I don't always read descriptions and comments on videos and was about to ask about the tone and timbre of that harpsichord but happened to read your comments. Somehow though, your playing transcends the instrument itself. My only personal experience is with electronic harpsichord sounds, so this video is very enlightening. Thank you.
Many thanks! I've been working on improving the sound recently, even though I'm still an idiot at it. (An just now realized the huge amount of work required in all the professional recordings we've been spoiled by.) The harpsichord needs to be voiced to avoid the "too sharp" and uneven sounds in some places; i'll keep iterating for sound quality :-) Thanks for noticing and don't hesitate to give me positive/negative feedback on any aspects, Cheers!
Stunning! Would you share some insight about your thought process? Something rather advanced for someone like me with music Degrees who would be in the application of the knowledge to improvisation. Cheers!
I would reccomend looking into derek remes work on thoroughbass and working on a thoroughbass treatise to begin if you haven't done that yet. and transposing all the exercises up and down 4 semitones so 9 keys total
@@killphil45 I second this! Figured bass is immensely useful for learning improvisation. Also, studying music is one thing, but listening and absorbing how the music sounds and feels is just as paramount.
@@killphil45 ah Derek! We were classmates at Berklee. Yes I am familiar with his work and with many treatises. Need to work on transposition, definitely! But besides instructions and written information that is inevitably post hoc, I’d love to see a merely practical, vocal description of it, like...”here, I hit g minor, and now I do this and that because and because”. Thanks for the comment:)
Many thanks for your kind words :-) I'm not sure if I can do a good job at explaining the thought process, but I'll gladly try to share some things: We could see 2 sides to improvisation: (1) Making a good rhythm + melody (2) 'The rest' I won't talk about (1) too much because that's both a very personal notion, and I think you would agree that there isn't any *real* theory on how to do this. This depends on inspiration/luck/time of day/music we listen to/tastes/etc... However I do want to highlight that this should be the foremost goal when improvising. I mainly "think" or rather try to "sing" a melody as it comes in my head and /then/ add some structure/patterns/theory on it (ergo, (2)) rather than the converse. I think it's more suitable to add some structure to core melody than to try to make a melody emerge from a structure. (Although it can be *very* helpful to have a constrained structure to find good melodies (similar to writing constraints, etc..) I would reduce this to a case of (1) since we're still generating a melody; What I'm trying to avoid here is the overuse of patterns and the fear of making "mistakes". I've often seen fellow students [fully including myself :-)!] stuck when improvising because they were thinking soo much trying to avoid parallel fifths/octaves/etc.. what then tends to happen is that they fall into a safer pattern such as harmonic circles which might be worse than the original "problem"). Okay! Let's see what I mean by (2): By (2) I mean in a very broad sense the "Theory" we use. But what *is* a theory? A theory is an abstraction that helps us understand and generalize things. Usually a theory makes a *lossy* model of the real world thing we're trying to capture (abstractions). Because of the simplifications, it allows you to manage more of a specific part of the problem you're trying to solve; Let me give an example. (I apologize, my mathematical side is shining through ;-) Let's say we want to study polyphony in the context of a choir of voices. By definition, our "real world problem" has a horizontal construction; Each person has a voice and should sing a coherent melody. We also want the voices to work well together. Someone came up with the great idea of 'harmony' (the *theory*): It's very complicated to analyze each voice horizontally, so it can be helpful to view them vertically, as /chords/. Harmony is a great theory because it allows us to do stuff that would be hard without: If you play a single voice (say, the cantus firmus, or maybe even the bass) you can "generate" reasonable additional voices by using the rules of harmony. However, it's important to recognize that any theory is not "truth in itself" but rather a tool to help us reason about a complicated problem. Thus, I think it's crucial we use the theory that is *adapted* to our problem. As such I come to the main point I wanted to make: I think most elements of music theory we learn are not extremely well adapted for improvisation. Indeed, when you improvise you have not only to (i) make very fast decisions (low computation time) but also (ii) you must do so in a so-called (in computer science) /online/ or /streaming/ fashion which means that you are generating your piece of music as a stream and can neither change the past, nor use what you'll do in the future to affect your current decision. (Contrast this with composition.) Pfew, sorry for the wall of text, but It's important to say this as I think that one of the most important things when you improvise is to develop /your/ theory (the one adapted to the music you like and want to improvise). Generic things I would recommend in terms of theory for impro: (a) - I usually think about simple 3 note chords. The seventh is just viewed as an additional voice. (b) - When you can, look more at the intervals /within/ a chord rather than the chord itself. This helps getting a little bit more granularity into your analysis of a chord and its /renversements/ (inversions in English I think). This is very helpful for polyphonic music. (b') - If you find yourself on a chord is too big to fully analyze on the go when improvising, just focus on the interaction of a few intervals inside it. (Ex, dissonant seconds that might resolve. Or getting a specific sound with an augmented fifth) (c) - Using modes can be very helpful. (Again staying in elements which work well with a more horizonal idea of music). However, don't "think" too much about them. There are a lot of sections in baroque music which are the use of a mode (usually a simple one, like dorian, but I've heard some mixolydian in bach ;-) (d) - Instead of thinking about a big chord progression, have some things ready in your tool-box, but use them because you /want/ to, not like (cadenza -> circle of fifths -> cadenza -> circle of ...). Such things are, (of course) cadenzas, plagal cadenzas, harmonic circles, ways to modulate you like ("mini" chord progressions, ex I->VI->harmonic circle, as in near the beginning of the start of the second WTC prelude.) Somewhat more precise things for countrapuntal impros: (e) - Focus on *orthogonality* when you improvise. You want people to be able to hear all the voice, so it's very important to make them "orthogonal". Below are two tips for this: (e1) - Orthogonality of melody (counterpoint). Focus on not having voices "wasted" vertically by doubling notes of the chord. (Don't worry about doubling the bass, this happens naturally when improvising). Notes that are octaves to each other are difficult to take apart. Similarly fifths are ok, but not "great" because it's "too pure" sounding. That's one of the subtle reasons why the 3rd is usually the standard interval for counterpoint (at least in the baroque, 3rds were considered much more dissonant earlier in history :-) I don't really recommend thinking too much about the counterpoint rules, it's very good to try *analysing* existing music with them to understand the construction (and see where they are broken!), but it's a little too cognitive when improvising and it's more important to internalize them in the ear and fingers rather than the head. (e2) - Orthogonality of rhythms. I'm a big fan of this one, and few people think about how important rhythms are in polyphonic music. The idea is as follows: If you have two rhythms of concurrently playing voices say rhythms R1 and R2 you want the rhythms to be "orthogonal" in the following sense: If R1 has fast notes -> R2 has slow notes or a silence, and the converse as well. Viewed another way, if you "overlay" both rhythms the notes of the one fall into the holes of the other and vice-versa. Again, I'm very temped to go in a very mathematical game here, but the only actual important part is to practice (poly)-rhythms in the right and left hand. (The left hand is especially reticent to playing more complex rhythms when the right hand is there too.) ...as you see, it's only very very simple stuff, but it's suited to the live nature of impro as well as the music I want to improvise... as well as my own limited mental capacity ;-) The *best* tip I could give you about the thought process/theory is to develop your own theory *for improvisation*, by practice, looking at what works/what doesn't and using the full power of general music theory to understand it (but not live when improvising!),and ..importantly: ..stealing from Bach, Scarlatti, Rameau, Purcell, etc.. ;-0 I hope this helps somewhat, and don't hesitate to.. just improvise! Thanks again for your comment, and sorry for the (mostly low on informative content) block of text, Cheers!
@@Borogrove dear Barogrove! Many thanks for this wonderful reply! It surely exceeds my wildest expectations. I am grateful you took the time to discuss the subject thoroughly with a fellow musician on such a delightful topic. I definitely agree with you on the low computation time and the necessity of making some apparatus, or theory, as you pointed out, that is functional to a specific need. In my case I feel I am full of ideas and themes and I am quite knowledgeable the style (i.e. Baroque, broadly), but I often find myself stuck with having to think about where is the third, or the seventh in a specific moment in time, or thinking that I want to modulate and I need to introduce a certain new note, or wanting to modulate to the vi and loosing time thinking what chord it actually is and how to reach it. I end up being absorbed by the low computation time problem and stop playing. I still have clear in my mind where I want to go though. You made a great point about singing, as I think this is the most important thing that has been lost in music education. The idea that some horizontality needs to be preserved otherwise we are thinking in blocks. I will also work on orthogonality. Another good point. And yes, I guess the big answer is...practice! I wish we could have a nice room at hand with two harpsichords, brew some fresh coffee and talk about music:) Thanks again.
The lute suites are such wonderful examples of *condensed* Bach greatness; I listened to them recently so it's very possible that I stole some things haha ;-)
@Yuki If you keep improvising and generally doing and working on what you love the rest comes by itself with time! I really don't have some sort of music "super ability"; The fingers learn many things on their own with time, freeing your head to think more about melodies. Keep improvising
@Juan, @NaN, Alma is immensely talented! I certainly wasn't improvising like her at her age (nor improvising at all :-) The most important thing I can say is that we should all improvise in the style(s) we like best; not to compete with each other but purely for enjoyment and to hopefully play the music we like. Alma is very masterful in the classical/early-romantic style(s); above all I wish for her to improvise the music /she/ likes the most, be it baroque, modern or jazz or an entirely new style. The world always need more music :-) Cheers!
Hi, i like to improvise to especially in baroque music, but i have difficult when i try to add different notes to the scale that i play; that kind of jazz notes that give a tragic sound Example: If i play the scale of the toccata and fuge in d minor of Bach and when i'm playing i want to push the Ab/G# or the Gb/F# sometimes it sound good but sometimes no. Can you make a video with an explanation please? Sorry for my language, i don't speak english and i have never studied music
using modulations to related keys (for d minor it would be a minor and g minor, but c and e are cool too) and melodic minor scale makes wonders with baroque style, at least that's how I see it (as an amateur piano player)
I by no means am as good at improvising as Borogrove, but I suggest first studying counterpoint/music theory and listening to A LOT of baroque music to internalize all the nuances and idiosyncrasies. After doing all of that, improvise on simple existing subjects (preferably ones that have a lot of stepwise or sequential motion.)
With all of this said, this is much easier said than done, so do not get frustrated if progress is slow. Creating such beautiful music on a whim is difficult and takes much practice to become proficient at. (:
@@Borogrove Oh, I forgot to mention amazing job as always ;) Also, I’m transcribing your fugue improv at 8:18 as I’m taking my Microsoft certification classes :P lol
I guess music is not in vain now that my piano is getting fixed. Im learning tricks like switching to e minor real quick by the B major chord while playing in D major that kind of thing
Ha! Indeed you are very right about the parallel fifths ;-)! I have not been very active recently but I just checked out your channel and you have really awesome video; many thanks for sharing! I’ll be sure to watch them and I’d recommend everyone reading this to subscribe! Cheers!
@@Borogrove No, no, I meant we need to talk about improvisation! Parallel fifths are inevitable, plenty of the time. I've enjoyed your channel very much!
This guy takes improvisation to another level
That’s the art of Partimento for ya
I don't always read descriptions and comments on videos and was about to ask about the tone and timbre of that harpsichord but happened to read your comments. Somehow though, your playing transcends the instrument itself. My only personal experience is with electronic harpsichord sounds, so this video is very enlightening. Thank you.
Dude this is so so so so good.
You're a legend as always!
Many thanks
@@Borogrove this is ricercare :)?
The sound is very sharp, good work with recording this (and playing of course) :)
Many thanks!
I've been working on improving the sound recently, even though I'm still an idiot at it. (An just now realized the huge amount of work required in all the professional recordings we've been spoiled by.) The harpsichord needs to be voiced to avoid the "too sharp" and uneven sounds in some places; i'll keep iterating for sound quality :-)
Thanks for noticing and don't hesitate to give me positive/negative feedback on any aspects,
Cheers!
@@Borogrove Isn't the harpischord an instrument that goes out of tune fairly easily? Do you tweak it yourself?
incredibly awesome
Epic fugue 8:04
Stunning! Would you share some insight about your thought process? Something rather advanced for someone like me with music Degrees who would be in the application of the knowledge to improvisation. Cheers!
I would reccomend looking into derek remes work on thoroughbass and working on a thoroughbass treatise to begin if you haven't done that yet. and transposing all the exercises up and down 4 semitones so 9 keys total
@@killphil45 I second this! Figured bass is immensely useful for learning improvisation. Also, studying music is one thing, but listening and absorbing how the music sounds and feels is just as paramount.
@@killphil45 ah Derek! We were classmates at Berklee. Yes I am familiar with his work and with many treatises. Need to work on transposition, definitely! But besides instructions and written information that is inevitably post hoc, I’d love to see a merely practical, vocal description of it, like...”here, I hit g minor, and now I do this and that because and because”. Thanks for the comment:)
Many thanks for your kind words :-)
I'm not sure if I can do a good job at explaining the thought process, but I'll gladly try to share some things:
We could see 2 sides to improvisation:
(1) Making a good rhythm + melody
(2) 'The rest'
I won't talk about (1) too much because that's both a very personal notion, and I think you would agree that there isn't any *real* theory on how to do this. This depends on inspiration/luck/time of day/music we listen to/tastes/etc...
However I do want to highlight that this should be the foremost goal when improvising. I mainly "think" or rather try to "sing" a melody as it comes in my head and /then/ add some structure/patterns/theory on it (ergo, (2)) rather than the converse.
I think it's more suitable to add some structure to core melody than to try to make a melody emerge from a structure.
(Although it can be *very* helpful to have a constrained structure to find good melodies (similar to writing constraints, etc..) I would reduce this to a case of (1) since we're still generating a melody; What I'm trying to avoid here is the overuse of patterns and the fear of making "mistakes". I've often seen fellow students [fully including myself :-)!] stuck when improvising because they were thinking soo much trying to avoid parallel fifths/octaves/etc.. what then tends to happen is that they fall into a safer pattern such as harmonic circles which might be worse than the original "problem").
Okay! Let's see what I mean by (2):
By (2) I mean in a very broad sense the "Theory" we use. But what *is* a theory? A theory is an abstraction that helps us understand and generalize things. Usually a theory makes a *lossy* model of the real world thing we're trying to capture (abstractions). Because of the simplifications, it allows you to manage more of a specific part of the problem you're trying to solve; Let me give an example. (I apologize, my mathematical side is shining through ;-)
Let's say we want to study polyphony in the context of a choir of voices. By definition, our "real world problem" has a horizontal construction; Each person has a voice and should sing a coherent melody. We also want the voices to work well together.
Someone came up with the great idea of 'harmony' (the *theory*): It's very complicated to analyze each voice horizontally, so it can be helpful to view them vertically, as /chords/.
Harmony is a great theory because it allows us to do stuff that would be hard without: If you play a single voice (say, the cantus firmus, or maybe even the bass) you can "generate" reasonable additional voices by using the rules of harmony.
However, it's important to recognize that any theory is not "truth in itself" but rather a tool to help us reason about a complicated problem. Thus, I think it's crucial we use the theory that is *adapted* to our problem.
As such I come to the main point I wanted to make:
I think most elements of music theory we learn are not extremely well adapted for improvisation.
Indeed, when you improvise you have not only to (i) make very fast decisions (low computation time) but also (ii) you must do so in a so-called (in computer science) /online/ or /streaming/ fashion which means that you are generating your piece of music as a stream and can neither change the past, nor use what you'll do in the future to affect your current decision. (Contrast this with composition.)
Pfew, sorry for the wall of text, but It's important to say this as I think that one of the most important things when you improvise is to develop /your/ theory (the one adapted to the music you like and want to improvise).
Generic things I would recommend in terms of theory for impro:
(a) - I usually think about simple 3 note chords. The seventh is just viewed as an additional voice.
(b) - When you can, look more at the intervals /within/ a chord rather than the chord itself. This helps getting a little bit more granularity into your analysis of a chord and its /renversements/ (inversions in English I think). This is very helpful for polyphonic music.
(b') - If you find yourself on a chord is too big to fully analyze on the go when improvising, just focus on the interaction of a few intervals inside it. (Ex, dissonant seconds that might resolve. Or getting a specific sound with an augmented fifth)
(c) - Using modes can be very helpful. (Again staying in elements which work well with a more horizonal idea of music). However, don't "think" too much about them. There are a lot of sections in baroque music which are the use of a mode (usually a simple one, like dorian, but I've heard some mixolydian in bach ;-)
(d) - Instead of thinking about a big chord progression, have some things ready in your tool-box, but use them because you /want/ to, not like (cadenza -> circle of fifths -> cadenza -> circle of ...). Such things are, (of course) cadenzas, plagal cadenzas, harmonic circles, ways to modulate you like ("mini" chord progressions, ex I->VI->harmonic circle, as in near the beginning of the start of the second WTC prelude.)
Somewhat more precise things for countrapuntal impros:
(e) - Focus on *orthogonality* when you improvise. You want people to be able to hear all the voice, so it's very important to make them "orthogonal". Below are two tips for this:
(e1) - Orthogonality of melody (counterpoint). Focus on not having voices "wasted" vertically by doubling notes of the chord. (Don't worry about doubling the bass, this happens naturally when improvising). Notes that are octaves to each other are difficult to take apart. Similarly fifths are ok, but not "great" because it's "too pure" sounding. That's one of the subtle reasons why the 3rd is usually the standard interval for counterpoint (at least in the baroque, 3rds were considered much more dissonant earlier in history :-) I don't really recommend thinking too much about the counterpoint rules, it's very good to try *analysing* existing music with them to understand the construction (and see where they are broken!), but it's a little too cognitive when improvising and it's more important to internalize them in the ear and fingers rather than the head.
(e2) - Orthogonality of rhythms. I'm a big fan of this one, and few people think about how important rhythms are in polyphonic music. The idea is as follows: If you have two rhythms of concurrently playing voices say rhythms R1 and R2 you want the rhythms to be "orthogonal" in the following sense: If R1 has fast notes -> R2 has slow notes or a silence, and the converse as well. Viewed another way, if you "overlay" both rhythms the notes of the one fall into the holes of the other and vice-versa. Again, I'm very temped to go in a very mathematical game here, but the only actual important part is to practice (poly)-rhythms in the right and left hand. (The left hand is especially reticent to playing more complex rhythms when the right hand is there too.)
...as you see, it's only very very simple stuff, but it's suited to the live nature of impro as well as the music I want to improvise... as well as my own limited mental capacity ;-)
The *best* tip I could give you about the thought process/theory is to develop your own theory *for improvisation*, by practice, looking at what works/what doesn't and using the full power of general music theory to understand it (but not live when improvising!),and ..importantly:
..stealing from Bach, Scarlatti, Rameau, Purcell, etc.. ;-0
I hope this helps somewhat, and don't hesitate to.. just improvise!
Thanks again for your comment, and sorry for the (mostly low on informative content) block of text,
Cheers!
@@Borogrove dear Barogrove! Many thanks for this wonderful reply! It surely exceeds my wildest expectations. I am grateful you took the time to discuss the subject thoroughly with a fellow musician on such a delightful topic. I definitely agree with you on the low computation time and the necessity of making some apparatus, or theory, as you pointed out, that is functional to a specific need. In my case I feel I am full of ideas and themes and I am quite knowledgeable the style (i.e. Baroque, broadly), but I often find myself stuck with having to think about where is the third, or the seventh in a specific moment in time, or thinking that I want to modulate and I need to introduce a certain new note, or wanting to modulate to the vi and loosing time thinking what chord it actually is and how to reach it. I end up being absorbed by the low computation time problem and stop playing. I still have clear in my mind where I want to go though. You made a great point about singing, as I think this is the most important thing that has been lost in music education. The idea that some horizontality needs to be preserved otherwise we are thinking in blocks. I will also work on orthogonality. Another good point. And yes, I guess the big answer is...practice! I wish we could have a nice room at hand with two harpsichords, brew some fresh coffee and talk about music:) Thanks again.
I really enjoyed this! Your improv here reminds me of Bach's 997 Fugue.
The lute suites are such wonderful examples of *condensed* Bach greatness; I listened to them recently so it's very possible that I stole some things haha ;-)
Dosent matter how much i train, i would never do what u do. You are the Alma Deutscher of the Baroque, maybe even better then her.
I think he's way better.
@Yuki If you keep improvising and generally doing and working on what you love the rest comes by itself with time! I really don't have some sort of music "super ability"; The fingers learn many things on their own with time, freeing your head to think more about melodies.
Keep improvising
@Juan, @NaN, Alma is immensely talented! I certainly wasn't improvising like her at her age (nor improvising at all :-)
The most important thing I can say is that we should all improvise in the style(s) we like best; not to compete with each other but purely for enjoyment and to hopefully play the music we like.
Alma is very masterful in the classical/early-romantic style(s); above all I wish for her to improvise the music /she/ likes the most, be it baroque, modern or jazz or an entirely new style. The world always need more music :-)
Cheers!
He really is ^^^
This is so cool
It sounds like Frescobaldi's tocattas!
:-) Many thanks!
Hi, i like to improvise to especially in baroque music, but i have difficult when i try to add different notes to the scale that i play; that kind of jazz notes that give a tragic sound
Example:
If i play the scale of the toccata and fuge in d minor of Bach and when i'm playing i want to push the Ab/G# or the Gb/F# sometimes it sound good but sometimes no.
Can you make a video with an explanation please?
Sorry for my language, i don't speak english and i have never studied music
My advise is to learn music theory as soon as possible, that way you will know why some notes sound better than others
using modulations to related keys (for d minor it would be a minor and g minor, but c and e are cool too) and melodic minor scale makes wonders with baroque style, at least that's how I see it (as an amateur piano player)
If you could write a quick roadmap to improvise fugues, what would be the steps?
I by no means am as good at improvising as Borogrove, but I suggest first studying counterpoint/music theory and listening to A LOT of baroque music to internalize all the nuances and idiosyncrasies. After doing all of that, improvise on simple existing subjects (preferably ones that have a lot of stepwise or sequential motion.)
With all of this said, this is much easier said than done, so do not get frustrated if progress is slow. Creating such beautiful music on a whim is difficult and takes much practice to become proficient at. (:
My ear expected to hear the BACH motif at 8:18, lol!
Haha, yes, I think I see the buildup could definitely suggest it ;-0
@@Borogrove Oh, I forgot to mention amazing job as always ;) Also, I’m transcribing your fugue improv at 8:18 as I’m taking my Microsoft certification classes :P lol
I guess music is not in vain now that my piano is getting fixed. Im learning tricks like switching to e minor real quick by the B major chord while playing in D major that kind of thing
We need to talk.
Ha! Indeed you are very right about the parallel fifths ;-)!
I have not been very active recently but I just checked out your channel and you have really awesome video; many thanks for sharing!
I’ll be sure to watch them and I’d recommend everyone reading this to subscribe!
Cheers!
@@Borogrove No, no, I meant we need to talk about improvisation! Parallel fifths are inevitable, plenty of the time. I've enjoyed your channel very much!
@@parallelfifths2824 cool profile name and pic :D
@@alexanderbayramov2626 Thanks! :)