WTF-Beta

Steal

@RealPlayer said:

my weight loss in recent years is due to loss of muscle mass, not exercise or diet. Case in point: I can no longer lift the lid of my 9 foot Piano.

I know those lids are crazy heavy, but if you used to be able to, and now can't, it's something to think about.

Have you looked into any programs that offer guided exercises or PT for older adults?

@steve-miller oh dear!! I'm glad it wasn't worse, but that doesn't sound like much fun!

@AndyD I love Hiromi Uehara!!! I am pretty sure this is actually from an interview, maybe with Rick Beato and i think they were talking and then she started playing...(oops, the video description says as much. My memory was right!)

I think there's a longer version somewhere... I would love to have a transcription of this, or the longer version, maybe nicely packaged with a beginning and end so a mere mortal like me could play it.

This is another Hiromi piece I love:

Link to video

@Axtremus said:

Chances are good that future AI models will “beat” this thing

That's what I was thinking. Anything a human can either already is or soon will be read-able by AI tools.

The article says this:

ShieldFont isn’t a foolproof defense, either. Any page that’s readable by a human could also be correctly interpreted by an AI scraping tool that simply renders the full webpage and uses optical character recognition on an image of the output.

BTW I need to add.. just playing through the first 15 or so measures, slowly, awkwardly… even that unmusical note-finding… the chords and the harmonies are so gorgeous. It’s very satisfying!

Parity

The other thing I’m going to start this week: Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones. I decided to do this arrangement, by Piano with Jonny:

Link to video

If you haven’t heard the original, here it is:

Link to video

If I were still singing, it would be fun to do a vocal version of it. But I’m way too out of practice!

If you remember the Wiosna thread, you might remember that the Piano Tell website has a recurring recital called “Play It Your Way” (PIYW) in which everyone votes on a piece and then works on the same piece, often in different versions. This time, the genre is jazz, and the song that got selected was Don’t Know Why, made famous by Norah Jones. There’s some debate at whether this is jazz or pop, but people agreed that it has enough jazz elements to count. I’m going to play it in a very un-jazz like way though, from the score, and (most likely) no improvised or solo sections.

But this should be a fun recital because this song really lends itself to be played in different versions, and there are tons of tutorials and different versions of the score floating around.

Anyway, if anyone wants to join in, here’s the thread about that:

https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2562-play-dont-know-why-your-way-piyw-11-october-2026

The recital goes live on October 15th, so if anyone is interested in playing Don’t Know Why, please join!

Ok I played through about the first 15 measures yesterday… it’s hard But definitely do-able.

Today I’m going to jump ahead to where the LH pattern changes to those sweeping arpeggios and see how that reads. Maybe that part will be easier for me actually.

I think this will be a challenge in some ways, but just listening and reading along with the score, it seems like it should be ok. I put a bunch of rehearsal marks for myself to guide my practice.

My fall piano lessons start either next week or the following. Maybe I can prep two sections of CdL for that… if so, those sections should probably be the first page and then maybe 8 measures of the sweeping arpeggios… hmmm

@Bernard oh dear that’s heartbreaking! And terrifying!

Re getting up off the floor, I can’t really do that without my hands. But I’m very good if I can use my hands, I don’t need any other assistance. We stretch almost every evening, on the floor in our bedroom, so we get down, do our routine and then get back up again. I also do a whole set of upper and lower body routine that I started when my knees started to go. So I some ways I’m pretty good.

What I can’t do is a single leg sit to stand, which would be good to be able to do if I ever get my foot surgery (which I hope to put off until forever…)

odyssey

@jon-nyc and @andyd thank you for the vote of confidence! I start fall lessons in two or three weeks (I'm not actually sure when my first lesson will be) so I plan to read/play it a bit before there. We'll see!

@Bernard said:

Is this something you worked on with your teacher, or is it something you did on your own?

I've worked on it before, so I did a fair amount on my own first, but then I worked on it a lot with my teacher over the summer. I don't think I could have gotten it to this point on my own. But now that I'm past the recording, I really like how I'm playing it.

@Mik said:

She could sight read anything and play it technically correct but it always sounded soulless too me.

Although I do aim for a "clean" recording, I would rather have blips and errors than soulless!!

@RealPlayer oh dear that sounds very scary! I’m glad it wasn’t worse! But be vigilant with yourself for awhile.

About 10-12 years ago, I was walking (half running actually) and I slipped on the ice and fell, very hard. I had on a backpack which I think was why my head didn’t hit the concrete. But my brain got knocked around in my skull and the next day I was dizzy and nauseous, so I went to urgent care and they diagnosed me with a concussion. I didn’t exactly get better and a week or a a few weeks later I was diagnosed with post-concussive syndrome, which is a type of MTBI “mild traumatic brain injury.” Ultimately it took several months to recover. I “listed” when walking for probably over a year after that.

All that to say, just because you didn’t hit your head doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt your brain. So be alert for any new symptoms, dizziness, headache that doesn’t go away etc.

@andyd Thanks for that link. I just bought the Henle version, which says that it includes fingerings by someone named Hans-Martin Theopold. They look to be different than the fingering in the score you linked to.

Looking at this score, it just looks daunting to me… we’ll see. I start fall lessons in the first week of Sept with a new teacher at the uni music school here. I don’t think I’ll work on CdL before than, but maybe I’ll poke at a few measures just to see how hard it is to read…

P.S. I tried to use the “spoiler” tags, but it’s not just for spoiler, it adds a NSFW tag and line breaks, which seems pretty cumbersome (at PT, it s black-out highlighter over the test and you can click to reveal, but it doesn’t add line breaks…)

@RealPlayer right, Ffrench’s “September Song” has nothing to do with the original tune of the same name. The hidden melody in Ffrench’s Sept Song is from Earth Wind and Fire’s Fantasy. Someone at Piano Tell also said they can hear Autumn Leaves in Ffrench’s Sept Song, but I don’t hear it.

@Mik I always find that it’s a trade of no what what I play or the level of difficulty it. Either I can focus on musicality and expression, and I end up with pretty sloppy playing, or I can focus on accuracy and I end up with much less musicality… ah well, it’s a process!

@realplayer and @wtg thank you for listening!

thank you @mik