I believe I've mentioned that I'm quite out-of-practice on the piano these days. I decided to let everyone along for the ride of "getting my chops back" (I don't intend to practice a whole lot, but a little each day.) So, instead of being perfectionistic, I decided to make a 'finished' product out of what was, admittedly, a quite imperfect improvisation made in one pass on the keyboard. There are several time glitches that I had to accommodate while making the beatbox part. This creation is also a tribute to my ol' trusty Blue Snowflake microphone, which has lasted me all this time quite well, because I've just upgraded to a Blue Yeti. Voice and beatbox recording quality will thus be much higher from here forward.

Stylistically, well, it's jazz, spontaneous but not entirely 'free' as it's anchored to 135 BPM (though I'm afraid it fluctuates substantially at times.) [The tuning is A=444 hz.] Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm much more comfortable creating extemporaneously than systematically planning things out. Theoretically though, one could take any number of moments from any longer improvisation, transcribe it, modify and develop it in various ways, and create one or several pieces. I believe that's why I love art so much—any creation is a microcosm of the whole, and as such, holds basically infinite potential for further creation. That aspect of art can also be quite maddening, as there may not be any sensation of something ever truly being "finished."

The video, also, was a major part of the experiment. I took the waveforms from the piano part (top line) and the beatbox part (bottom line, zoomed out a bit further) from the Garageband display and screen-recorded them, mixing them with the frustratingly inadequate capacities of iMovie. It's perhaps best to watch on not full-screen mode, or get some distance from the monitor when watching because it can be a bit vertigo-inducing. There are a bunch of subtle ambient sounds taken from my everyday life that make slight appearances through the piece as well, though they aren't displayed because I only had 2 simultaneous videos to work with in iMovie.

To improve this piece would mean to perhaps learn many of the improvisation's parts, make a bass part, double the kick and snare of the beatbox part or re-record it with my new and better microphone, add other musical parts, etc. However, I believe it's at a point now that satisfies the original impetus that drove me to create it, so I'll be returning to complete "Screen-havened hell redeemed" and another two-weeks-now-in-progress-piece called "Chimetron."

Coming to terms with one's limitations and still determining to create is an everyday act of courage. Sharing one's art is an act of vulnerability and faith. I hope you enjoy this piece and would love to hear your feedback in the comments. Also, if you don't mind, I'd really appreciate it if you'd like the video on YouTube and subscribe to my YouTube channel, which I'm going to be building gradually. Once I get 100 subscribers I can choose a custom channel name, which would be really helpful. Some days, I may upload content there when I'm too drained to write a whole blog post, so you can see it first if you subscribe :-) In fact, this video was finished and uploaded 2 days ago until I just now got around to writing this post!

Thanks as always for the love, support, and understanding:

@d-pend

P.S.

Ah, the title? If analyzed lucidly, it's quite self-explanatory; not at all abstract! Surely, I need not take any more of your time explaining. Besides, it's the sort of thing best left to the imagination, prone to becoming horribly mundane if thoroughly expounded :-D