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@AndyD that was lovely! I really like your performance of this!

(Left-right balance is a never-ending challenge)

@andyd and @realplayer it's too low for either of those purposes. I've seen the clothes drying thing, this is not only too low but also too short for that.

It's also too short to have anything to do with being a plug or stopper for the drain as well....

I recently stayed in an older hotel while attending a conference at another large university, I stayed in the hotel in the student union. (They also had a really nice Steinway B in the lobby that I played every morning while I was there, which was an absolute dream to play

Anyway, the bathroom probably hadn’t been updated in years. (For the record, it was fine, bathroom included, just old).

So this was attached to the wall by the shower/bathtub. Does anyone know what it’s for?

Major

@AdagioM said:

I’m not sure it’s just girls. I think there’s an entire generation that has self-diagnosed, trying to understand themselves and life.

My impression from the college students I encounter (and and outside of my own classes) is that it is spreading in general, but it’s much more common among girls than boys. At least here anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more even across gender lines in places like CA, OR, Seattle, but out here in more conservative places in the Midwest, it hasn’t quite spread to boys as much. But I suspect it’s coming. (Again this is just my subjective impression from the students I encounter).

I think pandemic shutdown was traumatic, and has had lasting effects on mental health.

Yep, my first-year students now would have been 12 in 2020.

Method

House

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.