Awwww ty! Although I have to get getter at my editing game hahaha, I raaammmmmbllle like crazy ;p Many thanks for the kind words ;)

Thank you!

Can’t wait to refresh invention no. 1! I’ve been looking for an excuse to do them again!

Hahaha many thanks 😅! I wanted to experiment with thumbnails, and when I added two raccoons as a test I couldn't resist using the meme thumbnail haha ;-) ..I actually secretly hope that I won't get much more click percentage from that thumbnail since it would be a bit depressing but. eh.. we'll see haha! Ty again for the comment and for your remarkable videos

You're more than welcome! It's also a challenge for me to keep regularly practicing & posting videos hehe ;-) Many thanks to *you* for watching, have a wonderful day :-)

@@Borogrove Yes, thank you... Also, where is the new video? hehehehe

I’m super glad that I could have been of some help! Happy practice 😊!

Many thanks for your very kind words! Indeed, even the 'easy' pieces can be *very* hard, but you are absolutely right in insisting in paying attention to details; It's much better to get some focus quality work in than going through more pieces with more approximative play. It's absolutely amazing that something as annoying as the quarantine can have positive impacts such as allowing you to start piano; You are well on your way to mastering those pieces with such an attitude. And indeed, I fully agree haha.. Bach is adddddicting ;-) Do *not* hesitate to ask any questions either concerning practice/improvisation or suggestions for pieces; I'm always super happy to reply to those, even if lately i've been horrible and let all social media pile up except the lives on reddit. I have toyed with the idea of doing a Patreon, and I'm humbled to hear that you'd support me. We'll see if I end up doing one, but in all cases many thanks for the very kind words; I wish you the most joyous practice moments with Bach and the piano! Ty again for the comment

You're very welcome Marco! Ty for the comment :-)

The motif at 14mins. .. the sense of the motif is 'a 1 e and' . This is the sense of the music, as so often in Bach figures LAND on the beat and the music, even at speed with too much aggression, SINGS when the player has built a technique which respects this. If you try and tie the logic of a motif to the beat then the results are stilted. It is the same in all music. Folk fiddlers trained poorly play Diddly datda, Diddly Datda (capitalised to indicate beat) when it should be da Diddly da, da Diddly da. I hope you read and think about this, you have so much to offer and a little change in awareness might open doors for you in terms of calmness and savouring. A great way to get out of the habit of making Bach sound like he wrote it (beaming illustrating melodic contour) as opposed to a computer engraving ( where software applies the beaming completely arbitrarily and without respect for the sense of the music ) is to WORK FROM COLD WITH NO SCORE ON SIMPLE MELODIES COPIED FROM BEAUTIFUL PERFORMANCES. Oh, I improvise a little on my guitar, on my Channel 'Counterfeiting Vivaldi' is nothing like Vivaldi and absolutely inauthentic. Feel free to listen and criticise, especially the chromatic blues lick chain. All the best and all power to you.

;-) Me too haha! We'll start having fun by stealing!.. umm.. taking inspiration I mean 😅

Aww well I'm super happy it can be of help! Normally I'd expect the other videos in the series to be more substantial since we'll actually analyze the inventions and improvise much more 🙂 Ty for the comment!

You're very welcome Jesse, glad to be of help!

Aww many thanks for the kind words, I'm more than glad to be making this niche content haha ;-) Ty again for the comment, and I hope that the subsequent videos in the series will give more substantial tips!

@@Borogrove I can’t wait! Started today in invention number one so I can get the most out of your teachings. I hope you really inspire me and I’d love to be able to create music like you!

It exceeded even beyond expectations! You are a truly skilled educator and this video contains so SO much valuable information! You are truly the pioneer of a new generation of baroque improvisators! So hyped for this series!

Wohoo! I'm super happy you've found this useful! Hopefullly the subsequent videos in the series should contain more useful content Many thanks for watching Nooctius :)

Merci beaucoup Kellian, Et absolument, c'est tout a fait le plan hihi ;-)

Oh I'm an idiot but making mistakes is a great way to learn so it all works out :-)

That's awesome! Yes, I hope next video will be quite interesting too! We'll get to improvise ;p

Many thanks Alex!

You are very welcome!

Many thanks Francisco! It should be coming this Thursday normally!

Many thanks for the very kind words! That's actually a fantastic video idea! I'd have to give it some proper thoughts, but to give you an immediate draft of answer: I really think that all impro is connected, because at the end of the day, there isn't really that much "theory" or "method" that can whistand the test of requiring to provide you with a stream of notes in real time haha. In fact, no method can even tell you what melody to play... because all melodies are potentially interesting 🙂 Thus, the main skills in improvisation (and music/composition in general I guess!) are being able to create interesting melodies and rhythm.. This is both the most fundamental problem we all have, in all styles.. but also the most difficult! Of course I wouldn't maybe improvise the same melody for a jazzy impro vs a baroque one, but what makes an interesting melody is absolutely shared by both.. in fact there are quite some similarities between baroque and much more modern styles! Finally, I am also a big believer that *harmony* can be viewed as naturally emerging from counterpoint. (Of course not always, harmony can be very useful to consider alone too sometimes). And thinking about counterpoint is both a great skill for improvisation because it allows you to very dynamically add/remove melodies, and potentially melodies that can go somewhere new instead of being "forced" to stay in you harmonic schema. Thus, practicing impro and some elements of counterpoint in your head can immensely help and directly communicate across all styles of improvisation/composition of music ;-) If fact if you listen to some music by Prokoviev, or Bartok for instance, you'll see that there's awesome use of counterpoint. Similarly in Jazz, a lot of "complex chords" can actually be nicely reached by thinking in terms of stacking melodic lines rather than purely vertical harmony 🙂 So tldr, i'd definitely say that all improvisations are inherently the same language.. music :-)

@@Borogrove thank you so much for this reply! I come from a "typical" modern approach to classical piano lessons and as such improvisation has always seemed so foreign and unattainable since it was never a part of my musical training. I think it is a shame how uncommon improvisation has become for "classical" pianists/musicians, but I feel there is a revival of this art happening thanks to people like you, En Blanc et Noir, John Mortenson, the Learn Partimento podcast, etc... You are one of my biggest musical inspirations and I can't thank you enough for sharing your thoughts and knowledge!!

@@Borogrove You need to consider both melodic constraints and harmonic constraints at the same time. It's a lot like solving sudoku, you need to make sure your solution satisfies both the rows/columns as well as the boxes. That's why it's more akin to constraint programming (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_programming), which is mostly in the NP space. If you focus on melodies mostly, you won't get interesting harmony, and if you focus on harmony too much, you may not think of interesting melodies. Harmonic constraints mostly deals with interesting harmonic progressions at certain regular intervals. For example from 1:28 to 1:36 of my Canzano partimento 19 prelude completion, the harmonic progression of the first down beat follows an oblique motion in the bass voice. If I didn't set the harmonic constraint there, I probably wouldn't have come up with such oblique harmonic motion if I only focused on the melody. Of course, if your melodies and their phrasing are all over the place, then it would mess up the cohesion of the entire piece. Generally speaking, the style is more constrained in melody than harmony, as various harmonic progressions can be found easily acceptable compared to the constraints that places on Baroque style melodies, so it's easier to focus on getting the melodies right in order to produce an acceptable piece than focusing on the harmony as you said usually the harmonies manifest themselves out of interesting melodies. Jazz generally focuses on chord progressions as there are many more acceptable jazz melodies compared to how many melodies can be considered acceptable in Baroque style.

Oh that's a wonderful quote from Beethoven! I wasn't aware of it... but I definitely agree haha ;-) Many thanks for the comment Vextrove!

I prefer the English word Brook (meaning the same as creek) as they start with the same letter!

Not Johann Sebastian, he is dead.

Hahaha well I certainly can't claim that status, but I'm more than happy already improvising where I am ;-) Many thanks for the comment!

Its true, you are!!!

Please continue this series

@@dylanfernandez3910 I absolutely play to Dylan! It's definitely also a challenge for me to keep posting regularly hehe

Exactly! Especially the Bass!

Hahaha indeeed! I haven't thought about the matroid yet, but greedy is definitely also a very good thing to keep in mind ;)

Yes! I have indeed heard of Partimenti! This is not a technique I have practiced a lot of but I am aware of it and might need to take a proper deep dive in the future :)

That's a great question, and would probably involve me blabbering for a long time if you let me hahah ;-) In short here's a few thoughts: Your conscious mind's attention is a bit like the "eye of sauron" haha, It's indeed something that can focus on parts individually and as they say: "Energy goes where the attention is". Ergo, the voice that you focus on, is probably the one that you want to make stand out. As such, it's indeed true that moooost of the time I focus on one or two voices (Soprano+Bass) consciously. In fact I can reasonably manage to keep two voices with my full attention.. .but I can't manage 3.. still working to that effect myself haha ;-) (I can do three voices, but not fully being aware of what all three are doing if they are moving, or by having three voices that don't always play at the same time) As you say, very often the middle parts are filled in with muscle memory/intuition generating a form of "automatic counterpoint". That's also why practicing pieces by Bach etc.. is good because it'll teach some of these patterns to your fingers that they can pull back from when you improvise. Interestingly it's something I'm actually trying to now *prevent* myself from doing as much, because while it's reaaaallly enticing to start adding layers of counterpoint, I really want to start working in expanding my ability to focus on more stuff.. and that will pass through the discomfort of trying to keep my attention on 3 full voices hehe ;-) However, it's also important to be able to train your attention to switch, like a lens, from one part to another. That way, let's say you introduce a voice in the middle, you can start becoming aware of what your middle voice is doing, and consciously attach yourself to it to make it do what you want (like adding a subject entry, in the case of a fugue like construction). Tldr; Yes, absolutely focusing on the top and bottom is great, but also train your attention to switch in the middle of counterpoint/chords. I even want to do a video purely based on exercises to train the ear/consciousness to do this "focusing" movement. For instance, take a complex chord and try to hear it by hearing all stacked parts instead of the "whole". Hope this helps, and ty for the comment!

@@Borogrove thanks so much for replying :)

Oh that's a great question! I actually really love all types of counterpoint, including postromantic or more modern too. I actually myself am starting to get into playing some Prokoviev pieces for the piano, and Prokoviev is a composer that I had played criminally little of until recently and wooooooooooww there is some GENIUS counterpoint in his pieces ;-) I need to checkout Szymanowsky much more as well! Many thanks for the great comment, but yes I absolutely think that all counterpoint is absolutely fantastic no matter the harmony.. if even harmony there is hehe, because I think that good counterpoint bases itself on *rhythm* as an even more fundamental notion. So what all types of counterpoint have in common is the rhythm :)

Awwwww, yes I know I disappeared without leaving traces, I am feeling better and much more ready to go now though ;-) Many thanks for the comment and for watching Matteo!

@@Borogrove Glad to hear! :))

C'est le moment musical 4 de Rachmaninoff ;-) Merci beaucoup!

It's just the start of Rachmaninoff's musical moment #4 :-) It's a super fun piece to play hehe

Yes! It was my plan to release them regularly one after the other. I came back from a loong time off youtube and am reviving the channel; but yes, I definitely want to continue this series.

@@Borogrove yhank you

Hahahaha oui en effet! Mon accent me trahit ;)

@@Borogrove En effet :) Avez-vous un pianiste préféré pour les oeuvres de Bach et baroques en général ?

@@milanboutros J'aime tout ce qui est beau haha ;-) Mais evidemment Gould est une reference; Mais aussi Richter, ou peut etre mon pianiste actif prefere (mes excuses, je n'ai pas d'accents sur mon clavier haha ;-): Grigori Sokolov!

@@Borogrove Nous avons les même références ! Cet amour de la fugue nous unie tous finalement ;)