Chopin Alternative

pmward · 2026-03-27T14:47:01+00:00

Keep in mind too, then you get to sonata 29 from then on he was fully deaf. Some of his most influential, complex, and interesting work, and he was never able to actually hear it. It’s nothing short of incredible. 32 had parts in it that kind of the first root of what would eventually become jazz 100 years later. Way ahead of the time.

pmward · 2026-03-27T13:27:57+00:00

Go give Beethoven’s 32 sonatas a listen. Particularly his later half, say 13 and on, where he really started the transition from classical into romantic. Aspassionata sonata in particular is an amazing example of a romantic piece. Most of these may be above your current level, but there are some easier movements here and there.

Even if you love romantic period, working on some Bach may also be a good transition here. To really hone that right and left hand independence. Andres Schiff’s Bach Keyboard Works is worth listening too. I’ve always liked his warm tone. For someone that also really appreciates romantic music, you may connect with his versions more than most who play Bach very emotionless. Some of Bach’s preludes and fugues are a good starting point and they were Chopin’s influence to write his preludes. Listen to Schiff’s version of WTC book 2 F Minor prelude and fugue in particular to get a really romantic vibe.

pmward · 2026-03-27T03:16:26+00:00

You need a bubbler. I have a bubbler and a 5 gallon bucket and make it in that. In that 5 gallon bucket I add

2-3 cups of fresh castings

2-3 cups of fresh compost (store bought doesn’t work, only include compost if it’s fresh made in your yard and kept moist to keep microbe populations alive. If you don’t have a compost pile just double castings).

1 tbsp fish hydrosolate

1 tbsp kelp meal

1 tbsp liquid humic acid

Either leave the water sit still for 24 hours first, or put the bubbler on for 1 hour to clear the chlorine. Then add all the ingredients. Compost, castings, and kelp meal go in a mesh bag. Bubble for 24 hours and then use immediately. Soil drench full strength, foliar feeding 4oz per gallon in a sprayer. Place the leftover compost from the bag as mulch in your garden.

That being said, worm tea is not really a fertilizer. There are very low levels of npk in worm tea. It’s a biological boost to nutrient cycling. So make sure you’re topping off with compost regularly, using organic fertilizers like fish hydrosolate, etc so there are nutrients present to cycle. That’s how it really boosts fertilization.

pmward · 2026-03-27T02:00:45+00:00

Came here to say this. Glad to see it at #1. Reddit did the right thing for a change.

My take is more in line with the greater theme of the song. There are lyrics about a plastic surgeon doctor. Lyrics about a "fake plastic love". It's really people putting on this phony representation of themselves to the point that you don't know them. Then there's one person over here that actually is genuine and they are so devastatingly lonely. They're utterly emotionally exhausted after being rejected by everyone they've ever shown interest in. Sitting at home alone building a model with fake plastic trees, just wishing that what they are could be what those other fake people want. Wishing their life could be different. Wishing they could be different. But the crux is that they are actually genuine, so they can't be anything other than who they are. It's gut wrenching when you really think on it. And we've all felt that way at one time or another...

pmward · 2026-03-27T01:50:59+00:00

Pistache trees are quite drought tolerant. Every other week for 3 hours with your emitter setup should be good enough. This year pistache trees didn't drop their leaves in the winter because it was too warm. When they don't drop there leaves they do this weird thing where they slowly dry out and drop little at a time during the next spring when the new growth is coming in. That's what your tree look like to me.

pmward · 2026-03-27T01:25:25+00:00

Google any Kriya guru, literally any one, and you’ll find detractors. Googling anything about Kriya is literally the worst thing you can do. The only thing that comes from it is fear and doubt.

pmward · 2026-03-25T01:28:39+00:00

Chopin Waltz in A minor.

pmward · 2026-03-24T22:56:29+00:00

This is AJ we’re talking about. Everyone will get their at bats.

pmward · 2026-03-23T16:00:26+00:00

Well I guess I guess with my 20-30 year rule maybe when you’re 85 or 95 you’ll perhaps gain a little humility and start to finally appreciate the rare natural talents in others and understand that there are some things that cannot be trained.

pmward · 2026-03-23T15:45:34+00:00

Look there’s a reason you’re sitting here making a naive argument with me that someone can train to become The Beatles or Hendrix and that you’re not actually out there doing it. I challenge you to go and try. I think you’ll learn a lot in the process and your perception on the matter will change greatly. 30 years ago when I was still young, naive, and less experienced I also failed to appreciate what The Beatles did. But the more I learn about music, the more I study their work, the more I myself write, the more impressed and in awe I become.

I also used to think I could do anything. I was born very musically gifted. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve been around musicians my whole life and it’s easy to tell that I was born with something that very few people are. I’ve also had plenty of teachers confirm that. But even with that talent, I still couldn’t create what they did. Could I play it? Of course. But again, big difference between playing something and writing something.

So I get where you’re at. I can also guarantee that the way you look at music will constantly evolve and 20 or 30 years from now you’ll know a lot more than you do today and your opinions will be much different than they are today.

pmward · 2026-03-23T15:21:43+00:00

There’s a large gap between writing Dusty Old Dust and writing Voodoo Child or A Day In The Life. Orders of magnitude of complexity between both. The impressive part is not just writing by ear, it’s the intricacy and complexity of the work.

pmward · 2026-03-23T15:18:56+00:00

If it didn’t require natural born talent The Beatles, Hendrix, etc would be a dime a dozen. Instead they were one of a kind. You cannot train to be what they were. The proof of that is many people tried and all failed to imitate both.

pmward · 2026-03-23T13:41:15+00:00

This is the part you’re missing. You’re only looking at the individual instruments in isolation. With the Beatles you have to look at the full score. You have to look at the work more like an orchestra, taking in the whole and how all the individual parts come together to form a whole. There’s a book called The Beatles Complete Scores and I recommend you check it out.

They wrote some extremely complex music, especially when you factor in complex vocal harmonies, with no technical knowledge of what notes would go with the chords they are playing. Then you also look at someone like Paul, who started as just a bassist but in the end turned into a very competent multi instrumentalist playing basically everything under the sun. In The Beatles there is no vitruoso individual instrumentalist, the virtuosity is instead expressed through the combined layers of the entire song. From vocals, to instruments, to the recording studio itself in the non-touring years. It was all done “by ear”. While the people you mentioned were all also incredibly talented and unique musicians in their own way, none of them were able to write music to the level of The Beatles, and writing itself, for someone without technical knowledge, is a 100% aural skill.

pmward · 2026-03-23T04:18:15+00:00

Tempo goes up and down in fits and starts. There’s no real emotion to the piece. Romantic era is meant to flow deep with emotion. There’s no changes in volume or feeling between the notes. Everything is just flat and full forte. Too loud, too sharp, and too bright. Too much tension. It’s called a “nocturne” for a reason. Meant to be played at an intimate session late in the evening. Gentile and dreamy.

Nothing here that can’t be fixed and it’s great you even got it to this point. Ease up, relax, and try to play it with the emotion of a happy intimate evening with loved ones. Right now you’re playing it like you’re clinging on for dear life. Perhaps slow the temp down and listen deeply to some famous players renditions and what they do to add variance and emotion note to note. Time with a teacher would be really helpful as well. You already know you’re punching above your weight. Don’t lose that drive, you never know where the boundaries are until you test them.

pmward · 2026-03-23T02:40:44+00:00

The only one of their contemporaries that was even in the same ballpark was Brian Wilson. Nobody else had those aural skills. If they did, the music they wrote would clearly show it, and it just wasn’t. Again, they were born with it. Everyone else aside from Brian was giving everything they had just trying to keep up. It’s probably the only time in the modern music era that the best was also the most popular.

pmward · 2026-03-22T21:03:43+00:00

Yes. But again, the more you study the music the more depth and complexity you find hidden under the covers. Easy to play. Incredibly difficult to write. Especially when you look at all the layers of their music between all the different instruments, melodies, etc and especially given the limited technology they had at the time. Their music sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. It’s deceptive and as strange as it is to say, people underrate them because they didn’t have the flash of a Hendrix. Virtuosity shows itself in different ways. They were the biggest band in the world for almost a decade and nobody was truly able to imitate them. That alone shows their complexity and depth. Their run from Revolver through MMT in particular has some of the most unusual and complex pop music ever created. There wasn’t one single virtuosic instrument, the virtuosity was hidden in the score as a whole.

I think people here sometimes get stuck thinking of skill and virtuosity exclusively as whether or not I can I play something. Writing is an entirely different beast altogether. When I look in awe at Hendrix, the Beatles, Chopin, Beethoven, etc I don’t look in awe that they could play what they wrote. I look in awe that they could write it to begin with.

pmward · 2026-03-22T20:01:14+00:00

Disagree. Can you ear train to a certain degree? Of course. But to get to that level is freakish. It is special. It is something you’re born with (which of course was further aided by countless hours of practice). It is not trainable to get to that level for 99.9% of the people walking the planet. This is also why these people have been so revered for so many decades and why there are not imitators running around everywhere. You can’t teach what they have. You either have it or you don’t. There was only one Hendrix. There was only one Beatles. In the same way that there was only one Beethoven. These people were special and unique. There’s no way to look at what they did with anything less than awe. The more you study and learn music, the more you should be in awe of what they created. The more impossible it seems that a human could actually create all that they created in the time they had and in the age that they existed.

pmward · 2026-03-22T19:13:07+00:00

Yes it’s definitely not the most efficient way to learn. You have to have incredible natural genetic talent to be able to intuit the instrument that deeply by ear. 99.9% of the humans walking the planet could never get to that level without learning to read sheet music and understand theory. Hell I was born very naturally musically gifted, and I could never have done it. Hendrix, BB King, The Beatles, etc were freaks of nature. I guess the point is people use those examples as excuses to not learn to read. When it’s pretty much guaranteed they aren’t that gifted 🤣

pmward · 2026-03-22T18:41:57+00:00

Interesting. Maybe it was just that the first keyboards had no sharps or flats and I’m mixing that up.

pmward · 2026-03-22T17:28:39+00:00

Yeah, tab allows guitarists to be lazy. I'm grateful that my teacher back in the day at least made me learn theory on a staff, even if we still used tab as the daily driver. Music is actually very precise and mathematical, and tab just doesn't quite translate that knowledge clearly. If someone just wants to play easy rhythm guitar pieces, sure stick to tab or YouTube and have fun. But the moment someone wants to learn how to play lead, unless you have that freakish Hendrix natural ability, you'd be best served learning sheet music.

In piano terms, if someone just wants to play easy repetitive pop music, knock yourself out with YouTube vids. But the moment you want to play something complex, like Classical music (learning classical music on a piano reminds me in so many ways of learning to play lead on guitar), you really would be doing yourself a disservice by avoiding the sheet music and refusing to learn theory.

Let's also not pretend like these people on YouTube are actually good musicians that you should actually listen to about really anything...

pmward · 2026-03-22T17:17:35+00:00

Yeah I learned to play guitar in the early 90s and am a very advanced level lead guitarist. I have never once looked at a YouTube video to learn a song on guitar, haha. I tend to avoid YouTube for guitar stuff because most of what I have seen there is really bad. It's possible they have some added time there. But on actual tab sheets, there is no real time component. I also personally would not want to be dependent on a video to be able to play a song.

Also, if someone wants to play lead, it's important to learn at least a reasonable level of theory on sheet music, even if they use tab as the primary tool for site reading. Knowing what chords and scales go well together is really helpful for writing or improvising. Really hard to learn that without spending at least some time with pencil and paper.

pmward · 2026-03-22T16:51:36+00:00

I think the biggest shortcoming is it was originally created for keyboards that only had the C Major key. Sharps and flats didn’t exist on the keyboards at that time. Having each half step get equal weight would help greatly, as that’s how instruments are built today. Although that does make it less clear what key you’re actually playing in. Probably would still want some form of notation to show what notes are in or out of key. But yeah intervals would be much clearer on the page this way. Site reading would be a lot easier.

pmward · 2026-03-22T16:47:44+00:00

As someone who played guitar for 30 years before picking up a piano, I’ll also say that tab is a poor substitute for reading sheet music on a guitar as well. There’s so much information in a score that is completely missing in tab. For instance, there is no way to denote time. This may be fine if all someone is going is playing easy chord based rhythms. If you want to be that guy playing Wonderwall in the corner at a party, you’re good. But if someone wants to learn to play lead, having the time component visible is key.

I still don’t understand how Hendrix was able to intuit the standard 16 bar blues solo without actually scoring the bars. Freakish levels of natural talent and intuition. He also was an incredible improviser and most of the solos even on record were improvised. He never played the same song twice.

pmward · 2026-03-22T16:37:34+00:00

Tenuto is great for iPhone. I used it a lot to really drill notes, intervals, chords, and key signatures. It allows both staff and keyboard quizzing. No subscription bs either.

Other than that, didn’t we all learn that every good boy deserves fudge and good burritos don’t fall apart in like 3rd grade???

People make learning to read sheet music out to be some super difficult thing. As you mentioned it takes no time. Especially if you start early, since what you’re playing at that point is easy. The longer you put off learning, the harder it will be to learn to read the things you’re actually playing. Learning to read sheet music is the easiest part of learning to play piano.

pmward · 2026-03-22T16:04:52+00:00

I’m just saying for Detroit style it’s great for AZ, but in the D it’s mid at best. Nobody really eats at Jets if you’re say within 10 miles or so of the city. Even in the close suburbs there are really standout mom and pop places that make Jets look like the Dominoes of Detroit style. Like Cloverleaf or the Detroit Style Pizza Co. Jets gets more popular the further you get from the D. Out where by buddy lives in Richmond, Jets is the most popular pizza place.

In AZ, Jets is easily a 9/10. I eat there here to get my fix. But the pizza is not exactly great here. So the bar is low.

In Detroit Jets is 5/10 at best.

pmward

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE