WTF-Beta

Tar

I love swiss cheese (I mean, I pretty much love any cheese...) so I would love the chance to have different swiss cheeses in Switzerland!

(Feeling a little hungry here....

That looks great!

@AndyD said:

Dates from 1860-70

Wow!

@AndyD said:

I keep an antique katana in ours, a place both humidity controlled and discreet.

that's interesting! How did you come by this katana?

Re piano buzzing... When I was the "care taker" for a Baldwin Hamilton upright that had clearly seen better days, it was pretty noisy. Then when I switch to the Petrof upright, that piano also had not been well cared for, and it was quite "rickety." It had a lovely, distinctive voice though, so I mostly ignored it.

But when I bought my current piano, a 2000 Yamaha C2, the different was amazing. This piano is so well-made, solid, consistent, reliable.... Yamaha doesn't have its "work horse" reputation for nothing.

This piano is just such a good instrument. Its tone/voice might not be "distinctive" or "unique," but it has zero issues or quirks. No buzzing, clacking, rattling.... And it is so responsive to maintenance.

When I first got it (from someone who didn't take care of it, noticing a pattern here...) it had a weird knock in middle C, inconsistent but very noticeable when it happened. My tech at the time found that the weight in the key was loose, he fixed it right up. Never heard the noise since.

Then, last year I started noticing a clicking noise. My current tech took out the action, tightened up all the screws (literally) and now again, no noises. The piano lived in the south, with a sloppy caretaker, for the first 20 years of its life, and then once I got it, it started to experience pretty consistent climate control, especially in terms of humidity. In winter 2024, I had a dampp chaser installed, and then in spring we moved to our current house, which is the driest house I've ever lived in. So I think once the piano got settled in to its new climate, and got all the residual "over-humid" impacts out, it got a little bit rattle-y. But it's fixed now, and between the lack of buzzes and clacks, and the significant tuning stability, it is just a job to play.

Sorry to go on!!! I just consider myself so lucky to have this instrument!

Here are some pics from "screw-tightening day"

A modern piano has a lot of screws!!

@jon-nyc said:

Not sure why but it seems so much more tragic to catch and eat a fish that old.

Was literally thinking this!

Shrimp

I really want to get my piano tuned, I’m working on recording something and the upper registers sound a little jangly to me. But the weather is changing so I feel like I should wait a bit…

@jon-nyc

@Steve-Miller I actually like the Atlanta airport. It’s been a while since I was there though.

@bernard I would have missed it if you hadn't pointed that out!

I meant "night" not "dark"...

Automobiles

Dark

Limited

Bit

Wabbit

As I’ve written about here, I take lessons at my uni’s music school, and my teacher last year was a doctoral student in piano performance. This is her last semester (and sadly, I’m working with someone else now, so she’s not my teacher anymore). The doctoral students have to do some specific number of recitals as part of their graduation requirements, and there are various rules about the recitals, I don’t know all the details but some of the recitals are “lecture recitals,” where they play repertoire along with a lecture about the music and composer etc. Others are traditional performances, some solo, some with other instruments. Last semester I attended one of her recitals with a trio (violin and cello) and that was sublime.

So she recently played her last recital before graduating. This was a solo performance, here is the program:

It was so great! I loved all of it, and she plays so, so well, it’s just such a treat to listen. Also I had a nice seat with a good sightline to her and her hands

It was especially nice to hear the Beethoven live (which I’ve never heard live before). A lot of the recitals at the music school have programs which I’m less familiar with, but this program was much more familiar to me than many I’ve attended, so that makes it nice as well. And the Beethoven Sonata is so well-known, it’s just a treat to hear it performed live.

The Glass etudes were great too, I’ve actually not heard Glass performed live either. My goodness, Glass is just hand torture. But not for her, obviously.

BTW each recital program has to be approved by a committee. If my understanding is correct, the performer has to choose/assemble the program, and then get it approved, and sometimes there are changes required etc. I don’t know about this one, but the inclusion of Glass was a little bit surprising to me, but I thought it worked really, really well as a program.

And the piano sounded divine.

All around, a really lovely program.

Time

Grapes

Disgusting.