All Episodes

Small group, but one new person tonight. I kept leaning into a bel canto, faux operatic sound tonight. I think the theme to All Things Considered worked its way in there. I was enjoying hearing harmonies that flipped between major and minor. Enjoy.

A bunch of new folks tonight! I must say, the numbers are growing. We still have enough chairs, but it's making me wonder if we will get to standing room only!  Anyway, had fun tonight, doing a little more jazz progressions and quirky rhythms. Enjoy.

Not much to say this time; enjoy!

Small but dedicated troupe tonight. Glad for the presence of people actively listening; it keeps me actively listening as well. In recent weeks I've been attempting to go into harmonies I'm not sure I know what I'll hear, and I have to remain adaptable to split-second implications of the harmonies. It's fun! The results are some surprises and a few thunks. Enjoy!

I've had a bit of trouble with the audio signal on this episode; hopefully this will be the last time I'm replacing the episode in the podcast. It was a quiet night with just my wife in the audience; she got the covid. I stayed in a primarily mellow mood, with a few unusual (for me) harmonic explorations. One quote got in there but I don't know what is was, I just know it's something I've heard before! Maybe you can tell me? Enjoy.

WE had almost twenty people here tonight! Some new folks too. I stayed squarely in the tonal realm tonight, and did a few genre-specific type pieces. One started off like an old hymn, then became a pompous overblown operatic cliché! I still didn't record it, but I did have a successful looping improv that was meditative, and didn't include any equipment failures. Progress!

After the first piece I really felt like stretching a bit, so I did! I'm not sure if the pieces "worked" as well, but it is a good idea to just let the music be what it wants to be. I then did some looping but of course forgot to record it, so tonight's episode is a little short. Enjoy.

Our numbers have grown! WE had about twenty people tonight. I was buried in audio cabling issues until right before we began, but I was able to change gears and get into the music. I did a looping piece at the end which went very well; once I figure out how to record everything along with the piano I'l start including it in the podcast. 
I did a bunch of straight-ahead improvs, then did one that was pretty experimental. It morphed into progressive jazz/Gershwin kind of thing. Enjoy!

Really big crowd tonight! Some new people, and the piano is in a more central spot after we painted and I reconfigured the studio. Consequently the music was a little more all over the place! I kept almost playing a melody of a song I know but couldn't quite bring to consciousness. Maybe you can tell me! Enjoy.

Always exciting to have new guests! I stayed in the very tonal realm tonight, and was also feeling pretty mellow; we had our first fire for the fall! Some pieces began very muted but got pretty energetic. Some quotes emerged; "Trials and Tribulations" from Jesus Christ, Superstar, "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Pachelbel's Canon in D, even Dancing Queen, which seems to show up rather frequently...
Enjoy.

One piece began in a very atonal, "contemporary piano" kind of way, but then I caught a groove and really dug into some unfamiliar sonorities. Maybe not good for listening while making dinner, but who am I to say?
Staying with piano only for the time being for the podcast; but for the guests who come in person I stop recording after 45 minutes and do an ambient/looping thing at the end. Building confidence!
 

Some new guests tonight; always fun to welcome them! Played some gentle explorations but also some pretty atonal energetic stuff. Not much in the way of quotes, but "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" (melody by Chopin) made it in there for a moment. 

We are back at it! This begins year seven. I hadn't practiced with the looping since the last episode in June or July, so I stuck with the old Steinway. One friend asked for a piece with the equipment, so I obliged, but didn't record it here.
The music tonight was in several different harmonic realms; sometimes new-age, sometimes pop-rock. The pop-rock one had a bunch of quotes that I couldn't even list; You Can't Hurry Love, Dancing Queen, and others... enjoy!

OK! This is a bit of a benchmark episode. I still played solo piano for much of the evening, but I switched to the computer/looping setup and was able to keep the music going without running into tech problems, and today I succeeded in creating a simple mixdown of the different sounds and combining it with the piano recording. I cut out the gradual layering of the percussion instruments, as it takes too long to wait for a melodic element. Enjoy.

It's funny; I was all set to do more looping and synth playing tonight, but I just kept playing solo piano. I got a little carried away in the moment and a few times I stumbled over myself, but to tell the truth I almost like it, because it's not so "careful". A couple quotes were glanced at at the the end; Dan Fogelberg's Longer Than and Lloyd Webber's All My Tribulations from Superstar. Enjoy.