I had a muse today! It must be why I had such a good mojo on this song. She's a great girl that I saw briefly today since we both travel a lot, and I didn't expect meeting her to inspire me so much! It's such a weird thing how inspiration works. Anyway I came home and jammed on this theme for quite a long time until I realized - hey this sounds pretty good, lemme record it.

Here and there I feel some fuckups but overall I think I pull it through. That's life by the way. I felt like finishing the song in many spots throughout, but the theme pulled me back over and over to continue. I like the tunes that do that - every time you're about to finish you get some more ideas on where to go next.

The theme over which I improvise here I remembered vaguely and adapted from a Zappa record. I can't remember which one and I'd appreciate any Zappa fans who might recognize it to just comment a link or a name of a track or something.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and hopefully more will follow!

Cheers!
Horatiu

Zappa Theme Improvisation

I improvised this tune while suspended in outer space, among stars and constellations. The things that happened out there inspired me to explore the keyboard in a slightly different way than when I play in this world.

It's part of my piano jazz VR experiments that I soon hope to record videos of. Meanwhile you'll have to imagine what I see and hear the music that comes out of my fingers.

Stars

Inspired by a cool video by Jacob Collier teaching harmony to 5 different people of various levels: young kid, teen, student, professional pianist and Herbie Hancock (pretty awesome classification). This is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRkgK4jfi6M

Anyway he was using Amazing Grace to describe the various interesting/crazy things you could do with harmonies and I thought "hmm that's really cool I should play that" and I recorded 3 versions at 3am local time and I like them all. There are good and dull moments in all 3 but I don't want to be perfectionist and never post anything so here they are. I find myself exploring strange directions and then struggling to resolve them, sometimes successfully but sometimes a bit strangely, and this time I find them quite endearing - much like the actor playing Frank Costanza in Seinfeld - he would forget his lines mid-speech and remember them and spit them out in an unexpected way with his amazing style and humor, some seeming mistakes turned into an actual style of acting.

Amazing Grace 3

Amazing Grace 2

This piece is completely improvised in a moment of strange emotion and mood. It somewhat reflects my mood, and grows from it. I would describe it as hopeful, confused and seeking answers, yet always finding resolve and discovering new territories with new challenges. I'm happy about the little themes I conjured and the rhythmical quality of it, I think it helps to bring such a free improvisation together. I'm also still as bad as ever at crazy virtuosic phrases, but here some are pretty well resolved in the end, I can't complain! The thought that ties the piece together for me is freedom - and the mood that one feels when realizing their freedoms and limitations, becoming one with their surroundings and thoughts. It feels like nothing can break this feeling of flow and peace, and energy and subtlety, and superficial humor combined with profound contemplation, and oneness, yet at the first distraction it dissipates into thin air and one is placed again in an impossible search for it - but it can only ever find you, if you don't try to find it.

Mood For Freedom

I stumbled across the most cheezy idea I could imagine today: Valentine's Day - I'm gonna record a version of My Funny Valentine. It's just 1 full theme without much solo but I think I can't do much better than this... It's somewhat inspired by Herbie Hancock's version from The Piano (my god what an album) and one by Shirley Horn (she is beyond this universe). Do yourself a favor and listen to those later.

My Funny Valentine

This groovy electric piano jam was made on 16 february 2018 at 1am. The date matters because I had returned home, one day before departing to new adventures, high/drunk but not on any material substance, and was trying to replicate a song that I vaguely remembered... and a feeling that I hope to never forget. The piece is cool and relaxing and makes me think of the good old times... I always want to be so high/drunk like I was when playing this tune!

I thought it was not really there yet and maybe I could add some backing instruments to it later on, and work some more on it, but since it has been a month now and I was about to delete it, and it doesn't actually sound too bad, I'll go ahead and release in this not too bad format. Enjoy WIP Composition Regg!

WIP Composition Regg

A happy tune from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Short cover version. Long version with solos is here: 
https://soundcloud.com/horatiu-roman/ 
village-life-impro
 
Video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ9fDF3NYaY

Village Life Theme

Long version for the Village Life theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Short version:
https://soundcloud.com/horatiu-roman/village-life-theme

Video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPnmt25itZk

Village Life Impro

Cleanus One is an art piece that uses an unorthodox process for creating music with AI.

In the distant future, art as well as its creators will take many shapes and forms, far beyond what we are used to seeing. Try to imagine the crazy creations that may one day emerge, and the minds of those artists that will stand behind them. We are naturally biased against whatever is different than us, and it is our own responsibility to open our minds and take notice of beauty wherever it may come from, to create a better world. However there is a more important message that I hope this piece transmits. The current-day creators and artists are just as diverse as you probably imagined those ones from the future I speak of, and you already have the opportunity to make yourself aware of this diversity, online, with minimal effort, for free. It is already today that we must cherish and appreciate the diversity among us, and though biased and imperfect, we can already start paving the road towards the future.

Video version:
(please listen to audio-only first, before checking out the video, for the full honest experience)
https://youtu.be/Ta9zOPIqzms

Cleanus One

The sound track for the jam game Mirror Guys made at Isolation Game Jam, Iceland in 2017. It loops (barely) so it's a good endless listen for when you're feeling a bit weird.

For those interested, here is the video showing some gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0F4SoDvGm0

Mirror Guys Soundtrack

A free electric improvisation from February, ignored for so long but so pretty. I enjoy listening to it myself so I hope you will also. There is some emotional background to the song, and you can understand it if you try to listen for the dynamics in the playing. Most of the time it is growing, both in terms of harmony and melody, upwards, and it has these chill major but mysterious complex harmonies, most of them being controlled-random, as in I do something random and then I "save" it as I try to understand what just happened in real-time.

And yes, the ending is somewhat abrupt because I cut another 10 minutes that I didn't like from the full recording. It is gone forever. You can imagine that it sounded nice even though it didn't. BTW, the follow up of this jam is the WIP Composition Regg which you can find also on this channel.

Funky Elec

My new composition, Barbidule, that I've been working on for the last few months is READY and I'm very happy about it!

It's inspired by a Mingus song (bonus points if you find out which one) and by my secret muses.

Goes with a video, here is the youtube link:
https://youtu.be/EX7zinS7SSw

Barbidule

A song about a short love story and the unfairness of life.

Mo Jazz

A song about coming home from the bar with your friends. Composed in a dream, performed in a closet at Global Game Jam 2019 Cluj.

Baietii Grei - Oi Loi Loi Loi

The original dream version of Oi loi loi loi, the drunk song recorded for Global Game Jam 2019 Cluj in the late Saturday morning.

Horatiu Roman

Popular tracks