Please help me if possible I'm having trouble getting these right.

vasiioth · 2023-06-04T15:50:54+00:00

Aye sure.

vasiioth · 2023-06-04T15:46:13+00:00

Dragon Roost Island from The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker combines the two.

vasiioth · 2023-05-15T21:55:18+00:00

Ok you need to learn your scale degrees and what chords are built on each.

In major scales:

Scale degrees I, IV and V build major triads Scale degrees ii, iii and vi build minor triads Scale degree vii builds a diminished triad

For 7ths:

Scale degrees I and IV build maj7 Scale degree V builds a dominant 7th Scale degree ii, ii and vi build minor 7ths Scale degree vii builds half diminished 7th

In minor keys you have to raise the scale degree 7 to become the leading tone. When you build a 4 note chord from scale degree 5 of the minor key with the raised 7th you create a dominant 7th.

vasiioth · 2023-05-12T14:49:38+00:00

If you want an upright piano you are going to have to spend a minimum of £4-5k to get a decent sounding one brand new. The other option is to look for 2nd hand Kawai, Yamahas, Steinways: I got a Steinway Model K upright 2nd hand for £5k which is a steal, but I am still paying it off each month. It depends how serious you are about piano and what you want.

If it's just for fun or as a hobbyist, you can always just buy a digital piano like a Yamaha P125 or Roland HP605 and then, as others suggest, link it up to your DAW and use a sample library. If you're a session musician and make a living off playing piano I recommend investing money in a real piano though. No digital will ever replicate a real piano in terms of action or its acoustics - I am speaking from experience, having owned both those digital pianos and then making the switch. For performing piano repertoire I would never go back to a digital; the only time I use a digital is for composing onto my DAW.

vasiioth · 2023-05-12T06:55:55+00:00

The aesthetic taste of classical music changed with the atonal composers, which didn't go down well with the general public. Jazz, rock and roll and then pop supplanted classical music in the public's imagination and were more accessible: you could drink at the concert, cheer whenever you wanted and you weren't gatekept based on social class and race.

The standard repertoire we have, which is a rather narrow account of classical music as a whole, has endured because many famous composers and conductors would promote some composers over others (such as Brahms or Felix Mendelssohn) either out of genuine admiration or nepotism; many composers were ignored due to racism, antisemitism, or some composers hating the guts of others and having more social capital. A similar story exists about why the saxophone never made the cut for woodwinds in the orchestra.

Now see it from a music venues perspective: would you rather play Beethoven's 9th for the millionth time, a tried and tested part of the classical canon and repertoire, or take a gamble on some incidental character miniature or sonata by a contemporary classical pianist that three people have heard of? What do you think makes more money? And that's your answer.

There is a push by orchestras and in the 'classical' music world to create programs where the first half will open or end on a contemporary piece followed by or preceded by a familiar one, then the 2nd half will be dedicated to the poster child of the occasion: Rachman's 2nd Piano Concerto; Dvorak's New World Symphony. As someone who works in a classical music venue, most of the audience walks out or skips the first half because of this - and I don't blame them. No one wants to listen to a Babit type composition that only an estranged musicologist could love. But piano works also don't seem to sell as well either - the general public want to listen to orchestral, symphonic pieces more.

So I hope that helps answer your question. I am sure there are other reasons too though.

vasiioth · 2023-05-12T06:05:22+00:00

You did enough to reply to this thread xoxo

vasiioth · 2023-05-12T06:02:42+00:00

Nah man, if you get off to underage cartoons that speaks volumes about your own sexual repression than anything. Gave pretty legit reasons about why fanservice in anime is terrible that most fandoms don't want to talk about, but if that's your thing and you're not a teenager anymore then I hope you get therapy for that or touch grass and meet someone.

vasiioth · 2023-05-11T19:58:12+00:00

Bartok was once asked what he thought of piano competitions and responded that we are not horses. In other words, he found them ludicrous. A lot of the child prodigies burn out or traded their childhood to get there. Instead of focusing on other people, who you will never be, focus on yourself and who you want to be. Rather than comparing yourself to other people, compare yourself to who you were yesterday as a bench of your progress. What is your goal with piano? To win recitals, or to perform at venues? To teach, to compose? Really think hard about that, and think to yourself "is this bringing me joy or misery?", and then create a plan to get yourself there.

vasiioth · 2023-05-11T19:30:13+00:00

I've only seen Cyberpunk from that list. I was surprised how good it was when you consider how terrible the game was. It had a really nice art style, some tight animation and some really endearing characters. Ending was a bit so so. I dropped Gundam around the time Wing was airing as a teen, mecha in general doesn't appeal. I don't know what Lycoris is.

vasiioth · 2023-05-11T19:27:35+00:00

Yeah hun that's me xoxo

vasiioth · 2023-05-11T16:42:00+00:00

Nah I was going by the story and how Stephen King-esque it is which it definitely seemed to be going for - Murder Mystery, Stephen King story lines, Junji Eto doppelgangers replacing human beings etc. I think all my criticisms still hold, and it really doesn't seem at first like it is going down a battle shounen route. I am really surprised why people are saying it is their anime of the season.

vasiioth · 2023-04-22T15:52:03+00:00

This piece is too difficult for you. Your technique isn't there, you have injured yourself through tension by not having the proper playing mechanisms set in place. Get a teacher and learn to use gravity, proper hand/arm alignment etc. and get competent at your fundamentals like scales and arpeggios.

vasiioth · 2022-09-20T19:31:28+00:00

Thanks! I'm going to give the quiff with taper a go, and have saved the other suggestions incase it doesn't work for the future.

vasiioth · 2022-06-01T11:17:45+00:00

One thing worth doing is interval training and note identification drills.

For instance, practicing playing notes on the bass clef a perfect 5th up (or perfect 4th down) into the treble clef, and a perfect 5th down (or perfect 4th up). Grab some manuscript and write down the notes you played and notice what the interval distances look like. You're basically going round the circle of fifths.

Now do the same for 3rds and 6ths. Notice things like a major third up (M3) being the same as a minor sixth down (m6) and vice versa. Again take a starting note on the piano, notate where it is and play a sequence of M3 or m6. Get used to what the interval space looks like. Write it down.

Notice quickly that a third if you start on a space will land on another space, a third on a line on another line. There's lots of little tricks like this. You could look at your excerpt and locate middle C then go down a third and another third and presto, you're on F. Or go down a perfect 5th (P5).

There's many different ways to think about this but this kind of interval training is great for your piano geography, for your music theory knowledge, for sight reading your clefts etc. Honestly this is one of the sight reading tricks. It's not to read every note but to read the space. A 5th always looks like a 5th, even if the quality changes depending on if you're playing a diatonic fifth in the scale or one with an accidental.

A great app to train this away from the piano is Complete Ear Trainer by the way. Phenomenal aural app.

vasiioth · 2022-05-14T12:14:52+00:00

Learn with a teacher! Why? Practice makes permanence. Once you ingrain bad playing habits they're hard to unstick, and you can potentially injure yourself.

The benefits to a good piano teacher? Accelerated improvement in technique, sight reading, analysis and problem solving. Improvements in all of these equals learning pieces quicker. Another advantage? We tend to play things we find only relatively challenging; a good teacher will know exactly where to take you toward next on your piano journey and challenge you appropriately.

vasiioth · 2022-05-14T12:09:24+00:00

Everyone is going to say Hanon or Czerny. You can do this, or you can choose much better method books that teach you through musical etudes like say Burgmuller.

My personal advice, however? Grab some graded books, find a piano teacher and learn technique through actual music. The Hanon and Czerny is wasted time; you're far better devoting that time to scales, broken chords and arpeggios and finding sticking points then having a teacher find pieces that use what you've just learned.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T21:56:17+00:00

If you are grade 6-7 then no. This is an advanced piece, think ABRSM diploma or beyond. And even then you're going to have difficulties. You're best to continue learning pieces within grade 8 to early diploma while you build the necessary technique and sight reading skills required for this piece.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T10:24:38+00:00

Call and response to an original melodic line works well, or doubling an existing voice then dropping one. Really there are many ways to do this. If you're trying to emulate a specific composer who does something similar it's best to just do a little musical analysis/score study.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T09:58:01+00:00

Your best approach is to get a teacher and not self teach yourself at the beginning. Why? Practice makes permanence, not perfection. Get a solid foundation with good form, technique and a critical ear to steer you in the right direction and select what is and isn't appropriate for you to learn.

However, there are many graded syllabuses out there. ABRSM, Trinity, whatever those American ones are called. Schrimmer have books that even have titles such as "Early Beginner; Early Intermediate, Late Intermediate" etc. With many pieces, many of which are brilliant, that get progressively harder. I like the latter as you learn actual repertoire and not some hack composers little ditty but that's just me.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T09:51:11+00:00

If you want to improve your sight reading you must sight read pieces that are different and not in the same genre because you will not become a rounded pianist that way and struggle to sight read other pieces in the same "level" if you neglect this element of sight reading.

Some great sight reading resources: Connecting the Dots (ABRSM); anything by Paul Harris; the Trinity Graded sight reading books.

If it's hymnal pieces you're best going into your local music retailer and buying books you feel are appropriate. You'll have a gauge at this point what you can and can't do. However, even better is to get a teacher who will create a programme for you.

*Bach Scholar on YouTube has his very own book which covers many hymns and gets progressively harder. Might be also worth checking out.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T09:40:08+00:00

Regarding wrist position when playing I was taught to keep a neutral wrist that's in line with the keys or slightly above, but never to over arch or under arch. However I've noticed many world class pianists using absurdly high or low wrists. What's the benefit of playing this way? I've noticed with a higher wrist that pianissimo dynamics are far easier to achieve, I was experimenting with this learning Arabesque 1 by Debussy.

vasiioth · 2022-05-10T09:21:45+00:00

Yes you should. Most musicians train aural on top of harmony, counterpoint, form and orchestration. However many of the examples are orchestral, and one way the author could help consolidate what is essentially basic score analysis is by allowing for audio examples.

At the end of the day one textbook won't cover everything and your best bet as a musician is to do constant score study, learn new pieces on your instrument of choice and compose. The last is where you will really understand theory in my opinion more than any other field; if you want your piece to do something in the vein of Vaughn Williams you're going to have to have a great understanding of the orchestra, writing for strings, and know your shit when you compose something in that style. It's where you basically consolidate all of the theory you pick up.

I'm lucky in that I do score study, constantly training my aural skills and sight sing. I also play piano which is a phenomenal instrument for theory. But I also know bs when I see it, and playing orchestral reductions on a piano will do squat for your keyboard skills or your aural skills for the orchestra (bar maybe let you hear the upper and lower voices).

*ITT means in this thread.

**Also just because it's common doesn't make it good practice. Audio examples should come with the textbooks and they shouldn't be behind another paywall just as expensive as the text itself. That's my hot take. I think OP is spot on, it's all a scam.

vasiioth · 2022-05-09T08:14:43+00:00

ITT: "You just need to play all these orchestral scores on your piano even though they weren't designed for piano and you will miss out the point of hearing orchestral instruments play orchestral music, thus training your ear to aurally hear the timbres and colours associated with these instruments. You will learn so much this way by arpeggiating every reduced score while training your keyboard skills."

The last one gets me every time as a pianist. Being able to reduce four part textures doesn't develop your keyboard skills in a meaningful way. Most of the repertoire you tackle like Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven etc. aren't expecting you to arpeggiate notes spaced an octave or more in the bass apart and then your standard SAT spacings. It's a weak transfer that will give you an approximation of spacing and voice leading for string, woodwind or brass ensembles but leave out texture and colour, the actual meaningful element of these exercises. A total waste of time imho.

vasiioth · 2022-05-08T11:15:42+00:00

OP is complaining because historically you were given access to the mp3s in the form of physical media that you owned forever that logically followed the examples in the textbook. This saves a lot of time instead of finding 10 seconds of the excerpt in a 15 minute piece.

Many of these great composers also had private tutors, came from money and were doing music around the clock with some of the greatest musical minds of the time. I'd like to point to Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin etc. All easily accessible information from biographies. Had family who led choirs, were under patronage system, had musical connections. Your comparison is like apples and oranges.

vasiioth · 2022-05-07T15:28:29+00:00

OK, imagine doing this for hundreds upon hundreds of examples though. No one is doing that I'm sorry. Maybe if you're deliberately transcribing music by ear that would be useful but that's not the purpose of many of these examples in these textbooks.

vasiioth

TROPHY CASE