This is my first improv on my series of improvisations composed with out of tune upright piano. Some of the notes have 2 or more microtonal pitches sounding at once producing interesting harmonies. Unfortunately, this is not very controlable but hey, it's an out of tune piano so... This is not tuned on purpous, although it's technically microtonal, I did not tune it this way on purpose, it's just out of tune severely. Tell me what you think.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxZGZ5d9Gjk

My audio quality is horrible, I really need one of those $100 high quality microphones :\
Hopefully you can tell I went for a creepy mood this time.

Yeah, the recording quality is terrible.

I don't feel like the piece has any design to it. It doesn't have any shape or development, and honestly, I wasn't feeling the creepiness, even. It mostly sounds like a toddler plunking around on a piano.

I took the liberty of watching your Modal Improvisation in F, and I have to say, I like that one much better. It's not just because it's tonal or whatever. The modal improvisation actually has rhythm and character. I felt it was much more creepy than your atonal musings.

Ok but I was just messing around, I was improvising which is something I need to work on more and the piano is broken, I was standing in an awkward position, but I don't know, I liked it, I thought it was alright, random, but you have to admit there is some nice unusual harmonies in there that could probably have been used better.
sounds like a toddler plunking around on a piano.
that's not nice, someone like that wouldn't be able or care to make any type of harmony, theyd just bang on it mine had space to it and some repetition.
I really like the chord at 0:09 when I play the middle f#.

Okay, in all fairness, I was probably taking some of my frustration with YouTube's glitches out on you. But still, this is not your best work. By just hitting mostly random notes, I don't feel like you're really taking advantage of the instrument. Because it's random, we can't really tell that the piano's out of tune. Do you know what I'm saying?

Your saying, that the out of tune piano could have more potential if I took more care? Uh, yeah, I was bored when I did that, it's kind of like a musician just bangin something out. The second one I do is going to be better I hope.

Well, this is "interesting," but maybe not quite what I was hoping for. It's always fun to mess around on an instrument that has problems, especially pianos that are out-of-tune/tone (I have a fixation for these kinds of things). Anyway, moving on, I might have to agree more with Alfonso on this, at least when it comes to the point-of-view; there really isn't anything that is going on here. My style of improvisation, and composing at that, has a lot of ambient attributes to it, stylistically, and this segment didn't make an atmosphere for me. As Alfonso suggested, you may want to refer back to your Modal Improv. because the piece itself had something for the listener to follow.

NOTE: "...something for the listener to follow," doesn't just mean a "nice sound melody" or what-have-you; referring back to ambient music, you have to make the listener feel the flow of the piece-- that it is going somewhere. Try experimenting with your volume a little bit. Maybe just start out small, slowly grow, have a short moment when it explodes, then quietly (however faster than when you were getting louder) fade back into it's small existence. You'll be surprised how much more "follow-able" your pieces will be just from doing that as an exercise.

Something else I want to bring up is your use of the word "atonal" (or "atonality") when applied to this audio sample you have here. In all honesty, there wasn't really anything atonal about the piece, except for the random bass notes played. Your right hand was playing voices, however, these voices (or, the "melody" if you'd use that term instead for this piece) most definitely had a tonal center. What chord or scale was it? Well I don't have perfect pitch, whatever, that isn't the point. And even the chords you used weren't atonal, they were dissonant, which makes it--still--very tonal, in fact.

NOTE: Atonality sounds more like this, Arnold Schoenberg-- Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGLcUfbVF3k). Let it be noted, that atonality doesn't just mean that it's randomly played/written notes. It first began as something 50x more complicated than the standard "tonal" system of how music was written several hundred years. Schoenberg finally made it official that "this" kind of music is achieved by music equation, which is where the "50x more complicated" part comes into play. Alright, anyway, don't want to get off track here. It should be known that there are "random" styles of music; when the notes are "random" this usually means that the other elements of the music (colour, tempo, volume, etc.) are emphasized. Someone who was amazing at doing this was Ligeti, however, he didn't write random notes (you'll have to believe me on that one if you've never heard of him before), Gyorgy Ligeti-- Atmospheres (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0P1NnUFxc).

Hope this helps!

EDIT: And I don't want to go too much into this, because I haven't really looked into Eastern music as much as I liked, but there really aren't any "microtones" here. Even though (most commonly) Eastern music has microtones, they are still "in tune." An out of tune piano... is well, just that. Just because it goes out of tune, doesn't immediately make it a micro-tonal piano. Remember that ;)

And I don't want to go too much into this, because I haven't really looked into Eastern music as much as I liked, but there really aren't any "microtones" here. Even though (most commonly) Eastern music has microtones, they are still "in tune." An out of tune piano... is well, just that. Just because it goes out of tune, doesn't immediately make it a micro-tonal piano. Remember that

Well I'd have to disagree, microtones have nothing to do with the middle east particuarly, The middle east does use quarter tones alot but microtonality is the use of inbetween notes on purpose, which is what I attempted, I tried to use the unusual harmonies that were avaliable on that piano but the piece was really random I guess. About atonal, I know it was too random I guess to call it atonal but atonality generally means trashing harmony rules to a new set of your own rules and there are different forms of that I guess. I may have played on a piano technically but I still think by using harmonies that don't exist on a regular in tune piano, it's microtonal to some extent. Going out of tune doesn't make it microtonal, it's the use of the harmonies avaliable. I hope my next one sounds better.

Ok I made the 2nd one I call "The coming" It's far better than the first in structure and audio quality. Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WqIoJzN1to
I hope I corrected alot of my problems from the last one. Technically I based this song in Ebm with lots of microtonal chords produced be out of tune keys. I tried playing this on my good piano and it's not nearly as good sounding and really isn't the same at all.

Now we're cooking! I really like this. GIVE ME MOAH!

Yeah, pretty cool dude! Can't wait to hear more from you!

Thanks! The first was just random but the second had alot of character to it. I think those very dissonant sounds create an emotion you couldn't achieve in the same way if they weren't out of tune. See, on the piano those middle C# and D keys were horribly out of tune and created some type of strange chord, but both sounded simular being that the D sounded very dissonant while the C# was a chord with a milder flavor. So I used this to create a chord leading that sounded sort of pleasing to the ear with those low bass establishing a harmonic sequence.