2017 21 Augustus, Crossroads Church, Kawai Grand, Matthijs Bos by Kain_niaK

So even do I kind of told myself to keeps these compositions exclusive for my street audience it's hard to escape that cry of attention and confirmation. It's important for all of us that we are seen for who whe are. And I, I make music.

So what do you guys think? I recently recorded a session on a Kawai grand piano, alone in a church, primarily for my European friends and family who I miss playing for after immigrating to Canada. The piano was slightly starting to go out of tune while I was playing it (some of the higher notes). I recorded it with my Zoom h4n stereo microphone.

About 1/5 is pure improvisation (I love what I improvised starting at 20:50 and especially the high notes at 21:33) and there is lots of semi-improvisation where I improvise on chord progressions I have in my muscle memory. Everything you hear are original compositions although on some pieces it's easy to figure out what the inspiration behind it is, like the theme music from Interstellar (24:40) or tunes from old Mario games (54:30, inspired by the credit music in Super Mario Brothers 2 on the SNES, I play with princess) . I am a harmony junky, addicted to the eternal search for nice chord progressions. I mainly play minor on primarily the black keys and I find it particularly pleasing if I can find progressions that switch me over to major and back to minor. I have never had an education in music and I can't play from score. Algorithmic progressions like the circle of fifths are things I discovered on the piano first as sounding good and then when realized it's just algorithmic I would look it up on the internet and then learning a tiny bit of musical theory.

If only I could always play on grands instead of playing crappy upright street piano's with broken strings and out of tune notes. So far the response outside has been amazing, when there are enough people around I can make about 200 dollars for about 6 hours of playing. I have some video recordings of the audience behind the piano, I might sync those up with the audio recording of my Zoom and post some of it too. It's a really good feeling to finally make some money with my music. Being completely broke and then playing for 45 minutes and making 15 dollars and then using that to buy food is a feeling I wish I'd known about 10 years ago. I am 32 and like Stufjan Stevens sings in Chicago, I have made a lot of mistakes. I started composing and producing (on the computer with fruityloops) when I was 15 (and learned mixing and mastering along the way) but still have major trouble with arrangement and being able to finish songs. I got rid of my computer (I struggle with internet and computer addiction) to focus more on playing and composing on the piano. Now that I finally am starting to make some money with it, the motivation to compose more is there, if not for the fact that I only have about an hour before I need to repeat my routine and I drive myself insane by playing the same stuff over and over again, so now I NEED to compose and switch the mindset from hobby (and just for relaxing myself) to work.

Anyway, enjoy and I am interested in some constructive feedback from all type of piano lovers and player. Now that I am performing there is lots of technical piano playing to learn (like playing different rhythms your with each hand) that I never felt the need to because up until know I never performed, just composed and on the FL Studio piano roll you can do so much more then with just 10 fingers and it loops perfectly every time unlike composing behind the piano where you first need to learn to play the loop good enough so your brain has some input to come up with the rest of the composition.

PS: I am aware I use to much sustain pedal, working on it.