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For my 7k post I thought I'd write about probably the biggest part of my life. The intertwined arts of keyboarding and songwriting. Probably even bigger than my studies, because even as I'm running my way through the quant track I'm still trying to see if there's a future where I can shit out a tsunami of albums and get paid for them.
In the span of ten years I've gone from learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with one finger to comfortably spamming arpeggios at a steady rate of just under 700 notes per minute with my left hand (with my right being slightly slower), and from changing a few notes in a melody to piss off my teacher to engineering a 120-man metal opera trilogy.
So, if you're a fan of my work or just want to hear a story, here's the best I've got:
There's a far too large fraction of Russians who somehow get the notion that as soon as their kid pops out of the womb, he or she is going to be the next Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, and so off to music school it is. Gymnastics and calculus are also acceptable substitutes for childhood. My mother belongs to this fraction, but thankfully she waited until I started hitting keys on the little keyboard I used to play around with until she decided to send me down the dark path of the one instrument in a rock band that can't get you laid.
And so when I was eight I started taking lessons. And even at that age, I remember I'd have something in front of me, maybe it was Canon in D, and I'd play something with two fingers and think to myself "No this part doesn't sound good, let's change it up a little bit". And then I'd go to lessons and the most predominant complaint would always be "how about you play what's actually written on the paper?"
I still contend that nine-year-old me perfected that song. But from what I heard it's a very unpopular opinion.
For the next few years I learned a good mix of everything. I remember being hot shit in fourth grade because I knew how to play the motherfucking Star Wars theme yo. Although I kept fucking up the Imperial March because I didn't understand the concept of E-flat. But negative feedback doesn't exist outside of the classroom at that age so the E-flats stayed forgotten for some time.
And then in fifth grade, barely anyone outside my circle of friends knew my name. I was just the kid who could play the Mission Impossible theme blindfolded. Which was hilarious because I never actually learned anything past the main melody, and I just improvised half the song on the spot. Selective memory means everyone still thinks I played it correctly, and I'm not in a rush to correct them.
Eventually I switched teachers. I forgot why we dropped the first one but she's my mom's current violin teacher and they became really good friends a few years back, so that will remain a mystery. The second one was a really great teacher but she would always use my mistakes as an excuse to tell my mom how bad I was and try to squeeze more lessons (money) out of her. After a few years of this we figured out the reason to the rhyme and went onward. There's two others but I'll get to them later.
Anyways, we're up to sixth grade now, in good old 2007. This is when puberty hit me like a sledgehammer, and I realize that girls are actually kinda sorta pretty cool. And there was this seventh grade girl I had a huge crush on, so I weigh my options, and I decide the best way to proceed from this situation and to get her to like me back is... write her an album.
I'd never written anything past the basic stuff, the fuckery I'd do back in my Canon in D days. And I found a basic chord progression I liked by accident. F minor, D-flat major, E-flat major. Just one chord short of the Fm -> D♭ -> A♭ -> E♭ (or, transposed into any key you want, i-VI-III-VII) that everyone (including me) overuses in the last few decades.
And then I based a song off of that melody and ended up playing it at my school's talent show. I forget which three groups placed, but they were all dance acts.
But I remember she commented on hearing me there, and to sixth-grade me, that was like hearing that your grandma no longer has cancer and can leave the hospital. Like, everything is perfect, and will be perfect, at least in that moment. And then I thought "Now everything is great! Now she'll love me and we can be together forever" and all the stuff a kid who just discovered how his dick works thinks about.
I don't actually have any recorded samples of that song as far as I know, although I do still know it by memory after all these years.
But that set me off, and over the next few months I'd happily go home and try to conceptualize this album that I could then play for this beautiful girl. I had nine songs, collectively titled "The Apprentice" because nobody could know what this was all really about. I was busy being subtle and suave here.
But in the end it didn't go over well. Because, in the end, as always... a keyboard will never get you laid.
So, cut to... the seventh grade. Back with a vengeance after a summer of StarCraft. I actually hit D+ for the first time in the winter of '08, and Brood War started to re-enter my life, so songwriting started to take kind of a backseat to StarCraft and my first love and a whole bunch of other useless shit that wasn't music. I peaked in eighth grade with a rating of 5100, and then my gimmicky play came back to bite me in the ass and I started my long decline after that.
On the side of lessons though, it was business as usual. This was where recitals started to get more serious, with tiers of auditions and all that stuff. And as much as they try to cover it up, there's this giant racial divide that started manifesting as I got older. Like it was always there, I just got drawn into it. On one side you've got the Asians, mostly Chinese. And on the other side you've got the whites, mostly Russians and other assorted Slavs. And they had this silent war going on.
And I mean obviously if you speak the same language as Group A, and Group B doesn't understand it, then there's obviously going to be a lot of hidden trash talk underneath the whole show, and naturally I assume they did it right back to us in their language. But it goes further than that.
Because you have two different, near opposite playstyles going on at these recitals. The Chinese went to their schools and learned that first comes learning the song, then correct play, then technique, and once you've got that you can start building upon it and then you've got your performance and your song. The Russians went to their schools and learned that first comes learning the song, then you build upon it, from that building you get technique by nature, and if you're really good you'll even hit all the notes right. Now in theory, the former method would win all the competitions, and the latter would win the hearts of the audiences.
But what this really came down to was the color of the judge being a good indicator of how I'd do. Learn the song perfectly (over a long period of time), everyone's happy. But then if I learned it imperfectly with my Russian method and I had an Asian judge, I wouldn't expect the highest results, and usually I'd be right. Can't slip any of my usual show tricks to hide the imperfections. But then on a Slavic judge I'd actually get points up for the mysterious category of "technique", even though by anybody's standards there's much left to be desired. I didn't question it though, just rolled with it.
Later on I'd take the theory and expand it to its logical extreme. The first rule of [UoN]Sentinel's Guide to Piano is this:
- If you're sitting straight up, with your arms at slightly more than right angles, with your eyes wide open, at any point in your performance, you're wrong.
Once you start weaving and closing your eyes and going Cirque du Soleil on the piano, the passion that you hear come out of the instrument increases tenfold. The downside is that you're going to look like you took six shots of vodka and then got epilepsy. But that's all part of the fun.
But at any rate, in spite of this holy war going on, I had a lot of fun at recitals. It's very fun to know that a crowd of five hundred or so at Princeton, or Carnegie Hall, or what have you, just heard you slip a very short improvised progression of your own invention into that Beethoven sonata to cover up a mistake you made, and most of them actually approve of your decision.
That's why I fell in love with the Romantic-era composers. Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Not only is it a lot easier getting away with the stuff I do in their music, sometimes it's actually encouraged.
And I love that, because music is art. It's not something you do to showcase your prestige or because someone told you to, it's because you want to express some sort of passion or idea. I think that's lost on so many of the kids who go through these musical programs, that first and foremost, once they've learned the basics of how to play an instrument, they should then simultaneously find out why they're playing it.
And outside the didactic world of auditions and competitions, I've always believed all performances are a two-way conversation between the composer and the performer. I don't throw in notes or cross out instructions in my sheet music because I'm an asshole. I do it because I look at this work of art of someone else's that's trying to convey something, and decide it would convey it better if I did X instead of Y. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. It's all in the ear of the listener.
But I like to pretend I know what I'm doing. It'll at least make it sound better coming out.
So for the sake of keeping it to a reasonable length, I'll end the 7k post here and follow up later on. I still have to get through 4-5 years of playing and writing, and I still haven't talked about my forays into power metal yet.
So I'll leave you all with one of the few songs I still have from that time period. This was back from when I was 13, and being the horny guy I was and still am, this too was written for a girl I was into. I made a few edits the following year and reposted the song, but it's still essentially the same song as it was from the summer of 2010.
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your Country52797 Posts
I followed a similar track to you, except piano always took a back seat to mathematics throughout elementary/middle/high school so I never put in enough effort to get where you are. I'm purely a improvisational pianist though since I stopped taking piano lessons after high school, so when super crazy people that play 500 notes per minute hear my sheer lack of speed, they lose interest before I tell them I just made that up on the spot.
just heard you slip a very short improvised progression of your own invention into that Beethoven sonata to cover up a mistake you made, and most of them actually approve of your decision
I love this. When you find that group of people, you know you're with the right one.
The piece at the end is very nice ^^
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I envy anyone able to play more than a stereo! (or otherwise creative and artistic)... good read :D
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Extremely enjoyable write-up. An anecdote about deviation from the score being encouraged: the fourth movement of Bartók's suite, Out of Doors, called The Night's Music, has a very recognizable phrase that occurs throughout the piece (it is the imitation of a frog's voice) and if you keep to the score it's notoriously difficult to remember when they occur exactly. Apparently the composer was aware of this as well and his intention was very different, as he once remarked to a student who learned it all: "Are you playing exactly the same number of ornaments that imitate the noises of the night and at exactly the same place where I indicated them? This does not have to be taken so seriously, you can place them anywhere and play of them as many as you like."
Beethoven and Chopin, two people who were on the one hand very rigorous with their score-writing and took pains to indicate exactly how the material should be played were both on the other hand outstanding improvisers. So there are indeed two sides to the proverbial coin.
Looking forward to your blog's next instalment!
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I'm curious because both you and Templar reference it, but is "notes per minute" a metric actually referenced by a teacher you've had or anyone in the classical music business? I've never heard of it before and assumed it was some sort of odd APM analogization (though in music I'd venture it means even less than in SC2).
Enjoyed your video though!
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On November 18 2014 20:49 Mirnaia wrote:
Extremely enjoyable write-up. An anecdote about deviation from the score being encouraged: the fourth movement of Bartók's suite, Out of Doors, called The Night's Music, has a very recognizable phrase that occurs throughout the piece (it is the imitation of a frog's voice) and if you keep to the score it's notoriously difficult to remember when they occur exactly. Apparently the composer was aware of this as well and his intention was very different, as he once remarked to a student who learned it all: "Are you playing exactly the same number of ornaments that imitate the noises of the night and at exactly the same place where I indicated them? This does not have to be taken so seriously, you can place them anywhere and play of them as many as you like."
Beethoven and Chopin, two people who were on the one hand very rigorous with their score-writing and took pains to indicate exactly how the material should be played were both on the other hand outstanding improvisers. So there are indeed two sides to the proverbial coin.
Looking forward to your blog's next instalment!
That's actually pretty interesting! I think I'll take a look at this when I get the chance, it sounds right up my alley.
Beethoven and Chopin were perfectionists, it's just that tastes change a little bit across two centuries 
On November 19 2014 00:57 Kronen wrote:
I'm curious because both you and Templar reference it, but is "notes per minute" a metric actually referenced by a teacher you've had or anyone in the classical music business? I've never heard of it before and assumed it was some sort of odd APM analogization (though in music I'd venture it means even less than in SC2).
Enjoyed your video though!
Not really. It's just a measure of how fast you spam notes. And of course it depends on how you measure it. Like I can consistently do 680-700 per minute across an entire song, but if we're talking a few measures of, say Rachmaninoff, or a solo, then it's possible for me to do 800 or more.
But I've never heard it used in the classical world. They put a lot more precedence on many other things than playing notes quickly.
On November 19 2014 01:00 Boonbag wrote:
700 notes per second ?
Whoops minute. I was going to put 12 notes per second but I can't hold that pace just yet. So 700/minute it is.
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now you just sound so casual =/
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On November 19 2014 02:16 Boonbag wrote:
now you just sound so casual =/
I mean it's not a superhuman trait or anything. Anyone can do it. I just had a method of writing songs I wasn't physically capable of playing, and then playing them.
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On November 19 2014 02:16 Boonbag wrote:
now you just sound so casual =/
:D The average human hand is, without any sort of training, capable of executing MUCH faster movements than what is required for virtuoso piano playing. The difficulty lies in discovering the movements and linking them together, and of course at the end of the day the most important thing is producing good music, that is HOW you strike those keys.
Thinking sixteenth notes, 700 / 4 = 175, 176 BPM (with sixteenth notes) is a common very fast tempo (many many Chopin etudes have it, for example). For very short periods in some pieces you are required to play faster, but for sustained fast playing it doesn't get much faster.
P.s.: Striving for velocity per se is usually a bad idea, if you read the OP back I very much agree with the "Russian school", that is, acquiring technique through actual pieces - I can elaborate on it if you wish, the crux of the matter is that by doing so there is a solution proposed already for the mechanical difficulties you need to overcome, because you are playing an actual piece of music so there is a good idea of how the thing SHOULD sound.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Rzewski
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That's why I fell in love with the Romantic-era composers. Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Not only is it a lot easier getting away with the stuff I do in their music, sometimes it's actually encouraged.
People commonly did that before the Romantic-era as well. In fact improvisation is starting to becoming more encouraged among certain instrument performers.
+ Show Spoiler +
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On November 19 2014 06:15 rabidch wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Rzewski+ Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyX5W9a_IE Show nested quote +That's why I fell in love with the Romantic-era composers. Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Not only is it a lot easier getting away with the stuff I do in their music, sometimes it's actually encouraged. People commonly did that before the Romantic-era as well. In fact improvisation is starting to becoming more encouraged among certain instrument performers. + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCaGSrI5BBk
My new hero
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your Country52797 Posts
On November 19 2014 01:21 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2014 00:57 Kronen wrote:
I'm curious because both you and Templar reference it, but is "notes per minute" a metric actually referenced by a teacher you've had or anyone in the classical music business? I've never heard of it before and assumed it was some sort of odd APM analogization (though in music I'd venture it means even less than in SC2).
Enjoyed your video though! Not really. It's just a measure of how fast you spam notes. And of course it depends on how you measure it. Like I can consistently do 680-700 per minute across an entire song, but if we're talking a few measures of, say Rachmaninoff, or a solo, then it's possible for me to do 800 or more. But I've never heard it used in the classical world. They put a lot more precedence on many other things than playing notes quickly.
I can play about 200 notes per minute, but I make those notes count dammit!
And every classical piece I've heard requires really fast playing, maybe that's just me though
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can you tell us more about the chinese and russian piano wars? like anecdotes or differences in philosophy. The image of year seven and eight kids divided into two rival gangs talking about music theory as if they were hardened criminals in prison discussing murders is hilarious.
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A lot of Tchaikovsky's Seasons don't need anything fast. October is really slow but really beautiful.
On November 19 2014 11:53 sths wrote:
can you tell us more about the chinese and russian piano wars? like anecdotes or differences in philosophy. The image of year seven and eight kids divided into two rival gangs talking about music theory as if they were hardened criminals in prison discussing murders is hilarious.
The race war as I remember didn't really heat up till high school. Before then parents or teachers might have made offhand remarks but it wasn't really something I paid attention to until later.
I remember this one concert in particular where from the last ten or so performers it was four or five Chinese names and then four or five Russian names, myself included, and maybe one of each to finish things off. So we're all lined up backstage in preparation about 10 spots ahead of our own respective slots because they want people in and out with minimal downtime, so you got the Chinese group at the head of the hall having their conversation in Chinese and ours is doing the equivalent.
And that in itself is nothing new, like some jokes sound better in Russian and some in English because of the phrasing of the two languages, and here's an opportunity to practice the former type of humor. But then the next guy, last of the Russians, comes down from our spot on the mezzanine and says something along the lines of "Man, the guy playing that Chopin looks like a fucking robot!"
And then there would be a quick circlejerk about the performance on the other side of the wall. Stuff like "Yeah he's just running through the piece without any respect" or "How can a beautiful piece like that put people to sleep" or my personal favorite, "If it was me on the bench, I'd do X Y and Z, not A B and C."
Now Russians are a pretty caustic bunch in general so I'd expect the Chinese were a bit more reserved in their shit talking, but once in a while they did look over to us and then look back and start laughing. I remember a kid who was always within two spots of me at every recital for the last two years do my epilepsy motions, which I mean now is hilarious because it's almost a signature of mine, but back then I was ready to go shut this kid up.
So the last kid in the Chinese group goes up and does this curt little nod and proceeds to play the fuck out of his sonata, and now that we're at the door we can watch him through the crack. We can't do any stupid shit because nobody wants to be the asshole who starts laughing like he's high on methane and then has to go up and face the crowd who just heard him behind the wall.
But I remember we were all copying the kid's bow and mixing it with the stereotypical martial arts thing, and to show our superiority we all decide without even speaking a single word on the matter to outbow this kid. Because the other four guys, I could write an essay on their problems. Could write an essay on my own, but I've got a war to fight here. This fifth kid I'm struggling to come up with anything meaningful or funny.
So I'm the third guy in that group to go up, and the guys behind me are like "Show those Chinese how it's done by real men", and I do my swagwalk up to center stage (because normally I'm really tense until I sit down and unload the passion, so naturally I decide to practice here). I bow so low I could see the piano's pedals a few inches below (above?) my dick. Snap back up, give a smile that would make a car dealer proud, and go to work.
If I could've found the little shit who made fun of my weaving, I would've given a big banana grin to him too. But it was too dark.
So I go to work on Beethoven. I believe it was the 3rd movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Now I consider him to be a Romantic composer, but he's still coming out of the very methodical and repetitive Classical era, so when you make a mistake it's really noticeable. But there's still all sorts of embellishments you could do.
So I started by speeding the song up by like 20 BPM and then being generally very liberal with tempo markings. Going from leaning in so close I could kiss the keys to exploding back to the point the bench tips slightly and hammering away at that leitmotif. I do this stuff on a regular basis now but back then I was doing everything I could to be flamboyant, just to silence that little shit. Although in reality I just gave him a lot more ammunition.
I managed to do all the notes flawlessly though, and definitely woke some people up between my self made tempo markings and slow motion headbanging. Left with another flowing bow, and told the guys something along the lines of "Yeah I think we won this one."
It was like that through ninth and tenth grade for me.
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Honestly... I cringed at that story. It reeks of generic adolescent racism which was sadly unchecked (perhaps reinforced) by authority figures. Luckily you live in 'Murka where we play pieces and practice our scales! :-)
Still taking lessons and/or practicing standard pieces these days?
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On November 19 2014 23:06 Kronen wrote:
Honestly... I cringed at that story. It reeks of generic adolescent racism which was sadly unchecked (perhaps reinforced) by authority figures. Luckily you live in 'Murka where we play pieces and practice our scales! :-)
Still taking lessons and/or practicing standard pieces these days?
I'm not saying I agree with it now, but that's what you get with 15-16 year olds. As for the part of the race war on the judging side, it exists, always will exist as long as you have these two conflicting philosophies, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
Now I don't discriminate; I just show off, and let the results speak for themselves, for better or for worse.
I don't take lessons. Most of what I play these days is stuff I composed, but I do play a wide variety of pieces and songs regularly as well.
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I must take exception to what you're saying because the more one continues their studies, the less this disparity is evident. Generally, the higher you get the more you're going to run into stories like this classical musician's account of her studies. The aspiring student, trying to advance her studies, is told by the professor: "You have no technique. You are nothing. Forget everything you have been taught, and I will teach you from zero." To further quote from the story the student continues, "I was surprised. What was the point? I can play entire concertos from memory. Why not allow me to play my pieces, and we can work on my technique as I played through the individual sections? That was the way I had been taught all along. He was insistent; we either do it was his way, or he would not teach me at all."
While you're labeling this as a racial divide might coincide with your personal experience, it's much simpler than that. There are either teachers that teach correct technique or teachers that don't. Technique enables clarity of musical expression and promotes sustainable play habits (i.e. avoiding RSI in its many and various forms). The degree to which a teacher enforces technique is their own personal prerogative, but generally speaking it's better to establish a good technical base first.
I'm sorry to come into your blog and speak so vehemently against what you're saying, but I strongly disagree with your assertion that it is a racial trait. I've seen too many Russian (or other generic Caucasian) technique nazis in my day to not speak up.
Sorry to be the Debby Downer there for a bit. I do support your endeavors! You seem very comfortable and happy with your progression so keep on enjoying yourself and your music.
EDIT: There is an interpretational difference between Russian/American/Chinese/French schools of music, but there is no difference between the technical approach.
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On November 20 2014 02:57 Kronen wrote:I must take exception to what you're saying because the more one continues their studies, the less this disparity is evident. Generally, the higher you get the more you're going to run into stories like this classical musician's account of her studies. The aspiring student, trying to advance her studies, is told by the professor: "You have no technique. You are nothing. Forget everything you have been taught, and I will teach you from zero." To further quote from the story the student continues, "I was surprised. What was the point? I can play entire concertos from memory. Why not allow me to play my pieces, and we can work on my technique as I played through the individual sections? That was the way I had been taught all along. He was insistent; we either do it was his way, or he would not teach me at all." While you're labeling this as a racial divide might coincide with your personal experience, it's much simpler than that. There are either teachers that teach correct technique or teachers that don't. Technique enables clarity of musical expression and promotes sustainable play habits (i.e. avoiding RSI in its many and various forms). The degree to which a teacher enforces technique is their own personal prerogative, but generally speaking it's better to establish a good technical base first. I'm sorry to come into your blog and speak so vehemently against what you're saying, but I strongly disagree with your assertion that it is a racial trait. I've seen too many Russian (or other generic Caucasian) technique nazis in my day to not speak up. Sorry to be the Debby Downer there for a bit. I do support your endeavors! You seem very comfortable and happy with your progression so keep on enjoying yourself and your music. EDIT: There is an interpretational difference between Russian/American/Chinese/French schools of music, but there is no difference between the technical approach.
I didn't mean it as a general thing. There's obviously many examples to the contrary and a huge variety of schools of thought that aren't along national lines, and that link is actually a really great example.
What I meant was that the whole system I grew up in was this whole "us vs. them" scenario supported by people on both sides, parents/teachers/judges/students etc. I didn't mind it. Gives a whole competitive aspect to the thing and it does create something to strive for.
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EPT
