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@wtg said in Marinara sauce taste test:
Onions
Shoot. I can't do onions, and neither can my mother.
We usually get Rao's, my favorite is to mix one jar of "sensitive" and one jar of "roasted garlic." Neither of those have onions.
I ended up not trying Mezzetta, which you posted about in the past, because it has onions too.
I'm quite happy with Rao's, it's just pricey (even on sale).
@RealPlayer said in Potential anti-aging treatments:
If I identify as as mouse, can I get the treatment now?
me too please! 
@wtg oh wow, that does sound promising! I wonder how long it will take to get from this point in the research to where the product will be available for general medical treatment. I have osteoarthritis in both knees (worse in right) and in my thumbs, in addition to my ongoing feet problems, esp. Achilles tendonopathy, which is related to loss of collagen in the tendon. So it sounds like this could be relevant for all of those issues, and you would think that a pill-form treatment would have more global impact rather than being localized to knees only (for example).
IOW, I hope they hurry. 
@RealPlayer said in You guys might understand this and might enjoy it:
371 chorales
Three hundred.... four hundred.... I've probably only played about ten, so ....
@Bernard said in Meanwhile, in Venezuela:
I hope this really, really pisses off the Maga base.
I wonder how many people will actually care. For too many Americans, it's "out of sight, out of mind" and only those with some connection to Latin America will care (although, having said that, there are a lot of Americans with LA connections...)
@Bernard that’s fascinating, thank you!!
Someone at PT shared info for Elaine Gould’s book on notation. I’ve never heard of Elaine Gould, but this seems pretty helpful as well.
https://forum.pianotell.com/d/2169-have-you-ever-seen-a-lunga-symbol-before-type-of-fermata/4
I found an entry here: https://dictionary.onmusic.org/terms/2023-long_pause
which describes “long pause” (and lists lunga pausa as the Italian) but there’s no symbol.
I also found a pdf version of Alfred's Essential Dictionary of Musical Notaton, and it only has the standard (rounded) fermata symbol.
Maybe I need to find a “complete dictionary” or even better, “dictionary of obscure musical symbols that only one composer ever uses” …
@Axtremus I also checked my music dictionary (an actual physical book!) and it doesn’t include this symbol.
I posted about this at Piano Tell, but I thought some of you (esp @realplayer @bernard ) might know more about this, so I hope it’s ok to share my post here as well.
I’m working on “Song For Gavin” by Ludovico Einaudi right now, hoping to record it soon, and I noticed this notation:
I have Einaudi’s recording of this piece, so when I was first learning it, I didn’t think too much about the notation because I know there’s a big pause right there before the next theme. (Plus I have a bad habit of not worrying about Einaudi’s instructions in Italian because he includes them so often, and because…. because Einaudi )
Anyway, now that I’m at the polishing stage and hoping to record this piece, I was going through the score and writing a few notes to myself and realized that not only did I not recognize the word “lunga,” I didn’t actually know what that symbol was. And it shows up four times in that measure across three beats!
So I figured I should look it up.
Lunga is apparently Italian for “long pause,” and sometimes is written “lungo” (in Italian) or “longa” (in English). (I don’t know enough about Italian to know why Einaudi wrote the feminine here, but I assume that’s the distinction between lungo and lunga.)
I didn’t find many images that showed this symbol the way Einaudi uses it (most showed a slightly different way of writing it), but I did find this graphic:
which suggests that the lunga fits under the umbrella of fermata and presumably a different type of fermata.
I have other scores by Einaudi where he uses a fermata, so it’s clearly not the case that he uses this symbol instead of a fermata. I assume he means the lunga to be somehow different from the fermata. In terms of how to play this particular piece, I’m not worried about it (because I can hear it, in the recording and in my head). But it’s interesting to think about the subtle differences in musical symbols and wonder what the composer intends.
Also, it’s sort of surprising to me to come across an unfamiliar symbol at this stage in my piano trajectory, especially in a contemporary piece, and in music by a composer whose music I have played so much of. I wonder if anyone is asking Einaudi these kinds of questions. I certainly hope so! He’s still actively concertizing, but he will eventually retire and so on.
Anyway, have you ever seen a lunga? In classical music or contemporary?
@Steve-Miller thanks for posting that Steve, I’ll watch it later.
@realplayer I have the big Bach chorale book (this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0989087913?ref_=ppx_hzod_title_dt_b_fed_asin_title_0_0) which I bought for sightreading practice, but I found it to be too hard for a “one a day” approach, so I haven’t played from it many years. (although my Amazon purchase record tells me that I bought it in 2014. After 12 years, maybe I’d find it easier now…)
But I love the chordal movement there.
Re Abide By Me, I think it’s been arranged and recorded by a lot of contemporary pianist/composers (like Nevue). Here’s a version I really like:
Link to video@wtg said in BYD > Tesla:
Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker.
I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of BYD. They’re not sold in the U.S., are they?
@Jodi said in Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff?:
good old mini incandescents
Those are the best! The warm color tone is much nicer than the harsh white led light.
Our trees are all put away.
This year I had 446 ornaments between the two trees. Plus two tree toppers.
@Bernard said in Had a screw loose…. (A piano thread…):
Wow! I'm glad for you that the problem was pinpointed so quickly.
He diagnosed it at the last tuning (summer IIRC) and of course now that he’s fixed it, it’s dealt that he was right.
I don't recall seeing (or paying attention to) the back action.
Same. I don’t think I even knew it was back there, and when people talk about “the action” on a grand piano, they’re generally only focused on the part that connects the keys to the hammers. But of course, that doesn’t control the dampers.
@RealPlayer I have a Yamaha C2 (5’8”) that was build in 2000. I bought it in 2019. 
@Rontuner said in Had a screw loose…. (A piano thread…):
Most university techs become very efficient at making things work...
Oh he’s definitely that!! Besides the fact that he gives me the best and most lasting tunings I’ve ever had, he’s also fast. And given how much work it is to get into the back action, I’m guessing he was pretty fast yesterday as well. But obviously not sloppy or careless.
@Rontuner said in Had a screw loose…. (A piano thread…):
Nice photo description -
Thank you!
Glad everything went well.
Me too!
This is a job where many starting techs get 'lost in the weeds' when trying to get everything back together properly. Damper work can be finicky!
I would have been much more nervous about this with some of the other tuners I've worked with in the past, mainly the ones who were less experienced. I might have mentioned this to you before, but my current tuner is the former head piano tech from the music school at my uni, he spent over 20 years taking care of the 500+ pianos here. And since he's been taking care my piano, I've had zero complaints, zero concerns.
Clicks and noises in general in and around the piano can be difficult to find, consider yourself fortunate that the diagnosis and repair seems straightforward.
Yep! Partly it's because this was a pretty straightforward problem, partly it's because my piano is such a good instrument.
The piano I had before this was a Petrof upright (model #115, 45 inches tall). I had purchased it used, I estimated (based on resources online) that is was built around 1990.
That piano had a lovely, distinctive voice. But it was as rickety as the day is long! Squeaking and clicking, creaking and wheezing! With that piano, my approach was just to ignore it!
For at least the last ... I dunno maybe 6 months, my piano has had a clicking noise when I pedal. I could hear the noise in the bass area below middle C, but it wasn’t tied to any specific notes, more like just caused by pedaling and half pedaling. I don’t think other people noticed it while I was playing, but you can kind of hear it in some of the recordings I’ve made lately. I tried not to let it drive me crazy, but I’ve really wanted to get it fixed for a long time now!
I noticed that it was worse when the indoor humidity was lower. When my tuner came in the summer, he pulled out the action and figured out that the noise was in the back action (a term I didn’t even know before then) and he said there was probably a loose screw, or maybe a few loose screws. At the time, he explained that to get to those screws, the entire back action would have to be removed. We discussed my understanding of the symptoms (esp. the timing of when it was worse) and based on that, he recommended that I wait until winter when the humidity was lowest. Then he would come and remove the back action and tighten all the screws.
That day finally came, yesterday!
He pulled out the action…
Here’s the back action, you can’t see the screws in question yet…
Here he’s pointing to the screws with his right hand. He ended up tightening every single one of these screws.
Actually, these photos are out of order, I think this was when he was explaining how the back action works…but I can’t remember!
Another shot of the back action…
Anyway, it was slightly less than two hours. And now…. No clicking!!!
A lovely way to start the new year 
My mother came over and Mr SK made toshi-koshi soba (year’s end soba noodles) for dinner. We visited for a while, she went home at 8pm maybe. Then we watched a movie, and were in bed 11pm.
Today we’ll take down our christmas trees (which will break my heart) while watching a recording of the 4-hour New Year’s Eve Japanese song contest Kohaku.
@RealPlayer said in Chopin's Op.72, No. 1:
By the way, have you seen that video where Seymour Bernstein argues that “hairpins” in Chopin and Brahms might mean rubato instead of crescendo and diminuendo? Head-exploding!
OMG! Head-exploding indeed!
