I have had an aversion to practice, working out, scales and arpeggios. Musicians and performers are like athletes having natural talent that has to be honed with dedication and work. Although I think have some natural talent, I lacked the self-discipline at an early age to achieve a professional standard.

I am now in the third age, mature and more disciplined I lack the young physic, a malleable quick mind that is needed to gain the muscle memory to play music. Performance is all about coordinating mind and body in time and space to get the desired effect. Now I am in my senior years, I held the belief that I would have time for music as approach retirement, but the reality is I have neglected to hone my basic skills for too long be a performer.

It is a limitation that does not stop me from making music from the confines of my own home, and as my friend Jim rightly pointed out that working within these limitations often helps unleash creativity .

Nocturne No.5, a piano improvisation recorded 30th April 2023.

Edited using the Open Source program Audacity. I have used two copies of the track and included some artificial echo and reverberation. My studio is compact, I have tried to recreate a bigger space for the piano performance. I squashed the second track by just over one second, this give an effect of pre-echo towards the end of the piece.

The improvisation starts with a tonal arpeggio followed by tonal clusters and then a melody culminates in a declaration of chords.

The tonal clusters give way to chromatic romanticism, reminiscent of early Schoenbergian motives that melt away to another declamatory statement. This followed another romantic episode. There is a five note turn a possible reference to a Fredrick Chopin polonaise.

Vic Berry

The improvisation contains subliminal music styles from the distant and recent past inspired by walking in the nearby Riffa Woods the day before the recording. I had not seen the stone carving for over 15 years since recording some video clips for one of my first music videos a classical guitar I found at a Council tip. The guitar was repaired with glue and gaffer tape and restrung. Early days of using digital recording and the Windows Media Editor. using open source, The video clips taken using an Olympus digital camera FE47,X43 so the audio and video quality is not as good as most smartphones can produce these days. See the Vic Berry YouTube Channel to view.