[linux-audio-user] Thesis: Playing and making music

Orm Finnendahl finnendahl at folkwang-hochschule.de
Sun Dec 10 16:14:51 EST 2006


Hi Frank,

> >Uhm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcKyv0T4b4A ;)

Frank, you can't be serious! All that kid is obviously trying do to is
to rhythmically sync playing 9 huge buttons with his whole hand to the
16th notes of the right hand part of the Fantasy Impromptus of Chopin
(among others). Have you ever seen somebody do a Chopin, controlling
88 rather small keys with ten fingers in a predefined order? Not even
the mechanical issues can remotely be compared to the complexity of
piano playing (or any other instrument).

And apart from common belief, the sportive aspect is not really the
hard part of playing an instrument: Yesterday a friend of mine came
over to check out my new Grand Piano. Unlike me he is an (admittedly
exceptional) professional pianist and it was quite frustrating to hear
him play a piece lying on the note stand, which I had been studying
before he came. After 20+ years of training I'm more or less able to
play such a piece, but to hear the subtelties of his dynamic and
harmonic control was mind blowing, especially as he was sight reading
a virtuoso piece from the 19th century, (which took me quite a while
to learn). Telling him my frustration he told me that he can relate to
that quite well as he experienced the same when he had lessons with
his his former teacher (who had studied at the Paris Conservatoire at
age 12)...

--
Orm



More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list