Sini ice-fishing. (Juha H.) 

Kukkiva maa ja esitys onnistuneesti ohi

Performance of Kukkiva maa went quite well. It was probably the best yet. Some more shows coming. I'm happy, pleased and reliefed. When you feel that way after a gig it must have gone pretty well. So it is.

Snowing, snowing - snowing alot all the time.

Juha H.

Samuli Mikkkonen ja Ableton Live

Back from concert. Samuli Mikkonen played with his band a very nice and peaceful gig in Suolahtisali. Good woodwind players, good pianist and relaxed, quite free "drum'n'bass"... Mostly Mikkonen's compositions, but also Sibelius and Kuula - all arranged quite freely. Free-Jazz but very structured and with much composed material. I liked the whole alot. - While the band was playing I realized that I was thinking how easy it is to improvise - if you got the guts (and some skills...) to do it.

Rest of the day playing flute and other woodwind instruments - plus fooling around with AbletonLive.

Juha H.

Kukkiva Ableton

Once again Kukkiva maa had a rehearsal . Now everything is fine. The whole feels very good. Poems of Edith Sodergran and Katri Vala are tender and strong at the same time. The texts vary from feelings of misery, anger and sorrow to joy, happiness and bliss. Maija recites and performs the whole very well. And I think that my music is quite ok for the project...

Fooling around with Ableton Live. How wonderful software it is!

Juha H.

Kukkiva maa jatkaa

Project Kukkiva maa (=Blossoming Fields) had a rehearsal. Everything is almost ok - a couple of more rehearsals and all should be well for our next performance. Thursday this week we'll go LIVE in Suolahtisali.

Yesterday was an hour "shorter" than the other days of the year. Daylight Saving Time makes one more tired approximately for a week - or a bit less... Right now I can feel it. Probably I have to go to sleep early, very early.

Juha H.

Improvisages

Improvisages had a rehearsal. It was the first time we went through the material of our next consert. Visual imagery, the sequence of Ari's paintings seems to be ok - though there is such an abundance of pics, way over 400. Music still needs some rehearsing - actually just playing and jamming together. Compositions and ideas for improvisation are ok and quite right. But we need to get more acquinted with the material at hand and thus become more certain and better equipped for what we're trying to achieve.

Juha H.

Yamaha keys and Wx5 in fire. (Juha H.) 

Ruanda

Right now Sini and I are watching the movie Ruanda - a horrendous true story only from a few years back. Somehow I don't like what happened there. Horribilities... But it is definately good for the Mankind to know what happened in Africa - the seemingly senseless murdering of hundreds of thousends of people. Peace in the world would be so much better. Dominion of one faction over another? Is it really worth the killing?

All in all - why can't we people live together in Peace?

Juha H.

Return of the Flower People. (Juha H.) 

Improvisages visualisoituu

All evening I worked with Ari's paintings. I tried to make them somehow go together with the music of Improvisages. It's not easy - pics should somehow reflect music and vise-versa. Very much what we, Jori and I , play together is probably always going to be mostly improvised. At the moment I've selected and 'sequenced' more than 400 paintings. Music is going to last in a LIVE situation 40 - 50 minutes. Some more work ahead.

Earlier I recorded one composition of my own. Many electric guitars, some woodwinds and percussions. And right now I'm beginning to feel very tired...

Juha H.

Bios ja musaa

Updated BIOS for one of our laptop computers. As usually there were some twists and difficulties. Nothing excessively complicated. But to waste time is never nice. Now all is well.

Rest of the evening I worked with my music - added some woodwind lines to one of my hybrid composition that is a mixture of Ableton Live tracks, Pro Tools recordings, improvisation and written material. Sort of weird instrumental electronica... Tomorrow is time to go back to the music of Improvisages and Kukkiva maa.

Juha H.

Ei kuvaa

Well, well. Picasa failed me again. Didn't manage to upload any photos. But anyways it's Equinox. Soon, within a few weeks, the snow will melt and Spring is here.

Juha H.

PS. And then all of a sudden and quite mysteriously the pic appears. Well and good.

Good morning, Equinox. (Juha H.) 

Imrovisages - musiikkia ja kuvia

Improvisages had a long and exciting rehearsal. Right now I believe that our next concert is going to be quite a big happening - at least when one considers the amount of art, both visual and auditive that we're going to reveal. There's going to be alots of new music - both composed and improvised - and many visual wonders. During the last years Ari has created so many paintings that it's amazing. Many of those pics can be seen here.

Juha h.

Crash

Sini, Hanna-Maaria and I watched Chrash. And a good film it was - actually a surprisingly good American movie. It won some Oscars and that is quite right. The story was built episode-like and fragmentarily, sort of. But in the end everything came together well and good. There were many surprising turns, untypical twists when compared to more ordinary Hollywood movies. The good and the bad people were NOT clearly different. The 'good ones' could do vile and evil things and the 'bad' weren't necessarily always bad. Right and wrong were within every character, within every person of the movie. Like in real life - you try to do good things but sometimes you end up doing wrong. Sometimes in real life you have to choose between bad and even worse. And sometimes it can be a bit hard to find out and see which is the less bad way to go...

Rest of the day - meeting people, walking on the Lake Keitele and creating music.

Juha H.

While watching the Brothers Grimm-movie... I sent this photo that I took a couple of days ago. Sunrise over the Lake Keitele. (Juha H.)

Bebop

Today I listened to a fantastic bebop-recording - Andreas Oberg Young Jazz Guitarist. Wild, imaginative and virtuosic playing. While listening I had a happy grin on my face most of the time. And the keyboard player was Marian Petrescu. Even more happy grinning. He is probably the fastest jazz-pianist in Finland. Part of the fun of listening was that I jammed along with my flute. I didn't remember that bebop is so much fun!

I continued working with my composition - Pro-ALi In India. Yesterday I created a rhythm track with Ableton Live. Today I added some woodwinds and percussions in Pro Tools. And tomorrow I can hopefully mix the whole.

Juha H.

After working all evening with Ableton Live I had no more strength left - except to send the above snowy photo. (Juha H.) 

Ableton Live 5

I upgraded my Ableton Live to version 5. All evening I tried to figure out what to do with the software. A lot I found and I can see many more ways to use it. It must be a dream come true for 'electronica' (?) musicians. And it's definately LIVE software. But I'm a bit puzzled because I like so much the 'old time' REAL PLAYING - to play real musical instruments for real. To just and only push buttons is a bit too easy. But fortunately Ableton Live is so much more than just pushing buttons. I've only scratched some surfice... The possibilities of what you can do with it seem to be quite endless.

Toropainen visited.

Juha H.

Frozen Little River. (Juha H.) 

Bright and sunny day on the Lake Keitele. (Juha H.) 

Blues - for recorder and guitar. (Juha H.) 

Ja illalla Improvisages

Improvisages rehearsed, jammed and played some Real Music. Fun it was very much. Improvising is so nice - every now and then some Magic and/or Divine happens. Though today we just went through some (ten or twelve) sequences and some real, written down compositions - it was so nice to let the things just happen. There were some moments that the music just flowed through us. Thank you very much. That was for Jori and me.

Earlier today Ari visited and we had some nice talks about the Visuals, Artistic (Aristic!?) side of forthcoming Improvisages shows...

Juha H.

Kummeli Jackpot

After seeing the movie Kummeli Jackpot I tried to send here a picture - actually a hand-written piece of sheet-music. But to no avail. Picasa or something somehow failed me again. The movie I saw in Jyvaskyla and it was quite funny. But not being able to send the pic to this blog annoyed me just a little bit. Maybe I'll try it again tomorrow. Right now I'm too tired to do anything.

Juha h.

Lake Keitele and sunrise today. (Juha H.) 

Pasuunapelimannit ja Improvisages

Pasuunapelimannit had a rehearsal Sumiainen, Finland. We practised for the next gig next week - unfortunately I can't partake then. Other obligations take my time. Well, anyways it was nice to play music.

I began notating my compositions for Improvisages. With the suitable computer software music gets more readable - if compared to the hand-written sheet music I sent to this blog a couple of days ago.

Juha H.

Vauuh!!

Yesterday evening I tried to send to Blog Improvisages the hand-written piece of sheet music below but to no avail. Picasa just didn't work for me. Today I sent the same notation with different text. And all of a sudden and quite miraculously both pics ant texts appeared. So the one I sent today was deleted.

For almost all evening I've worked with Improvisages-sequences.

Juha H.

After listenig to Swedish metal band Deathstars I wrote the above melody. The band sounds quite a bit like Rammstein. But my composition has got almost nothing to do with neither of the bands... The name of the scribbling above is Kuolontahti laulaa which is in English Deathstar Singing. Jori, could this piece of music be a part of some Future Improvisages Show? (Juha H.)

Kuvia ja Improvisages

During the day I worked with the photos Sini and I took on our Rostockreise. Some twenty I added here. And thirty pics Sini sent to a site where a password is needed.

In the evening I created one more sequence for Improvisages to jam and improvise along. Rhythmical chains... Real chains that I sampled a week ago. Today I twisted, reversed and manipulated them in many ways. And added two tracks of bass drums and then some more weird sounds...

And during the night I'm going to sleep.

Juha H.

Scene from the Port of Hanko, Finland - before the sailing began to Rostock, Germany. (Juha H.) 

Kotona

Back from Rostock, Germany. Woah! It's almost four o'clock in the morning. Good journey across the Baltic Sea and back. Somehow right now I'm a little bit tired - and happy. Travelling is nice but it's so good to be back home.

Juha H.