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Derek Paravicini

merlin

merlin

Avatar changed - Town names deemed offensive.
Just wondering if anyone saw the documentry last night on Derek and his astounding musical abilities?

Has anyone bought any of his recordings and if so, how rewarding do you find them? I thought his playing at the end with Jools Holland was astonishing.
 
Yes I saw that, his pitch is amazing, especially when they sat him in front of the orchestra and he condensed everything into one chord.
I hadn't heard of him before the programme. Felt a bit sorry for Rex, the kid he performed with though, he'd obviously never played with a band (who seemed unnecessary anyway) before and they said it was his first concert- 2000 people is a pretty heavy first concert, especially when he has to keep up with Derek who is just the dude.
 
Yes I did think Rex was the victim of being made the performing puppy of an overbearing Hollywood Mom.

Derek however was astounding, not only in his amazing pitch and musical memory, but his ability to improvise with such dexterity. You have to ask how people develop such abilities

I have found a website if anyone missed the programme and is interested

http://www.derekparavicini.net/
 
I thought the whole thing about him not understanding the emotional side and just learning the cues like going straight to minor for sad etc. was interesting. Kind of refreshing in a way- making music not attached to emotion is a difficult thing, he seems to go beyond expressing a feeling to something more innocent.
I'd like to hear some compositions if he has done anything
 
PeteH said:
I meant to watch this programme and forgot - it sounded really interesting. Could you expand a little on what exactly you mean here? :)
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Yeah, he has 'universal perfect pitch' (I hadn't heard that term before) which meant he not only has regular perfect pitch but also the ability to dissect any chord down- they were giving him ten note chords and he could pick out every single individual note and play it STRAIGHT back. Then they took it further by sitting him in front of an orchestra, playing huge dense block chords at him and he could listen to every single note, pick out the important ones to play as a block chord or play every single note back as a lightning fast arpeggio. It was pretty damn impressive tbh.
There wasn't enough of his playing though- mostly it was just faded into the background with narration over the top which was a shame, couldn't really hear what he was doing theory wise. Mind you most of his improv was too fast for my ear anyway but I couldn't tell if he was playing modally or just instinctively, from what I did hear I get the feeling it was just instinctive even though he is properly trained.
 
Then they took it further by sitting him in front of an orchestra, playing huge dense block chords at him and he could listen to every single note, pick out the important ones to play as a block chord or play every single note back as a lightning fast arpeggio. It was pretty damn impressive tbh.
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That floored me – an astonishing ability.

There wasn't enough of his playing though- mostly it was just faded into the background with narration over the top which was a shame, couldn't really hear what he was doing theory wise. Mind you most of his improv was too fast for my ear anyway but I couldn't tell if he was playing modally or just instinctively, from what I did hear I get the feeling it was just instinctive even though he is properly trained.
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I wish it had gone into more detail as I couldn’t figure out how his obvious improvisation skills were grounded, i.e. had he learnt / been taught / instinctively know ‘things that fit’ or was there any emotional connection / attempt to say something? A fascinating bloke.

Tony.
 
Tony L said:
I wish it had gone into more detail as I couldn’t figure out how his obvious improvisation skills were grounded, i.e. had he learnt / been taught / instinctively know ‘things that fit’ or was there any emotional connection / attempt to say something? A fascinating bloke.

Tony.
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Thats what I was trying to get at earlier, it seemed to me that even though he had obviously been properly trained- he could instantly transpose between any key and so forth and he must know his scales, I got the feeling 99% of what he was playing was basically an instinctive thing where he knew in his head exactly what every note on the keyboard sounded like so knew exactly which one he wanted to play next without ever thinking about a specific scale. Just the impression I got anyway, shame they didn't or maybe couldn't go into detail- is he even able to explain it himself?
 
Anex said:
Yeah, he has 'universal perfect pitch' (I hadn't heard that term before) which meant he not only has regular perfect pitch but also the ability to dissect any chord down- they were giving him ten note chords and he could pick out every single individual note and play it STRAIGHT back.
Click to expand...
I've met a couple of people who can do that sort of thing. It's pretty scary TBH.
 
What was amazing Pete was that he was able to dissect really complex chords played by lare ensembles and play them back as a really fast arpeggio. We were talking about fifty simultanious notes IIRC.
 
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