spacing hack

yelyah

solo piano 20100425

On the first take, I started on the A flat above middle C, which somehow immediately led to me playing the opening melody of Michael Andrews/Gary Jules cover of "Mad World" (see the followup note below).

On the second take, I ended up doing this 13 minute improv where everything (in my mind anyway) connected musically to the piece that came before it. But hey, that just seemed weird to release.

So on the third take, I ended up loosely doing the same thing by accident: long take (7 minutes this time) where things seemed to feel connected.

So in the spirit of "give me the same thing, but different", a 7 minute piano improv counts as "same but different" in my world.

Perfect pitch-ish, well kinda

I'm fascinated with perfect pitch and would love to someday hold that claim to fame.

I seem to have some bizarre half-working version of it. As an example, I verified after my songwriting session, that yes, "Mad World" does start on the A flat above middle C.

So here's how my half-working version, um, works..

Like in the example of my first take from this songwriting session, every so often I'll play a single note on the piano and I'll say, "Hey! That's how X song starts."

Caveats:

  • the note I play has to be the very first note played in a song
  • the note I play has to be played on the piano in the song

So basically it's probably not perfect pitch after all. Probably what's happening is that I'm actually memorizing the audio, so that when I hear it replicated exactly, it suddenly sparks a memory.

So I'm guessing that if I were to stumble onto the the same synthesizer patch that was used in some random song, and just happened to play the same note that the song started on, then there's a decent chance that I would once again say "Hey, that's how that one song starts!"

But since a piano sound is what I'm using the most when I improvise, this tends to only help for identifying music that's piano dominant.

Basically, I could be a contestant on a very niche version of "Name that Tune" where I could name that Tori Amos tune in one note.