Saxualization of the Piano

1. We begin by starting out in C#m which I have been singularly obsessed with for years. We use a theme that I have been playing with for a while, where we begin with 3 strong notes at octaves followed by a chord and then silence, which is filled with saxophone. This piece is like the birth of first life from the primordial soup of unliving ingredients. Composed and played by Gabe B (saxophone) and Vivekanand Pandey Vimal (piano).

2. In this piece we have a flowing saxophone solo over a gentle rain fall of soft piano cords. I think on this day I was feeling very sleepy and dreamlike. Composed and played by Gabe B (saxophone) and Vivekanand Pandey Vimal (piano).

3. Here the underlying piano piece has a feeling of running through fields of life as the saxophone romances destiny. Composed and played by Gabe B (saxophone) and Vivekanand Pandey Vimal (piano).

4. Composed mostly in Bflat Lydian, we explore the dance of piano and saxophone. Composed and played by Gabe B (saxophone) and Vivekanand Pandey Vimal (piano).

5. Lila F., who had to leave early, helped us converge towards using a Aminor scale structure. Hannah P. (ukulele) and Rachel J. (guitar) created a wonderful backbone on which Gabe B. (saxophone) and myself (piano) added some musical flesh.

6. In our composition period, we tried many different combinations of key changes and tempos. We found that each of us gravitated towards a different musical structure and instead of fighting it, we decided to honor it and let each of us soar freely where we were most comfortable. The piece starts with Vivekanand playing on the piano in C#m, followed by Dalena T playing a beautiful piece on the piano mostly in EM followed by Gabe doing a soaring solo in Eflat Lydian over the pianos in EM.

7. (6/6/2018) Brian L. and I began with an expansive and exploratory brainstorming session to generate some ideas before beginning our jam session. There is a picture of this in the shared googledoc above. Overall, beyond music, we were asking the question, "how do you idea generate effectively". We decided that we should use a chord progression that psychologically people know well and then add mysterious elements to it. So, on piano, I did a Chopin-nocturne-style feel switching between CM (C,G,C) and Am (A-D-A). Hanna, on ukulele played dreamlike variations on the established chord progression of (CM-GM-Am-FM). Brian masterfully crafted unity by playing percussion on the poland spring bottle.

7/7/2018 Brian L (on guitar) and I myself (initially piano) started by brainstorming ideas for a short story that Brian was writing. From that brainstorming session, we verbally-painted a story of a lone person upon a silo beaten by the weather and the unforgiving ocean....and after being lost in that primal turbulence of an out-of-beat cadence, the person feels a moment of identity. So, the guitar (Brian L) represents this awakening identity and the drums (Rita P) represent the nonsychronous waves of weather and the mouth organ (me) represents the breath of Destiny. The drums were small bongos that one of my students gave me when I was a WHS teacher.

7/13/2018 When we met, Gabe B (Sax) brought delicious fragments of music that he had composed, consisting of a Saxophone piece that flowed around Cm and FM. Gabe had also composed lyrics for the vocals. After listening, Lila F (vocals) and Ingrid P (vocals, drums) explored the vocals with Gabe and through improvisation wrapped around this structure, we created the following progression: Drums -> Drums+Piano -> Vocal melody with lyrics and piano and drums -> vocal melody without lyrics with piano and drums -> Sax, vocal improv, piano, drums when possible -> piano and drums -> vocal melody with lyrics and piano -> drums. The drum was one of those percussion boxes that you sit on and slap with your hands and we found it in the room.