Our first major improvisation session with UCI took place last Tuesday. The class was divided into two groups; one group worked from Tower Building on Lafayette Street and the other worked from Avery Room in the Bobst Library. The video conference connecting three sites was made possible by ichat. Improvisation between two NYU groups worked out wonderfully; there was great musical energy shared by synthesizer, piano, toy piano, flute,and voice. Although there seemed to be an audio problem between NY and California and thus the UCI dancers did not pick up on our music, I think the session was very successful, at least between two NYU groups.
So here I'm going to report my performance in the improvisation session. As I made a promise last week, I was able to fight of my fear and just start playing simple musical ideas on the toy piano. Some were good, others not so inspirational (and the great thing was that I could blame the toy piano for its unevenly constructed keys). So far so good. Then I went on to the real piano and started playing something...then it suddenly became so hard because the sounds were much more exposed than those of the toy piano. But I didn't stop trying there. I thought I would just forget about all the unintentional dissonances I was making and would just focus on the musical gesture. I concentrated on my imaginative phrases and sounds and just went for them. The outcome was not that great but I think I did very well for my first major improvisation session!
As I listened to the sounds of other musicians I noticed there are no right notes or right rhythms; they simply play what they felt at a given moment. Next class I am going to explore further on improvisation, maybe introduce some dancing as well, and try different directions to expand my possibilities of music making.
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