7/18/13

I had a medical procedure that prevented me from making an entry in this mblog yesterday. My apologies. As usual, I like to try to make up for absences. This piece today is twice as long (two minutes) as an ordinary daily recording.

The minute long confine prevents a lot from happening musically. Just doubling to two minutes makes it possible to create a real song as opposed to a song idea, or seed for a song. When the idea came to me this morning to make the piece two minutes I realized how liberating it feels to open up the time constraint. Improvisations take on a character of their own and that includes an open time frame for complete freedom. Whereas I rarely indulge myself with forty minute ramblings like I used to in the seventies, these days my improvs might range from two to seven minutes. It's a pretty minor consideration when starting a piece.

Today, I have Chopin's E minor prelude sitting in front of me and I decided to run through the framework of the song (looking like two minutes worth or so). The left hand has simple chords and it's easy to see the harmonic content as you scan through them. The melody I keep in a E harmonic minor scale unless the chord underneath dictates something else. Even though the chords have a descending chromatic movement, most of the time the home key prevails. I ended up using no pedal which gives it a cleaner more intimate sound to me.

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