the notes on the staff and to play what some long-dead composer wrote centuries before - I had no music of my own. So I threw all of my sheet music away and determined that I would learn to improvise. Within a couple of years, I could sit down at the piano and play for an hour without thinking. (Well, direct from brain to fingers, anyway.)

Somewhere along the way, I gave up piano entirely.

Something happened a few months ago. Maybe I was listening to a bad piece of music, maybe I was watching Grammies being handed out to bad musicians, but something happened to make me realize just what it was that I had thrown away. Suddenly, I wanted it back.

I had a piano tuner come over (several times, actually - my little Baldwin upright hadn't been touched in many years), then started playing again. It's nothing like riding a bicycle. The muscles are atrophied, I have no endurance, my fingers won't go where I want them to nor do my hands seem to want to work together. I cursed myself for having let it go.

Samuel Barber's three Orchestral Essays (No.2 is incredible; Slatkin w/St. Louis Symphony)
Emerson, Lake & Palmer (self-titled album)
Jean-Luc Ponty (mutliple albums)
Kate Bush (multiple - the voice gives me chills)
Loggins & Messina: Mother Lode (genius)
Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos No. 2 & No. 3 by Horacio Gutierrez
Yellowjackets (multiple)
and as much early Genesis as I can fit in lossless MP3
Even a handful of Tori Amos and several other pianists...