I consider it a perk anytime I get to use my creativity at work. And, in the case of the most recent example, I found some inspiration I can use on my own projects.

A few weeks ago I produced a video for Long Island Business News about the abandoned Pilgrim State campus in Brentwood on Long Island. It was once the largest mental institutions in New York state. It had its own railroad station, its own power plant.

It was also the mental hospital where poet Alan Ginsberg committed his mother, and she was lobotomized there.

However, today many of the building are demolished or abandoned, and it’s a spooky place that many believe to be haunted with the ghosts of the deceased insane.

Our photographer, Bob Gigione, took some amazing photos which I used to create the video, and Ambrose Clancy, who wrote a wonderful story about the hospital for the paper, crafted a poetic script which he read behind the video.

All the movie needed was some creepy music.

I wanted the music to sound like it came from outside of one of the crumbling buildings, with the listener on the outside, wondering which tormented soul was pounding away at a dusty, aged piano in the institution’s rec room.

So rather than hook up a nice microphone above my own piano, I used the tiny, built-in microphone on my MacBook Pro, which I placed on the floor.

As for the improv, I thought about the hospital of old, the cacophony of the herded insane, versus the eerie silence of the campus today. I’d often return to a C blues scale to keep the mood sorrowful, but not cliché, like a lot of diminished chords would have come across.

For the video, I put an echo effect on the track to add a bit of spookiness and make it sound more in the distance.

In the end, the video came out great, and it’s been very popular.

But here’s the piano track on its own, without the echo effect I used on the video. Rather, this track just has a live music filter on it. The best part, around 30 seconds into the track my dog Charley walked by the MacBook, and his little nails tapping on the wood floor adds a very creepy element to the track.

Click to play:

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While I was improvising this I really felt like I could have stretched out beyond 3 minutes. I’m going to record a series of Pilgrim State improvisations in the near future. But this time I’ll hook up the nice microphones.

I’ll be sharing those later.

Lastly, here’s the finished movie.

Related posts:

1. Piano meditation: One note, no more
2. The first keyboard meditation
3. Music: My piano is chanting