Whello there everyone, Yes, after almost a year of procrastination, I'm finally sharing my piano playing here. I play piano for around about seven years now. I've had lesions for two years, I stopped when my piano teacher died at age 46, and never really wanted to take lesions again after that. I've learned quite a considerable amount of repertoire by now, most of which are not really noticeable (Lot of Yiruma pieces and such), but that's not why I'm making this thread: You see, in the last year or so I've, apart from "normal" repertoire, also learned some modern classical pieces. I learned them by ear, to after that make my own arrangements of them. I've said for some time I would show my favourites, but, until now, never really got around doing so. All of these are recorded in one go, just with my phone, all of them first or second time I played them that day, it's not really anything special. I just uploaded some files derectlyfrom my phone to the youtube accound of my spam email adress... I could also try to record some of these properly in case you guys really want me to do that, but I don't think that's worth it, as that would be going to take me a full day. Anyway, Let's start of with something that isn't a modern classical piece, as this is a Rachmaninoff Prèlude. Yes, It's in a weird sound and all that, It's just something I was having fun with whilst recording I wanted to also share this one to show what type I normally play. This, for a Rachmaninoff piece, is quite easy, but it's still technically more advanced than all other pieces I share here. If you want to see some hands flying, skip to around two minutes in This is the first actual modern piece I want to share... The original is called Shadowland - Part 2 and is written by Frederico Albanese. I didn't change too much with this one. To be fairly honest, this really is one of my favourite pieces to play. It's extremely simple (I learned it in two days) but so well-composed... After that comes Mike Lazarev's Unhinged, or, my version of it. I changed this one a lot. I've teased this one a few times, as I've worked quite hard on recomposing it. I don't really feel like I did it justice here. When I played it, I hadn't played it in over a month (so this is the second recording, the first was just too bad) I originally premièred this piece on a (or "the") Christmas concert at school because, as it's both sad and hopeful, I thought it would be fitting to play there. Once the person organising heard me play it, she asked me if I would want to open the concert. I thought I was flattered enough to get invited to play solo piano there, and never expected to open. So, I played this for seven hundred people... I played it better then than I played it now... I originally wrote this for, or about, a friend of mine, who, at that time, was suffering a suicidal depression, but I'm not going to talk too much about that here. I know rotate my right hand in a weird way, but that simply turned out to be the most effective way of playing it. Due to some strange jumps in the right hand, I had to come up with creative solutions. Overall, it actually isn't a difficult piece to get the fingers down, but it's really hard to get the emotion across fully, for some reason. [continuing next post, as it doesn't let me have six videos in one post...]
Then comes Feathers by Poppy Ackroyed. This is the piece that originally got me in to this. It's not the most difficult to play, though you do start to feel stamina in your right thumb after all those F's. I don't really think there is too much to say about this one. As second-to-last, I want to share this one: Birdwomen, another one by Ackroyed. This is the other one I changed a lot in. I basically took the part at the start, which is original, to then start composing it further myself. I'm sill not sure about the fast middle part, which also is the most technical part of everything I shared here, but I'm really happy with the way the part after 1:52 turned out. I rewrote about another friend of mine, who was also suffering mental problems at the time. (and still is, sadly) It's just my way of dealing with that kind of stuff I guess. I want to end on a more happy note. This is my interpretation on the famous starter piece Kiss The Rain, by Yiruma. It's one of, if not the, only starter piece I still play somewhat regularly. I just really like the sound of it. I think you can hear I've played it a lot over the years. This also is the piece I tend to experiment with when I hear a new and interesting way to play, as I can play it whilst having a conversation with someone: It's really only muscle memory. Due to that, this is one of the only starter pieces I now play with correct technique, you might have already noticed in other pieces, but I do quite some stuff wrong here and there, simply because I didn't know jet at the time I learned it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little share from my side. If you guys want me to, I can record and upload some more "classical" repertoire (I've by now leanred basically everything Debussy and Satie have ever written), but I don't feel like that's necessary: so this is probably just going to start a one-time thing. ~Jelle
Very nice to finally hear Unhinged as performed by you. Dinner is ready, so I'll watch the other trio later.
Heh, I don't. But it's fine for this purpose. Still, if you've got a USB MIDI interface, it could be nice to record the audio of some of the performances through that... I personally don't like doing that though (I prefer playing on acoustic pianos anyway, as long as they're in tune), so I'm fine with this!
I thought I'd bump this thread I (two weeks ago again) opdated the rachmaninoff prèlude and Unhiged, as I asn not jet happy with how those sounded here. I also recorded One summer's day by Joe Hisaishi. I did not really plan to do stuff like this to this thread, but I might aswell post a new song every now and then... I record myself quite often: It's a really good way to hear your own mistakes, and how you could change your interptetation... Anyway, this, in fact, is the first serious paino solo I learned to play. I started the first part what must have been 5 or 6 years ago now. I never learned it far in: it gets a lot more complicated to play down the line. But, roughly two years ago, I picked it up again, and learned to play it fully and with emotion (as seems to be a theme: I used to play it better than this.) The first time I made someone cry when playing piano was with this song. Nowdays, that happens more often, but, at the time, I actually was quite proud of it
You've got some skill man. I love how the audio quality is much better than the video quality. It reminds me of the very old days of Youtube, back in 2006 when video quality was not that good, but the content was very good. Thank you for sharing your videos with us, it truly is showing off your skills.
Really nice playing, I like the different types of songs throughout your videos. I myself have been on and off with piano for about 5 years now but usually the challenging part is sitting down to practice rather than the playing itself.
