Henry Powderly

My last piano improvisation was on the more abstract side, an experiment in using one note only while still telling a musical story.

In this next one, it’s back to an exploration of mood, especially a minor mood. I based the meditation on a simple V – i resolution, stepping in and out of it, meandering through outside chords always with the inevitable V – i resolution in mind.

At the same time, I kept the movement of the piece very slow, almost decelerating  at times, all to create a very somber and reflective feeling to the piece.

I kept the high points from gathering too much strength as well, which when I thought about it after listening to the piece the first time, it made it feel as if the music was a man with his head bowed who even when he’s on the brink of breaking out of the melancholy, doesn’t because he loves the mood too much.

Enjoy the piece.

Piano Meditation 3

If you thought watching television through a kaleidoscope would give you a headache, you’d probably be right. However, it just might put this parade of mind-numbing entertainment in perspective.

On my recent trip to Minneapolis, I was surprised that in addition to the squat tubes of soaps and lotions, a ubiquitous white robe and an overpriced minibar, there was a small kaleidoscope in the room, perhaps there to help adventurous visitors pass the time while they wait for their pot brownies to wear off. Because having looked through it at the gray and cold landscape of the frost-bitten city, there’s no way it was meant for enhancing the drab skyline.

But watching television through it? It was early, and I was passing time before having to head out to full day of corporate meetings, so I turned on CNN and watched a fluff-filled newscast spin and flash in dissecting, blooming, bleeding and flashing patterns of light crystals.

Suddenly, it all made sense, the repetition, the hypnotic glare, the cells flowing into one another.

It may sound like an overstatement, but I found the mask slipped away when I watched TV through a kaleidoscope. My mask, their masks, all of it. It’s not real, the box, it’s a snowflake melting on your eye, keeping it wet so you don’t have to blink.

I put the kaleidoscope up to my camera, and took a few pics so you can see what I’m talking about. The patterns are beautiful, eerie, gruesome, hypnotic and delicate, like the experience.

Enjoy the photos.

Since I’m going to be off this blog for a few days I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season.

For me it’s been a very special time, getting ready for my baby girl’s first Christmas. Between my wife and I, our parents and our siblings, our girl will be mighty spoiled this year.

So I hope every one of you the best this weekend and throughout the year. Happiness and peace to you all.

Truth be told, most of my nature photos I take on my property, which is fairly large by Long Island standards and features a great assortment of trees, vines, bushes and flowers. But I also leave the reservation.

This batch comes around the same time as my last group of fall photos, but were taken at one of the salt marshes on the Long Island sounds.

They feature thin, wiry vines, some with almost delicious looking blue berries (though I gather I’d get pretty damn sick eating them).

Then there’s the water, which seems to looks cold in the barren fall.

But the algae that lines the ricks on the shore, it’s a green as it is in spring, which makes me wonder what changes aquatic plant life goes through during seasonal shifts.

It’s a tossup for the most depressing end of a season between late late fall and late winter.

While winter tends to linger, and slushy, gray snow, cold wind and barren trees can get a bit maddening by the end of February. But the end of fall, when all of the wild colors fade to subtle brown, when the dead leaves crack and curl in their piles, and the empty trees creak in the chilling winds, well, it’s a real bummer.

These are the last photos I took of the season, just a few days before a fierce blizzard blew in with winter.

It’s all sticks, save for a few red berries. There are even a few photos of my barn, which seems to frown in the cold.

Enjoy the photos.

This next batch of photos comes from late fall, but not the end of fall. As you’ll see in later photos, this period of the season still had plenty of color left in it.

The middle of fall was marked with bright yellows and plenty of greens, from still healthy lawns, stubborn-to-change leaves and knotty vines. But, closer to the end of the season the greens disappeared, replaced by yellows and reds, while the old yellows turned brown.

At the same time, the leaves on the ground, which once looked waxy and pliable, had browned and shriveled and dried.

So, enjoy the photos. My next batch will come from the very end of the season, when most of the colors were gone.

I’ve always been disappointed the One Note Samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim doesn’t stick to one note, though the tune is catchy as hell. So for this second piano meditation I decided to try sticking to one note, and only one note.

That doesn’t mean one frequency. In this case I used five different octaves of G, but never left G.

It’s not all that pretty, and I made a point of breaking up the rhythms so the time and tempo felt fluid. In fact, the piece is a bit stressful at times, with all of the repetition, but who says music must always be pretty. Art not only imitates life, but it amplifies life too. And while repetition in our own daily lives may beat and beat on a muffled drum, it’s normal that an artistic interpretation of that sounds with more tension.

In addition to the repetition of the G, I discovered while recording that the pounding Gs started to generate a lot of feedback, which I ended up using in the piece. And since I played this on an electronic keyboard, which is always perfectly in tune, there are plenty of harmonics floating over the monotony.

Enjoy.

Piano Meditation 2 (With G)

This is an exciting post for me, because I’ve decided to start posting some improvised piano music here, taking a risk, but getting it out there.

For as long as I’ve been playing piano I’ve held these types of personal sessions, where I hang my head and wail on the piano, following every idea as it pops into my head, encapsulating the mood of the moment in notes and chords and rhythms, letting go of any skill limitations and reaching in any direction I have the impulse to follow. When I was in high school I’d pick the lock of the theater door so I could jam on the baby grand on stage. When I moved out of my parents’ home, taking my piano with me, I’d often break into a meditation that lasted late into the night. And in college I again found ways to sneak into the auditoriums so I could play on the empty stage, whispering or pounding out music, alone and in the dark.

Now, as I’ve gotten older, my free time to jam like this is much less, which is why I’ve decided to start recording them when I get the chance.

For now, I’m playing these on a full size, USB-powered keyboard, using Garageband to record. The “Orchestra Steinway” piano in Apple’s symphony jam pack is incredibly warm and realistic, and with just enough echo to evoke an empty hall, the sound is perfect.

I’ll call these “piano meditations,” and I’ll post them as I record them.

The first one went in a somber, introspective direction, with moments of sweetness and a few spots of disorganized distress. I hope you enjoy it.

Piano Meditation 1

She dragged the pink toes of her gym shoes as she shuffled to the batter’s box, leaving two, thin straight lines in the packed-down dust behind her.

He played with a rock he’d picked up on the way outside, rolling it in his pocket while a manure scent of wet decaying leaves sailed in the tight cold October air, over the field.

She was up first, and a fluffy cloud shadowed the field as the pitcher bounced the red, supple ball down the line, far askew, a foul that stopped against the chain fence behind her. Then the teacher clapped and picked up the ball and rolled it back to the pitcher’s mound as the shadow slid past first base and over the woods that bordered the playground.

He dropped the rock and kicked it beyond the edge of the outfield.

She thought about his clammy hand and how much fun it was to hold, and though her best friend had sneered and teased her, she knew she’d hold it again.

This time the pitcher delivered, straight to the box where she, with her arms outstretched like wings, kicked and buried her toe dead center launching the ball over the pitcher, who threw up is hands and jumped, though he could have been a giant and he still wouldn’t have had a chance.

It bounced between the second and third basemen, who each ran after it with their arms outstretched like mini Frankensteins or Japanese robots, but more frantic and cute.

Run, shouted the teacher. And she did run, her long braids swinging like Tarzan vines behind her back. The ball had bounced back into the air when she looked to the outfield where he stood, right in its path.

He watched the spinning red ball, and only would have needed to slide a few steps to his left if he wanted to catch it. But he didn’t, he just let bounce past him and roll deeper into the outfield while the other fielders frowned and yelled at him and chased after the ball themselves. He stood and watched her run towards second, round the base, and stop at third right as the shortstop caught the ball, passed by the center fielder from deep right field.

She turned around to smile at him, but he was searching the grass for a stone, or maybe a bug or some other treasure buried there.

Flickr photo by Kevin H.