The Best Kind of Physical Exhaustion

When you finish and you know that you won’t be able to move for a few minutes.

When your mind is clear and the only thing that runs through is a series of emotions and no words to describe them.

When your heart beats quickly and your toes curl from anticipation.

When you can’t wait to find out how it’s going to end.

When the last thing you do leaves you breathless.

This is the best kind of physical exhaustion: when you can’t comprehend what just happened.

This is the kind of physical exhaustion that concludes an incredible practice. I’m still in shock. I think I just made Tchaikovsky turn in his grave and not because I sounded bad. I sounded decent. I sounded like I could take on the world and no one could stop me. And there are only three words left in my head:

“‘I feel infinite.’” – Charlie, the perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Steel Drums

There’s a specific set of music pieces that go with steel drums. And there’s a certain person sitting here dreaming of playing again. I’ve been going through serious withdrawal since May. I want to challenge myself again, and it’s so far away!! I had “La Vida es un Carnaval” stuck in my head for weeks, just ask Christina. And now my Pandora is playing “Jump in de Line”, one of the first pieces I ever played.

Ugh. Please, I need to play!

The Last Gig of the Year

I’ll be sad to see the Seniors leave Steel, even though I’m not even in class with them every day. The gigs we go on are enough to bond with them, and be sorry to watch them go. Still, it was one of the best gigs this year, and I’m really glad I decided to go. We forgot a pan, and a book, but what the heck. A few massages and a lot of laughs later,
I have to wonder: Why does my room smell like chicken salad?

Best Music Video of All Time

I didn’t really hear the music part of the video because the video is so freaking awesome. It blew my mind away!

“This Too Shall Pass” by OK Go

The Hush Sound

There are so few female singers that are worth listening to. The famous ones are only famous because of Disney, and no offense, but I think that the music market is exploding with thin-voiced, air-headed female singers. While love songs are the most popular songs, there are still other fantastic songs out there that aren’t about love.

Keane does a good job of being awesome.
Muse is dreamy.
The Hush Sound is to die for.

Sue me for listing the few bands that rock piano. But what distinguishes The Hush Sound is that one of the vocalists, Greta, is a girl. She has a thick, meaty voice that is so satisfying to listen to. It washes over you like a warm bath (the good kind). This band knows how to mix their sound and how to make good music.

The only thing left on my list is to buy their CD Like Vines. “We Intertwined” and “Wine Red” are breathtaking, I suggest you give them a listen. These guys need to be heard. Not crappy singers who march across the stage with the microphone so close to their lips that you can’t tell if they’re singing or if they’re lip-synching.

It’s hard to find good music in this age of whiney voices and bad acoustic artists. Acoustic is definitely the way to go for many things. Naked music is the best and most pure. I play naked music. Naked and for you to judge. Naked and proud of it.

One Time, She Told Me This

The difference between family and friends is that you usually end up hating family.

I used to think it was true.

A Small Dose of Classical Music Listening Etiquette

On Friday, I went to a Joyce Yang concert. She played the Grieg Concerto, quite well, though I must say I don’t see the “million-volt performance” that the program promised me. I doubt I ever will if Yundi Li doesn’t come to my city. Anyways, she played all three movements of the Grieg, and it was pretty good.

It would have been so much better if the audience hadn’t gone berserk and forgotten that you never applaud between movements of a single piece. By doing this, you, in effect, interrupt the piece. And it’s supremely distracting to the performer.

So, maintain etiquette and don’t clap between movements. It’s rude.

Today, He Turned Over in His Grave

It is beautiful, it’s supposed to be a struggle between the complete abandon of the soul and the restraint of the mind. It’s an emotional tidal wave of passion. A fire.

Today, it was murdered. Dismembered, hacked, burned in a fiery pit of the passionless. I’ve decided that if you can’t play a piece, might as well not perform it, lest you render a musician dead. If you can’t feel a little bit of the torture in the composer’s soul, or the joy, whatever the emotion may be, then you can’t even have an inkling of how to perform it.

So, his nerves long fried, resurrected once again this afternoon to turn himself.

The tango of abandon and restraint is the theme of Romanticism.

Uh… Shite

Hmm… So here’s the plan: fall in love. Yeah, before January 10th. Think that’s going to happen? Nope. Not me. Not me at all. Maybe the next person over will, just because that’s how things work. The thing is, I’m playing this piece, Nocturne Op. 72, No. 1 Chopin (Posthumous), and even though it was published after he died, it was one of the earliest Nocturnes that he composed.

The Problem: I play it like I’m young. I’m immature in the whole love that was lost realm.

The Solution: Fall in love and get heartbroken [before January 10th].

The Problem with The Solution: Well, that one’s quite obvious.

The Solution to The Problem with The Solution: Run around screaming (that’ll get the guys, won’t it?).

Oh yay.

By the way, Cyrano de Bergerac is an epic play. Kudos, top of the notch, fantastic, awesome, mind-blowing, well-done, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Haha.

My left bicep is sore. I did not do one-handed push-ups; I can barely do two-handed ones. I did not lift weights with one arm; I’m far too lazy to. I did nothing that would strain my left arm more than usual, than play my concerto three times over.

The last time I played it, my teacher accidentally set the metronome to a quarter note = 144. That’s super fast. Because during the reentrance, I have to fit four notes into that time span. That’s ridiculously fast. 144 means 144 beats per minute. Which is approximately 2.4 beats per second. And by beats, that’s quarter notes, in this case. So, let’s vote and see who wants to be me playing at 144 with a piano marking that’s actually being reedited to be a mezzoforte marking, and having to become progressively more aggressive and energetic throughout the passage? Of solid sixteenth notes?

Now my left arm hurts. And it’s bloody weird. But it definitely tells me volumes about how weak I am. I’m so jealous of Martha Argerich and her man arms. She’s able to just drop her arms down and BAM! there’s a giant sound. Whereas I have to perform a version of a pounce on the keys, and I get a fraction of the sound she gets.

So jealous. And she sounds about a million times better playing Prokofieff than I do.

Now, I am sore. My hands felt like they were falling off yesterday. Well, not hands so much as fingers. Today is a whole new day with a whole new day’s worth of practice. Maybe I’ll lay off a little on the fortissimos.