Unexpected Piano Music Part Five: Fake Empire

This is by a group called The National. These guys were apparently regular cubicle schmoes who just happened to play music together periodically. At some point, they decided to give up the glamorous Dilbert life, and try to make it big as rock stars. I think they're still at it, so it must be working for them.

You don’t have to listen to the entire song this time. In fact, it gets a little cacophonous (thank you spell checker) at the end. You wonder if they were seeing how many people they could fit in the studio. But I am really impressed with the piano part in the first minute or so, especially how the LH and RH parts seem to be playing on entirely unrelated time signatures. But it works.

U2 fans may want to hang in there until at least the 1:45 mark, when it sure sounds like they signed up Larry Mullen Jr. to sit in on the session.

Fake Empire - The National

It's contagious

Let's backtrack a moment, and recall how this piano journey got started.

• January, 2007 - We make the decision to build a new house.
• November, 2007 - Having sold our house, we move in with Sue's folks while the new one is being built. They have an ancient piano. I tinker.
• December, 2007 - I visit Susie, Official Twin Sister of Aw2pp. Her son Jacob has Guitar Hero, which, strangely, increases my interest in all things musical.
• January, 2008 - Jillian starts lessons. I decide she needs help. She didn't, but that's incidental.
• February, 2008 - I buy my own lesson book, and away I go.

A couple months later, my mom (Gramma MA, a frequent visitor and commenter here these days) came to visit. She'd played piano when she was younger, but not in the last 20 years or so. She was very interested in my progress, and eventually played some things on her own. She (and to a lesser extent, I) was surprised at how naturally it all came back to her. I described it here: http://aw2pp.blogspot.com/2008/04/hey-i-was-right-that-was-interesting.html

So where are we now?

• Jillian is in piano lessons, as you know.
• I go to those, and may start as well.
• Susie, Official Twin Sister of Aw2pp, bought a digital piano for Cousin Jacob.
  
• Jacob now takes in piano lessons.
• As of last week, Susie also has started piano lessons.
  
• Gramma MA is starting to play again, and may herself buy a digital piano soon.
• Jason, the World's Largest Kindergartner, will start lessons next fall.

- Aw2pp, who's wife is immune to whatever fever the rest of us contracted

Job hunt update

Applications placed: about 40
Rejections received: 10 (including 6 from internal IBM positions)
Legit opportunities I'm progressing: 3

At this point, I am working on a Sales Engineer opening at a small vendor of Contact Center software. I have a second meeting with them on Friday.

In the meantime, I am hedging my bets by dropping off applications for openings I helped create. "Hi, I see you are hiring a Business Technology Architect. I was part of the team that defined that need, and scoped the solution this person is supposed to implement. Can we talk about you hiring me?" There are two such openings at different WebSphere customers in the Chicago area, and I am spending my time looking for more.

And if all that fails, IBM has graciously provided a list of countries they'd be happy to transfer me to. "Sue, any thoughts about moving to Turkey? How about Slovenia? Or Nigeria? Their Winters aren't nearly as bad as ours, I hear."

Jillian has piano lessons tonight. She was off last week (MLK Holiday). I am going to talk to the teacher about taking the 7:00 PM slot, immediately following Jillian's lesson.

- Aw2pp, a driven, talented, and highly experienced professional with 13 years experience working with and managing large, geographically disbursed teams on enterprise-scale software development and implementation projects.

Unexpected Piano Music Part Four: Porcelain

Continuing in our intermittent series on popular songs that surprise me with their paino... this one is a little melancholy. (It's Moby, go figure.) But I really, really like the way the piano creates sort of a falling sensation. For some reason, this makes me want to take up jazz piano.

Alfred's Book One taught me that this sort of thing is called Call and Response. So there.

Porcelain - Moby

And we're off!

Thanks everyone for the well-wishes. After the first full day of joblessness*, here are the stats:

- 1 interview in the books
- 1 2nd interview scheduled for next week
- 1 recruiter conversation down, another scheduled
- 10 applications dropped onto customer career portals
- 2 rejections already tendered (thanks anyway CNA and HSBC)
- 0 minutes of piano playing

* - Technically, I am not jobless. I remain employed by IBM for another month. But you know what I mean.

At this point, there is already a front-runner in the "Where will Aw2pp be employed on February 24?" Sweepstakes. Not much else to say on that yet; let's see where it shakes out. But two things are clear:

1. My time with IBM is over... IBM ain't hiring, and they may not be done reducing headcount.
2. Otherwise, the market is not the desolate wasteland that I had feared. There are opportunities out there.

More later.

Good news, bad news

The good news:

- For 2008, I met my target quota.
- My company (IBM) surpassed Wall Street expectations, and issued strong guidance for 2009. Stock is up $9 today.
- For 2009, I have a healthy pipeline in my accounts, and I am well-positioned to continue, if not extend my 2008 success. Strong words in this economy.

The bad news:

- None of the above was positive enough to keep me and many hundreds of my colleagues from losing their jobs. I (we) have until February 23 to find new jobs within IBM, or accept IBM's gracious severance package, and some well-wishes.

Bummer. I'm not happy about this.

I'll keep you updated. For now, I have already applied for 9 openings I found at my customers, working on projects whose underlying software I was instrumental in selling. That could be interesting.

- Aw2pp, who might have quite a bit of free time on his hands soon

iMeem - is it working for you?

So far, most of the music links I have posted here have pointed to recordings I have uploaded to, or found on, iMeem.com. I like this music host because:

a) It has a fairly extensive collection of stuff already uploaded to it.
To prove my own point to myself, I just thought to myself "Ok, think of something obscure, and see if you can find it on iMeem." Immediately the Waterboys popped in my head. They are an obscure (but not totally unknown) group of musicians from the British Isles who play Celtic-themed music (go figure). 157 hits. Another search for local Nashville musician Webb Wilder (the self-proclaimed "Last of the Full-Grown Men") returned 37 hits. Believe me, if you can find 37 entries for Webb Wilder, it's quite likely that you can find pretty much anything, musically speaking.

b) I can upload my own stuff to it easily.
Without going into detail, trust me when I say that uploading is easy. Which leads me to...

c) I can embed recordings directly on this here blog.
Like Youtube, iMeem provides a code I can then use to embed recordings on Aw2pp. But herein lies the problem, and I need your input on this.


Multiple folks have contacted me to say that they cannot get anything to play off my iMeem links. Myself, I have never had this problem. In my mind, this works. But I'm not the target audience here, you are. And if you can't play the music, what's the point? In that case, I need to find alternate means of sharing music with you.

So here's a test. Below, I am embedding my two-week-old, imperfect recording of I Due Fiumi. Could you do me the favor of clicking on the play button (if indeed you see one), and seeing if you can hear some piano music?

i due fiumi 1-5-2009 - Aw2pp



Those of you who can't fire up the link, can you tell me what you are experiencing? In theory, you are supposed to see something like this:





If you don't... well, I need to start looking into a new music host.

Unexpected Piano Music Part Three: The Denial Twist

This is a really interesting track. First of all, the lyrics are very well put together. Jack’s got a gift for this. (Trust me on this, I know it’s a little hard to make out what he says.) Second, although I am by no means an expert on this sort of thing, I would say, to my ears, that there is NO instrument carrying the melody here. The voice is the only melody. All other instruments, including the piano, are there to help drive rhythm. I’ve heard it argued that the piano is really a percussion instrument. In some ways, this is a really silly thing to say, but listening to this song, it’s easy to remember that the piano sounds are generated by hammers striking strings.

The slow decay and resonance of the piano sounds makes me as certain as I can be that they’re using an acoustic piano here. Of course, The White Stripes are not above manipulating the sounds of their instruments to create the sound they’re looking for (did you know that Seven Nation Army does not, after all, make use of a bass guitar?). But listen to the 1:20 or mark… that sounds like the real thing to me.

The Denial Twist (Album Version) - Jack White

Quick hitter - Melodia Africana II...

... is coming along nicely. Having some troubles on the third page, but the pattern is slowly coming to me. Just finished tinkering with it, in fact, and now that I am about to go to bed, maybe the little piano Gremlins will work in my dormant brain overnight to solidify it. (I know you know what I'm talking about...) I've probably put 4 hours into it this week, which is a lot for me. If progress keeps up at this rate, it'll be my recital piece. If not, I'll submit I Due Fiumi (albeit an improved version over what you heard the other day).

As I work on MA2, it occurs to me that these pieces do not seem to be coming together any more quickly than earlier pieces did. It took me about 2 weeks to make it the whole way through Limbo, then another month or so to feel ok about it. That's kinda been the time frame for everything else I've tried. A couple weeks to be able to play the notes, another few weeks to get up to tempo, and another few weeks to make sure I am obeying dynamic and phrasing markings. I thought, naively, and incorrectly, that things would speed up the more I went along. Part of the problem is that the pieces are getting incrementally tougher. There are just so many entry-level pieces in my Best of Einaudi book. But the larger problem is, honestly, my lack of skill / technique / experience. Even when I get a piece as good as I can get it (remember Ombre?), I'm still not entirely happy with it. This is a powerful indicator that I need to improve my fundamentals, and probably return to Alfred's for awhile. At least through Book 2, and probably more.

Dinner conversation from last night... we were talking about Jillian's piano lessons.

Jillian: Daddy, do you think I'll be as good as you after piano lessons?

Me: Better. Really, Jillian, I feel like I'm not even taking baby steps yet. And you are going to me much better than me, probably sooner than you think.

Jason: If you aren't taking baby steps, does that mean you are crawling?

Me: If that. I guess it depends on where you want to go. If my goal is to run a marathon, yeah, what I am doing right now is no more than crawling around my Pack N Play in comparison to that.

Jillian: So you mean, I'm maybe sitting up, not crawling yet?

Me: Sure, that's one way to think about it. Compared with where you'll be some day.

Jason: What about me? Have I rolled over yet?

Jillian: Jason, you haven't even lifted your head up.

- Aw2pp. who knows his developmental milestones

This could cut into the piano playing time

Good news and bad news: among our Christmas presents, we got a Wii. Not much to say on it just yet, other than the kids love it, and my Mii looks an awful lot like, um, me. Remarkable in how lifelike this thing is.

- Aw2pp, whose Mii can't putt, either

Jillian has two lessons under her belt now

Hi everyone. Sorry for the blog silence. Busy, busy times.

We're underway with the piano teacher. To review, she is a woman who attends our church; we learned about her through the church grapevine, met with her, talked to her on the phone about the logistics, methods, and goals of her piano instruction, and decided to go with her through June. She teaches Monday through Thursday, from 3:00 to 8:00 PM, in 30 minute sessions. Jillian's appointed time slot is Monday, 6:30.

Like the woman who taught Jillian's first set of lessons, PT is a very nice woman. And there the comparisons end. PT is very outgoing, and talks a LOT. Curiously, this has had a resonant effect on Jillian, who is normally very reserved. After just two 30* minute sessions, Jillian has discovered her inner extrovert, who wants to show off and tell stories. For those of you who know her, you'd be surprised at her demeanor. She's almost giddy at piano lessons. You know, like a typical 6, er, 7 year old.

* - In theory, the lesson is 30 minutes, but nobody has booked the time slot after Jillian.** Since there is not a hard stop at the top of the hour, and since nobody is banging on the front door to say "Off the bench, my turn", that means we've tended to linger a little extra longer each of these first two lessons.*** Monday, in fact, we didn't leave until 7:25.

** - Yes, I am fully aware this creates an opening for me. Quiet, you!

*** - At no extra charge!

PT's instrument is an Emerson Baby Grand. As you know, I am no expert on these things, but I'd estimate it to be maybe 60, 80 years old. It sounds like it is in good shape. PT says the touch is a little firmer than most, but apparently Jillian isn't having any trouble with it.

At this point, PT is in an evaluation stage with Jillian, discerning what she can do, what she can't, strengths, weaknesses, that sort of thing. As she moves through the lesson, she takes moments to tell me what she is doing, and why she is doing it. As with our visit to the Suzuki teacher back in December, it is almost embarassing to have the teacher engage me while teaching another... but I understand her motivation. It might otherwise seem they're sort of all over the place, playing pieces from Jillian's old Schaum book, from her new Bastien book (Primer B), and various sheets of music we've had laying around. From these activities, PT has concluded the following about Jillian's development on the piano:

• She's quite good at translating printed notes into keystrokes, but...
  
• She's just OK at reading notes. Better on the Treble Clef.
• She needs work on counting and rythmn.
  
• As I've mentioned before, she can be creative with finger positioning. This is a mixed blessing, in that over time, she'll have the flexibility to do what she needs to do to play a difficult passage. But for now, we need to be sure that she CAN play using prescribed fingerings, so that needs some work.

In sum, she's off to a good start, but there are some foundational things on which Jillian's first teacher may have been overly permissive. We need to get those things on par with her strengths before we can make serious progress. Therefore, some of Jillian's first assignments seem trivial to her, but we're encouraging her to focus on the subtle points she's supposed to take away from them, like counting and finger position.

PT also knows what I'm up to in terms of the piano. She's even offered to split Jillian's lesson into a 25/5 ratio, giving me the last five minutes to play something, and/or ask questions. Thus far, we haven't been able to manage that, since, as I wrote earlier, the time seems to have gotten away from us each week. (Did I mention PT talks a lot? Well, she does. Not that there is anything wrong with that...) I'm considering asking for that 7:00 PM time slot, but money needs to loosen up a little first. Which could happen in the next month or so; stay tuned. I had I Due Fiumi ready to play for her, as part of determining where I am at, and how best to progress. Had I played it for her, it probably would have sounded something like this:

i due fiumi 1-5-2009 - Aw2pp

Which is to say, passable, with a couple of errors (you'll hear them) but probably not good enough for a PW ABF Recital, and not nearly as good as Anthony B's or Monica's recordings of the same piece. But still not bad for me. (And I really like the Pianissimo virtual piano!)

Back to PT. I think the odds are REALLY good that we're going to stay with her for the time being. Years, in fact. It's difficult, but possible to envision a scenario in which we might outgrow her. Her strength is not so much teaching piano / music per se, but rather in the Cognitive Development area, where she has a Master's Degree. (She's played piano her whole life, but only had five years of lessons herself. By her own admission, she's no virtuoso.)

And to answer Mom3Gram's question, yes, I think Jason will take lessons from her, too, probably starting in the Fall. And Jillian? Our little extrovert can't wait for her next lesson. She's making marks on the calendar for every day she practices. She gets up in the morning, puts on the headphones, and plays her assigned pieces. She loves it. Really, isn't that the point of all this?

Oh, and she is already excited about playing her recital piece in June. Who knew she had THAT in her?


- Aw2pp, who is Sooper, Sooper Serial about ManBearPig.

You can infer...

... when things are busy around the Aw2pp household. Blog silence is a good indicator of this. I'll try to get something up today or tomorrow about the piano teacher, and Jillian's first lesson last week. All went well.

- Aw2pp, who is starting to not like shoveling snow

Unexpected Piano Music Part Two: Southbound

This is the song that opened my eyes to this topic. I feel ashamed to admit it, but in my 30 years or so of listening to this song, I had never, not once, noticed there was a piano back there. Of course, now that I notice it, I wonder how I could possibly have ever missed it. (There is even a piano solo beginning at the 3:00 mark or so. Hello, McFly!?) The next step in the progression was to realize how much the Allman Brothers Band uses a piano (or at least a piano-like instrument). Two of their most popular songs (Jessica and Ramblin’ Man) use it, as do a handful of more obscure (but every bit as interesting) songs.

I don’t have much more to say on this one. The piano part sounds really, really simple, almost (but not quite) like I could play it right now. (Very different from the piano part Telegraph Road in that respect.) And it sounds like a lot of fun.

Southbound - The Allman Brothers Band

One Year

There wasn't a single day, moment, or hour in which I took up this piano learning thing seriously. It was a gradual process, over the course of several days, maybe even a few weeks, in tinkering with some of Jillian's lessons, and a couple sheets of music we had laying around.

At any rate, that all started about a year ago.

Jillian's Lessons start Monday at 6:30

As much as we would have liked to get started in the Suzuki method, the thought of fighting rush hour traffic for an extra 25 minutes each way was too much to overcome. So our new teacher, a woman who attends our church and lives 1.7 miles away, has taken on Jillian as her newest student. Our new Piano Teacher (henceforth, PT) has, including Jillian, 35 students under her care. She teaches 30 minute lessons continuously, 3:00 - 8:00 PM, Monday through Thursday, and had only three openings. (I think a couple of her advanced students sit for more than 30 minutes... that, or she mixes in breaks periodically.) Jillian's weekly slot is Monday at 6:30 PM. We're very excited.

At this point, I am not considering signing on as student #36. We'll see how it goes with me sitting in on Jillian's lessons first. I still think, at some point, I am going to have to get my own teacher. Sue says the same thing every time she comes over to the piano and watches me attempt some unnatural jump. Now is just not the time.

Unexpected Piano Music Part One: Telegraph Road

About a month ago, I was coming home from work listening to the iPod, and it occurred to me that the song I was listening to had a piano in it. What was surprising was that I had heard this particular song probably 400 times in my life (give or take, oh, about 200) and it had never occurred to me to listen to what the piano was doing. Then the next song came on, and it had a piano in it… in the case of this song, I was always aware there was a piano involved, but I never knew how significant the piano’s role was in that song.

Then Telegraph Road, by Dire Straits queued up. It's a long song, so fire it up now, then read the rest of what I have to say about it.

Telegraph Road - Dire Straits

I first heard it as an undergrad at Vanderbilt. A guy a couple doors down was blaring it, door ajar, for the entire hall (and perhaps those upstairs) to hear. I went to his room, and asked him to turn it down. “What? This is a great song! Tell you what, you got a minute? Listen to this song, and if you don’t like it, I’ll close my door. It's about driving home from work on a snowy day.” Well, who could pass up an intro like that?

Problem is, Telegraph Road is a 14 minute song. But this gentleman had previously shown reasonable judgment when it came to music, so I sat down and listened. And talked basketball. And listened. While I did, he explained it’s a song about the founding of Detroit, how it grew into a prosperous manufacturing town, but eventually caved under the myopia of those who were not focused on the world at large, and the changes that were happening. (Sort of ironic… this is as true today as it was when the song was written 25 years ago.)

I listened. My verdict: “What a long, boring song! Close your door!” Dutifully, he did. After all, we had a deal.

The timeline of my appreciation for this song looks like this:

1988 – 2001: “What a long, boring song.”
2001 – 2002: “Hmm, there is something compelling here, can’t quite figure out what it is…”
2002 – 2008: “Wow, those last five minutes… that’s about as good as it gets for guitar virtuosity. Mark Knopfler is a god.”
2008 – “Wha? There’s a piano in there? Why hadn’t I noticed this before?”

What I didn’t realize is that, not only is there a piano in this song, it’s a featured instrument, every bit as necessary to the music as Knopfler’s guitar. And perhaps as difficult to play, in its own way. Even when things get a little out of hand at the 12:20 mark, if you make it that far and listen closely, there is a piano keeping up with things. As you listen to this song, focus your attention on the piano, as it comes and goes. Afterwards, ask yourself whether the song belongs to the guitar or the piano. (Answer of course, is both, but you’ll see what I mean.)

And since this is a really long song, I may as well take a second to bring this thought back full circle for you. On my way home this particular day, this being the third in a series of piano-laden songs, I paid very close attention to other songs on my iPod. I was amazed at how many of them made use of the piano, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. And here and there over the next few weeks, I am going to share those observations with you.

- Aw2pp, who wonders what ever happened to James Giblin, and Engineering Major from Lackawanna, New York

Piano-Related Gifts this year

Happy New Year, everyone! This morning, I am at a customer site, trying to get a demo environment up and running. So while I wait (and wait) for their Database Administrator to get their database back up and running, I thought I would take a moment to tell you about the 2.5 piano-related gifts I scored this year.

The first is a software suite called Play Piano 2.0. In theory, this would take the place of a teacher, until I have the time and resources to get my own. It has animations showing chord formations and progressions, and all sorts of other fancy things I can't remember right now. I am going to give this a thorough tryout, and will report back.

The half-gift sort of came along with this. It's a virtual piano, something called Pianissimo by Acoustica.



A virtual piano (VP) is a software suite that takes MIDI input and converts it to real piano sounds. You probably knew this, but I had to look it up. People tend to use these in lieu of the piano sounds that come with their digital pianos. That is, you could connect your DP to your computer, which uses a VP to convert the sounds into something really nice and fancy, then connect your computer to your fancy sound system, which then pipes wonderful piano sounds all over the place. Not that I am going to do to this. This is, apparently, a low-end, entry-level VP, at least compared with industrial-strength heavyweights like Synthology Ivory Grand, Pianoteq, and the Garritan Steinway, which all cost hundreds of dollars. Still, for a simpleton like myself, it has more bells and whistles than I can possibly understand, much less use. For example, it has settings for the:

- Extent to which the virtual piano's lid is open or closed
- Size of the virtual concert hall*
- Velocity of hammer strikes
- Degree of sympathetic resonance

* - But sadly, no settings for the number or mood of the people in the imaginary concert hall, nor how much they like or hate your performance. Unlike, say, Guitar Hero.

I imagine I might tinker with this as a possible replacement for the soundfonts I had been using to convert recordings. Pianissimo starts with a 250 MB sample from a Steinway D, then adds some sort of sound modeling to it based on these settings I mentioned earlier. I'm no sound geek; but I can see how people get that way.

Finally, I also got a set of Grado SR60 headphones.



I've mentioned to you before that the one thing about our Casio Ap-200 that disappoints me is the sound. To some extent, I expected this, but didn't mind it. Sound quality was fourth on my criteria list, after price, touch, and build (sturdiness). But it's actually worse than I expected. The sound is anemic, as if a pillow has been placed over the speakers. Nobody is ever going to mistake the Casio, by sound alone, for an acoustic piano. I had hoped that the headphones I received with the bundle (Audio-Technica ATHM20) would make up for the poor sound, but they actually make things worse. When I play with those, they... how should I put this? They ring. Yup, that's it. When I play the piano with those headphones*, I experience a ringing in my ears that goes away the instant I take them off. Naturally, I blame the headphones.

* - "Cans", audiogeeks call them. See, look at what all you learn by coming here?

Nevertheless, as you saw earlier, Rowan doesn't seem to mind. So those are the kids' cans, while I have my own. And, though the SR60's are the cheapeast, lowest-end headphones in the Grado lineup, oh my goodness, Holy Harmonics, Batman*, what a difference! I won't attempt to describe the difference. Let's just say this... when I put them on, I thought that I had neglected to plug the headphones in; the sound didn't sound like it was coming from the headphones, but rather, from outside them. Only, the sound was no longer muffled, but rather bright and clear. So I took the headphones off and played a few notes, just to be sure. Sure enough, the headphones were plugged in, the piano sounds were indeed coming from the SR60's.
* - According to this site, Robin never uttered the phrase "Holy Harmonics, Batman". He did, however, say "Holy Haberdashery, Batman!" I'll have to mix that into everyday usage.

Memo to Sawtooth, mom3gram, and any others of you with digital pianos... buy some good headphones, if you haven't already. Sawtooth is probably way ahead of me on this, but just in case...

- Aw2pp, who thinks the Database Admin has now gone to lunch

Piano teacher update, v 2.0

The whole fam-dambly met another prospective piano teacher yesterday. This woman attends our church, and was recommended by numerous people, including members of our worship team and the pastor himself. After a bit of sleuthing (remember, we're new to the area and church, and don't know everyone yet*), we finally found her after the service, and talked briefly with her.

* - Yet. Give us Sue time.

Yes, she gives lessons.
Yes, she is taking new students.
Yes, she has a new session starting January 5.
Yes, she also takes adult students.
Yes, she'd allow me to attend Jillian's lessons, if I don't sign up for my own.
Yes, she lives nearby.
Yes, she's available to talk more.
No, she didn't want to talk more that moment, as she was staffing a sign-up table for Compassion International, and didn't want to mix business with missions.

So we owe her a call. We like what we know so far.

Tough day at the office, Ro?

A week or two ago, Rowan decided not to take a nap. Instead, she went downstairs to watch Jason play computer games. A few minutes later, it occurred to me that it was unusually quiet down there. I went downstairs, and this is what I saw.







What a lightweight. She can't hang. Looks like she fell victim to a Garfield-sized nap attack.

(Tip o' the cap to Susie, Official Twin Sister of Aw2pp, for the caption suggestion. Susie is visitng from Houston this week, and thinks it's really cold here.)

- Aw2pp, who jumped out of an airplane once. Once.

Piano teacher update

We haven't yet committed to the Suzuki teacher we met last week. Our only pause is the distance. So in the meantime, we're still evaluating some closer options. The question is this: do the compelling aspects of the method outweigh the cost of driving 30 minutes, or potentially more, given that her available time (Thursdays at 5:30) means driving through rush hour traffic?

The answer is, of course, that it depends. If there are closer teachers, who also teach on a very nice piano, who are also very nice, we may eschew the drive. So there is one woman in our church who we're trying to get in touch with, who may or may not be taking on new students. And another woman in town, recommended by friends of friends.

In the meantime, Rowan took the opportunity the other day to remind us that we need to talk to prospective teachers about a package deal.






- Aw2pp, who made his first snowman in 35 years (give or take) this morning

Questions and answers for 2ndSoprano

Recent comment from 2ndSoprano:

I like your evaluation index- it's an interesting concept.

As for your next piece to learn, is "polishing for the next recital" (which you mentioned several times) a strong criterion? If so, then I would think you want something you think you can get to speed. And are you limiting to Einaudi only? If so, I can't help you out there. Not really a fan, but that's just me, apparently. lol

And, as always, this is all IMO, mainly because:

1) I've decided I don't want to play really difficult pieces. I'm working on expanding my collection of Easy Piano books.

and

2) I've given up on the recitals.

How's Jason doing?

I'd answer there, but it's a little buried, and probably is best addressed in its own post.

First, Jason. Great. Wonderful. He's himself, albeit a little easier to talk to than before, since his hearing and pronunciation are improved overnight. He didn't really have a bad day at all last week. Even the very first day, you'd have think he merely had a tooth pulled or something*. We spent all of last week trying to reign him in, mostly unsuccessfully.


* - In fact, he did have a tooth pulled as part of the procedure. He had an upper front tooth that was very loose, and they went ahead and yoinked it. Apparently, there is a slight danger that the tooth could come out, and lodge itself in the windpipe or even lungs. We haven't seen the bill, so we're looking forward to finding out whether this impromptu feat of dentistry comes free of charge.

Recital pieces... yes, I am always keeping an eye towards possible submissions on the recitals. I regard the work it takes to polish a piece as necessary and useful in my progression. What caused you to decide not to participate in these?

As to playing difficult pieces... it's not necessarily that I aspire to play things that are hard because they are hard. (Well, maybe there is a little of that in me, now that I think about it.) But it's more a matter of enjoying that also happens to be difficult to play. I like Liszt; I like Chopin; I want to play, for example, "Linus and Lucy"; these are hard. I'm not going to be content playing things out of Alfred's the rest of my life. So I want to improve, and increase the breadth of what I can approach.

The flipside is that, to get there, I have some unpleasant work to do, like Alfred's, scales, arpeggios, Hanons, and things like that.And in the meantime, I also want to play some music.

Which brings me to focusing on Einaudi... it's not so much I am a huge, longtime fan. 6 months ago, I'd never heard of him. It's really more a matter of my lack of awareness of other composers and repertoires* that are simultaneously musically interesting, and yet approachable for me as a noob piano player. I'd play classical if I could, but for the most part, that stuff is beyond me. I'd play jazz or ragtime, but again, the music is either trivially uninteresting, difficult but interesting, or difficult and uninteresting. I'll take any recommendations you have for me. I know some of the Bach Two Part Inventions have been submitted by novices before, but I don't know which ones.

* - I like the word repertoire; all the letters are in the top row of the alphabet portion of the keyboard. It's the little things, what can I say?


- Aw2pp, who does not have a Facebook status.

First, there was Joe the Plumber...

... now we give you Joe the Bouncer.



I am told he was asleep not five minutes later.

Sue would ask that you turn off the volume, thereby sparing yourselves her adoring mommy voice. But Joey has things to say, too, so you're going to want to hear that.

One good reason not to go to Bear games

This is funny. Some guy opened a Diet Coke ("pop", as they call it here) at the Bear game last night. It froze instantly.



(Credit to Tom Skilling's Blog, and the photo to someone named Rick Bardahl, who, I hope, enjoyed the game.)

- Aw2pp, who blames global warming

Wow, Why is Aw2pp so busy?

I promised you earlier in the year that December would be slow for me. That I would have lots of time to practice. And post lots of thoughtful, interesting and insightful things here. I’m 0 for 3 on those predictions. Work, which is usually really slow for folks in my position (pre-sales) has been as busy as ever. I’m lucky to get 20 minutes on the piano in a day. And frankly, I’m not happy with the meager amounts of bloggy goodness I’m posting here these days.

What up with all that?

Well, as I have admitted before, I get a lot of good blog work done on the train. Our new house (I mentioned we built and moved into a new house, right?) is 41 miles west of Chicago. The train trip takes about an hour 20 each way. I am, at this very moment in fact, on the train, thankful not be driving in some seriously bad wintry weather. But I have not been on the train much lately. Instead, I’ve either been working from home*, or driving to visit angry customers who purchased software that doesn’t seem to be working. And periodically driving to other customers, trying to sell some last minute software. (WebSphere Stocking Stuffers!)

* - No, really, when I work from home, I actually do work.

Maybe January will be slower.

- Aw2pp, who always yields to snowplows

Let's play "Caption that pic"

Today, we'll start with one of the candidates for the Aw2pp Christmas Card picture.




I'll get us started: "Peace on Earth."

- Aw2pp, who always gets a little misty when Linus tells Charlie Brown about the true meaning of Christmas.