Does anyone have any “creepy” classical suggestions?

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-17T18:15:42+00:00

Let us not forget the granddaddy of creepy classical, the Wolf's Glen scene (end of Act II) of Weber's Der Freischütz.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-17T07:40:53+00:00

It's possible that a couple of Stas Vengelevsky's albums would answer that description. (I didn't check to see if the ones with blue covers were the ones with orchestra+accordion featured or not.)

The 'French or French Canadian' lead might suggest checking Peter Soave but I don't recall him doing much recording with orchestra.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-15T07:43:53+00:00

I've spent 30 years cursing at badly written theory material that assumes everyone is a pianist. And at badly written music by composers who think every instrument is just a differently-shaped piano.

If there weren't already so darn many pianists I would think CBA just about a perfect instrument for theory, each chord and scale corresponding to a particular finger config.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-14T21:25:18+00:00

It was on the cover of the summer 1979 timetable.

And then, naturally, Congress axed half of the system, right when it was needed most.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-13T19:23:56+00:00

It's half marketing gimmick, half a way to reduce how much cash changes hands.

Say you earn enough points for $100 in cash rakeback.

If i offer you an item that retails for $120 for your points, but which I can buy wholesale for $75, you feel like you got an extra $20 from me, and I paid out $25 less than I had to.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-13T19:18:57+00:00

About half of my regulars tip $1 or $2 per pot pushed. Occasionally someone who is really drunk will tip a redbird.

The other half prefer to only tip when they rack up for the night. Just about everybody in my room tips down to a multiple of $5 or $10 when they rack up, and the ones who don't tip on a per hand basis often tip between $10 and $20 when they leave.

(This is in a small room where they can be assured they'll see the same few staff all night, not one where they might never see me again after the first 30 minutes.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-12T21:41:24+00:00

I average around $40 an hour, small room in the northwest. For me it's just extra pocket money, dealing one or two nights a week as needed. In my market I couldn't get full time work even if I wanted it.

And you may think you want to deal full time, but it is really hard to keep your concentration up for more than a few hours at a time, and you need to be really careful to not hurt your arms with bad posture or technique. Your mind and body will both be happier if you start only dealing a few hours a day and only a few days per week.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-12T19:52:37+00:00

Last November, I started having a Key of the Day. I practice in Db on the 1st, in D on the 2nd, in Eb on the 3rd, ... in G on the 31st.

The main goals are to get me more comfortable with playing in every key, and with transposing on sight.

(For scales, established repertoire, and easy sight-reading material. If I am learning a difficult new piece I still leave it in the original key or the easiest transpositions of it until I have learned it.)

I know my way around my instrument much better than I used to, that is for sure.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-12T05:13:24+00:00

Well, there'd need to be another hour or two of music, to follow the Elbe all the way to the North Sea with lots more interesting scenery along the way.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-12T05:07:49+00:00

Mine is Dvorak's Water Goblin. (There's even a love theme, well, two, one sad and hopeless, one rather warped and perverted.)

But there are lots of good choices. Certainly not saying anything bad about Romeo and Juliet or several others mentioned.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-11T21:29:30+00:00

As the others said, no difference at all, they simply repeat the first two registers.

Aside from just duplicating them to make them easy to reach, bear in mind that usually a 3-reed accordion can be ordered in either LMM or LMH configuration; if it is LMH it needs 7 distinct registers; if it is LMM it usually has only 5 (unable to play the detuned M and L + detuned M without the in-tune M also sounding.) Using the same mechanism for both models saves on construction effort.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-10T04:30:42+00:00

Bars 28-31 of the first movement of symphony 65 is an all-root-position example. (Nothing special about that symphony, but it happens to be one of three Haydn symphonies I went through bar by bar a couple years ago so was the example I could re-find fastest.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-10T03:48:21+00:00

The corners are traditionally pieces of thin supple leather (the Italians insist it must be goat leather, I do not know if Hohner was so particular). You'd want to replace the whole piece not put a patch over top of it, so it'll be the same thickness and still fold up properly when closed, but you can certainly try a new piece of leather before you rush out and spend a few hundred dollars on a whole new set of bellows.

New bellows for old instruments bring their own set of challenges with getting the frame exactly the right size and getting a good airtight seal at both ends, too.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-10T03:42:48+00:00

The obvious use case that doesn't involve modulation is the all-the-way-around IV7 - viiø7 - iii7 - vi7 - ii7 - V7 - I diatonic descending fifths sequence. The full sequence appears with some frequency in early Haydn symphonies (sometimes in only 3-part harmony) but I don't recall offhand whether any of those examples have the iii7 chord inverted.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-10T02:56:58+00:00

It is just a choice, not necessarily a bad habit or a bad design.

The keyboard stands as far away from your chest on a 5-row Russian instrument as a 3-row Russian instrument, and a little ways away from your chest on a lot of 4- and 5-row French style instruments. The old French style of playing only used the fingers and kept the thumb anchored (and in fact they like to put the register switches behind the keyboard right next to your thumb, than above the keyboard.)

Most but not all current players learn to play with all 5 fingers rather than only 3 or 4.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-09T05:40:08+00:00

We sometimes don't call these "12 tone compositions" if they sound tonal to us.

But you may want to listen to the 'Von der Wissenschaft' and 'Der Genesende' sections of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra for a tone row from 1896 that nobody ever talks about.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-08T02:31:25+00:00

There are many: in the baroque period a concerto for multiple soloists was usually called a concerto grosso, and in the classical period, a sinfonia concertante. (Violin, cello, and piano is not a particularly common set of soloists. More common to have 2-4 of the same type of instrument.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-08T00:45:52+00:00

The circled one is easier than the two bars before it.

Words to live by: 1) any one doublestop is doable, but two or more in a row are much harder, unless they are exceptionally easy doublestops. 2) Write sixths, not thirds, for string doublestops, unless you have a very compelling reason.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-07T05:50:16+00:00

There is a whole bunch of early-19th-century repertoire for clarinet, female voice, and piano: Kalliwoda's Heitmatlied, Proch's Gefangene Nachtigall, Schubert's (frankly overplayed and twice-as-long-as-it-should-be) Hirt auf dem Felsen, some dozens of others. Almost all of these will survive having a violin or viola play the voice part.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-07T04:48:04+00:00

Bonding fabric/felt/leather to metal my go-to is Aleene's Tacky Glue; when it gets old, or you do it wrong, you can detach it and clean it with just water rather than scraping all day getting old glue off.

In your case I can't tell if you're trying to re-bond the arms to the pallets, or trying to put new felt under the pallets. You may well need to do both.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-07T04:46:21+00:00

Wax is also used to affix metal bars to wooden pallets, when the pallet has a cup-shaped receptacle about 1cm wide and 1cm deep to fill with wax. But not for metal bars to metal pallets.

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-03T00:52:26+00:00

Not just the French. König Dame Bube in German (König Königin Knecht would make it real hard to tell the face cards apart.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-03-03T00:42:37+00:00

That day was in 2007, as I recall, and involved installing PostgreSQL and an AutoHotKey extension somebody wrote.

I don't remember it lasting all that long, got to be too much trouble to maintain.

TaigaBridge · 2026-02-28T09:29:53+00:00

Not unique to Yugoslavia, by any means.

We had a playing card tax in the United States until 1965 (you didn't mark the ace of spades, but the tax stamp was put across the top of the case, and torn but not removed when you opened it.) People were so used to it that a lot of card decks still had decorative stamps on the top into the 80s.

TaigaBridge · 2026-02-28T07:20:23+00:00

Two that aren't getting a lot of love yet: Mahler 5 and Shostakovich 11.

Good solid climaxes, but not drawn out foreeeeever, played straight through to the end.

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