I already tried Sorabji/Mark Thomas/God/whatever you want to call him, but no dice. Maybe one of you can help? To anyone who can play the piano and has the ability to upload soundfiles: I would like you to play Debussy's "Passepied" from the Suite Bergamasque. Only you have to play it very very slowly and very legato. Record your performance and then post it up somewhere or email me the .wav file. I would play it myself, only a) I can't get the triplets right and b) I can't keep the tempo slow enough / I keep wanting to speed up, and that ruins everything and most importantly, c) I'm way out of practice and don't play that well anymore. If you know the piece, you know it's usually played allegretto, but when you play it that quickly you lose all the fantastic nuances in the chords. The chords are what make the piece and need to be heard, and heard *slowly*. My favorite chord ever is in this piece: g# b e in the left hand, b d# in the right. Fabulous. This is music that needs to be savored. Any takers?

*sigh*

sorry rhiannon, as I lick my wounds from certain tongue lashings.... I would love to hook you up on this one, I AM CLUELESS. I DO NOT play a piano, although I sound pretty darn good on an old Worlitzer or Rhodes, they make anybody sound good. A shame... it would truly make MY day if I could say..."Oh yeah sure....lemme go throw that tune on my portable DAT, just make this here new directory, and badabingbadaboom!....here you Rhiannon, emails away *smile* (with tooth sparkle)!!" but that ain't gonna happen.... sigh

I get a smile with a tooth sparkle? Wow. Thank you for wanting to help me, though. That was very nice of you.

I'd help you, but I'm spending the next two months working up the piano reduction of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" which, strangely enough, was first written for piano, I think. Anyway, it's pretty much taxing my meager talents, and it's slooooow and eeeeasy....

Uh. Never mind. Fuck it. The piano IS a stringed instrument. Done.

It's also a percussion instrument. and a torture instrument to bored pre-adolescents who want to learn Korn licks on the guitar instead, so the piano teacher has to slam the keyboard cover closed on their hands to get them to pay attention.

Oh, Antigone, I may have to marry you after all. Either that or get you to send me the finished sheet music for your Adagio transcription. Piano teachers: what is up with them? They always make you play the ugliest pieces in your books, and make you play in recitals, without your music, even though both they and you know you can't memorize music worth a damn. I give them all a big raspberry.

Ooooo, I'm not transcribing the adagio, I'm playing from a transcription I bought. (I've got a link for a sheet music company somewhere... If you want it I'll dig it up.) Although the reduction I have isn't very piano friendly, especially for my hammish hands. I'm also doing "Last Dance" from Sara McLachlan's latest album, "Surfacing." Yes, I am the king of schlock! But my piano teacher (who also happens to be my aunt) wants me to do something more "piano like." So I'm probably going to also do a sonitina that I wasn't able to work up for the last recital. It's not that ugly of a piece. I actually kinda like it, I just like the schlock stuff more. :-) Whew! Luckily she doesn't make me memorize the music, but by the recital it's usually completely in the fingers anyway. I mean, piano teachers do all of that stuff for our own good, ya know? I just wish I'd listened when I first took lessons when I was 6 and hadn't stopped playing. Then I'd be playing like Mark by now and wouldn't be struggling to get both hands to simultaneously stroke the keys so my sappy emotions could get out in a form I find acceptable. Well, I've got another 20 years to practice...

my pıano teacher used to hıt my hands wıth a stıck whenever I'd let my wrısts drop. she made me cry.

there's a special spot in hell reserved for piano teachers. You know, the most effective way to teach someone an instrument is to find out what type of music the person wants to play and teach them that style first, concentrating on learning the songs the student wants to learn. If you really want to play "Tutti-Frutti" you aren't going to enjoy learning "ode to joy" yet.

Hey, my aunt isn't going to hell! Well, she's Jewish, so she probably doesn't believe in it anyway...

I had two teachers, one from age 4-10, the other from 10-12. The first one was a god. He even ordered all these really hi-tech synthesizers and let us compose our own songs, and those were the songs we played at our recitals. He was awesome. He always took it in stride that I didn't practice, and if there was a note or a dynamic in a piece that I didn't think sounded right, he would let me play however I wanted. The other teacher was a Lithuanian lady, who was an excellent pianist, but very very old-fashioned and very strict. She made me play Czerny etudes for children, and I had read in a book of composers' biographies that Czerny hated children, and when I told her this she laughed and assigned more etudes. EVIL! This was the worst: I have long clumsy fingers and I can't play fast at all, and she assigned me Schubert's something (man, I forget...Etude?) in E major. The right hand plays one long run during the whole piece. I simply couldn't play it. She KNEW I couldn't play it, and she still made me perform it in a recital, without my music, and I shook so hard I couldn't press the keys, and I cried on stage. Would you forgive her?

Nope.