I was talking with a family friend who is a professional musician, who I hadn’t talked with since I was a child, and he asked, “are you still playing piano?” And I said yeah, sure. And then the conversation went into music and composing and software, he laments how little time he spends in front of a keyboard, composing music, and how difficult it is to find the notes. It comes out that I sit at my piano almost every day, doing improvised music exclusively. That’s the only kind of piano I play - not playing by ear, not reading music, usually not doing variations on a number*. And I get the impression that this is really unusual for a piano player - is it?
I don’t frequently play guitar, but when I do, it’s pretty much the same approach. I’ll sit there spending thirty minutes figuring out how to voice something, because I suck at expressing myself with a guitar. But when friends play guitar, they’ll come in with riffs, or if there is improv it is lead on top of a song playing over the stereo. (On guitar I can play improv or mimicked lead, or baseline, single note, and usually do when with others. But I almost never do so when playing alone / for solo leisure) I get the general impression that the way I play is weird, not necessarily bad but just unusual.
So not only piano, I’m wondering if it is generally unusual to play solo improv music on a regular basis.
~Max
* At least not consciously - I suspect everything I have ever played is stolen from existing music
I play folk music - upright bass and banjo. Took a lot of piano as a kid. I’ve known a few folk whose playing is limited to working things out by themselves by ear. But it is not at all common among the musicians I’ve known. With only a couple of exceptions I can think of, everyone I’ve known has felt there was some benefit to be derived from lessons, learning music theory, reading music, playing with other people.
I was having trouble finding a word for it! “plunking”, “noodling”, “dicking around”, etc. but like, without the connotation that it only lasts for a few seconds or minutes or is disjointed, or something in between other things.
As did I… I mean, I can read simple pieces even now. I can even write, albeit very slowly. And I can play a song by ear. But I rarely do any of these things, yet play regularly. I guess I’m asking how unusual that is. But I’m also not a musician - of the two musicians I know, one said he can play as I do (and would if he had the time), the other said it’s very weird. And of the people I know who play piano as a hobby, when they play that means reading or reciting something already read.
I play in an improvisational jam band. We don’t start any songs with a plan or even a hint like ‘let’s try something in the key of B.’ We just start jamming and see if any music falls out. It’s all recorded and a few of the guys enjoy listening through what’s mostly nonmusical noise to see if there are any songs in there. There’s about 9 or 10 of us, though almost never that many jam all at once.
I play alone at home, too, though a mixture of established songs and noodling.
I wonder if the person who says “I’m going to sit here and this piece of sheet music over and over again” is really having fun… when I did that, it wasn’t.
It was called “practice”, and I hated it. Took a music theory course in HS, just to get some sense of “that’s going to sound dissonant, that’s going to sound basic, and this here is going to sound… jazzy!”
Oops, forgot the word “play” in my post. [/pedant]
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Speaking of “play”, and Fun vs Practice…
The most amazing church organist I know has been doing it since he was a kid.
After a huuuge postlude (the last ‘show-off’ piece after the service; this was like Keith Emerson riffing on Bach while drinking Scotch), someone asked him how much he practiced. The pastor walked up and said “In all my years here, I have NEVER heard him practice a single note. He just comes in every morning and… plaaays…!”
I go through phases where I will play the piano a lot, or guitar. It’s mostly just playing whatever come into my head, though I do have some songs that I like to play such as Song For Guy and a few Super Tramp songs. There are a few things that happen, sometimes I will play around with my favourite chord progressions and often it just devolves into hours of just playing. I get totally lost in it.
Exactly what I was going to say. I noodle way too much. I haven’t played a structure piece from start to finish in almost twenty years now (it’s possible I have, but I don’t remember), whereas when I was growing up, I didn’t play anything unless if was on the staff in front of me. When I’m bored, I mostly like to play along to tracks or just plop down some compositional fragments that I never really intend to get back to.
I haven’t played piano for years. But when I did, that’s what I used to do. Play chord sequences and poke around at the keys, and just generally make nice sounds.
My college roommate, a serious pianist, was impressed until she realized the simplicity of what I was doing.