Your deapest and darkest fear!!!!!(Muahahahahahaha)

[ihatepop]

I hope this has not been posted before.

Please express your deapest and darkest fear. I want to see how different everyone's fears are.
By the way, look out for the Shadow of Fear. It's just lurking behind you.....

ihatepop

[henrah]

Time.

Really, it is. In time I'll lose my Dusty, the cutest - but most paranoid - cat in the entire world, and the most loving.

Also, in time people change their minds, and in some cases this turns out bad for me. Hindsight's a real pregnant dog.
Henrah

P.S. Also scary horror films manifesting themselves in real life, i.e. The Descent *shudders*

[lau]

spiders

[prometheus]

I have two concrete fears.

One is to be abducted by a inhuman superior race of intelligent beings, ie ETs.

The other is having an heart attack.

The change of either one of them happening is quite small, especially the first one. Maybe I sshould add that the first one if a fear I had during childhood and may be entirely gone today. Of course both of them are irrational.

Another one is an even older fear for 'something' in a strange nightmare I had many times as a kid. If I have to try to make it contrete is is an atomic bomb slowly getting ready to go aff and destroy all.

[wishful thinker]

Becoming a piano forum junkie 

So seriously, it has always been heights.  It's not as bad as it was (I don't break out in a sweat when the plane takes off any more) but I don't think that I'll ever be over it.  Knowing that its totally irrational doesn't really help. 

Oh, and I suppose there'e nuclear proliferation, global jihad, bird flu....and how I'm gonna fit two grand pianos in my living room.....

Am I allowed to have more than one? 

[henrah]

....and how I'm gonna fit two grand pianos in my living room.....

Slot them together like in that video of the Bach concerto for 4 pianos shows. More importantly, you're going to have two???

[steinwaybaby]

my deepest and darkest fear is life.

phantom

[pianolist]

The other is having a heart attack.

In case it's any comfort, I used to be unable to get to sleep in my teens, because I was terrified I might die during the night. At 58, I'm still scared, but the fear has eased. I sleep better than I ever have done. I would never have thought that I might feel less scared, but perhaps it's one of life's compensations for age.

My greatest musical fear is that something might go wrong with my pianola while I'm doing a concert. I've seen pianists stop in the middle of a recital, glower at a broken string, and snap their fingers and call "Steinway." I can't do that, as I'm responsible for the instrument as well, so the egg would all be on my face. I have to do some concertos with orchestra next year, and my nerves are not for me, but for the mechanisms inside the instrument.

[thalbergmad]

My favourite banjo is undergoing an operation next week.

That is probably my greatest fear.

Thal

[ihatepop]

My favourite banjo is undergoing an operation next week.

That is probably my greatest fear.

Thal

Oh, whopee......
Yee Hawh!!!!

ihatepop

[jre58591]

my deepest and darkest fear would be for my hard drives to crash and my backups to be lost. nuff said.

[lisztisforkids]

George Bush somehow being re-elected. I wake up at night with a cold sweat, realizing it was only a bad dream.

[wishful thinker]

Henrah,

Yes I am going to have two.  I bought a Yamaha C3 in the sale  and have to sell my Brinsmead grand  .  She is lovely but I really need a modern action (she plays alot better than my teacher's Erard, but she won't listen  ).

Pianistimo,

Intrigued to hear that you give recitals on a pianola.  Why not get an electric blower and then you can retire to the bar while the concert is on?  Or are you worried that you will still need to be there to change the rolls, and so cannot justify the expense? Please let us know.

[ganymed]

me too - im really really scared of spiders

[henrah]

I also suffer from arachnaphobia, but it's starting to lessen. Most I can now go near and try and capture, but it's those low riders (the black ones where their bodies are small and frail and you can see the fangs, and they lie very close to the floor and their legs give them their size) that are the fast ones and the ones that really scare me. But, silly them, they get stuck in the bath, so all I can really do is wash them down the drain.

I once had a horrifying experience with two low riders. There used to be a big gap in the wall between our shower and bath, and I was always scared of it because of the spider possibilities it had. One day I got out of the shower, put a towel round my waist and two low riders came shooting out, falling over each other in a big bundle between my feet for a couple of seconds and then shot underneath the bath. I was stricken with fear for a couple of seconds, not really knowing what went on but knowing that there were two big spiders cavorting at great speed between my feet. It was horrible...

[pianolist]

Pianistimo,

Intrigued to hear that you give recitals on a pianola.  Why not get an electric blower and then you can retire to the bar while the concert is on?  Or are you worried that you will still need to be there to change the rolls, and so cannot justify the expense? Please let us know.

I'm going to be accused of spamming this thread, but it ain't ma fault, no sirree ...

I think pianistimo may bridle at the idea that she might be giving recitals on a pianola. It is I, pianolist, who do so. Indeed, the term "pianolist" signifies exactly that: a pianola player.

You obviously haven't yet discovered the true nature of these instruments, but there's no shame in that, since for everyone to whom I explain the matter, I always reckon there must be around 1,000,000 born who will never encounter it. Have a look at www.pianola.org, which I am in the process of writing. It should explain one or two things, and you'll find mp3s both there, and dotted about this site.

If I cama from Mars, and went with you to an orchestral concert, I can imagine that I would ask you what the peculiar fellow at the front of the stage was doing, waving his arms around like that. After all, it would be clear enough to me, as an intelligent Martian, that the real musicians were the ones playing all the different instruments.

If you weren't a musician, you would probably tell me that he was needed to keep the instrumentalists together, but we musicians know that that is a superficial view, and that his real raison d'être is to create a unified interpretation from a group of individual musicians. The important point, from where I stand as a pianola player, is that he is creating an interpretation.

Now, there are two main types of player piano, the better known being the reproducing piano, which plays recorded rolls, marked up in real time by pianists at special recording pianos. I do in fact give concerts with these sometimes, and in 1988, for example, some friends and I organised Percy Grainger to play the Grieg Piano Concerto at the Last Night of the Proms. The main skill in these cases is in restoring and regulating the instruments to play as they should, because the vast majority of the world's reproducing pianos play appallingly, which is why they often have a bad reputation with musicians.

But my main instrument is the pianola, the foot-operated player piano, and by and large the rolls for this were not recorded, but simply transcribed from the sheet music. If you have thought about such instruments at all, you will probably think that they sound mechanical and unmusical, but that is simply because the world's pianola owners do not know how to play them. Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime pianists probably have a reputation for playing loudly and at an unvarying tempo, because there was a whole series of CDs made where the pianola rolls were bashed out.

On the pianola, one must create the dynamics with the feet. That is not to imply some sort of smooth, terrace-like dynamics, but as varied a mixture of accents, sub-accents and general accompanimental levels as one can manage. There is a tempo control, operated by the right hand. This is not for setting an inexorable paper speed, but has to be constantly, and sometimes quite violently, controlled, in order to bring about anything from the most minute to the grandest and most sudden inflections of rubato. There are other hand levers for the pedals of the piano, and also levers which subdue the relative dynamic levels of the treble and bass sections of the instrument.

I put an mp3 of the Minute Waltz somewhere in the Performance thread recently. I don't like playing these rolls "without expression", because it turns the whole concept of the pianola into a circus trick, but you can take it from me that the roll which I am playing is utterly metronomic, in that there are no inherent inflections of tempo in it at all. Now, you may or may not like my interpretation, which is slower and less insistent than many modern ones, but it certainly isn't metronomic!

I trust this explains something of the matter! On and off I am trying to run an "Editing of Piano Rolls" thread, as an aid to educating musicians, with the explanatory text in the Performance section, and the musical examples in the Audition Room. Apart from these considerations of interpretation, there were at least a hundred composers in the 20th century who wrote music specially for the instrument, since it is not restricted to the compass or number of the human hands. Stravinsky in particular was interested, and you'll find a page devoted to him at www.pianola.org.

There, I hope that answers your question, and I hope it will not have diverted this thread for too long!

PS: Johan - do feel free to cut this out and put it in the Editing of Piano Rolls thread, if you feel it should go there.

[wishful thinker]

Pianolist,

My sincerest apologies that I accused you of being pianistimo   

I am very familiar with pianolas, my first piano was an upright Gulbransen, I recently restored a Witton and Witton (bellows and tubing, not a full stack rebuild) and have a Brinsmead triumphodist in the storeroom awaiting the time when I can rebuild it 

I would really like one of those push-up babies, so that I could have a really good piano and the fun of the pianola! 

[bench warmer]

North Korea ------ Iran---------Nuclear Madness

[pianistimo]

i was going to say pianolas.  but, pianolist has been so kind as to explain them and reveal some of the mystery surrounding them.  so, i am not quite as afraid of them as i used to be. 

being abducted during a supposed concert in a derelict warehouse.

[ted]

Most of the spiders used in the film, "Arachnophobia", were gathered in the Auckland suburb of Avondale and shipped to Hollywood for the purpose. Around sixty years ago, timber was imported from South Australia to build the Avondale racecourse grandstand. It contained a colony of triantelopes which established itself in the suburb. The peculiar thing is that they have never spread beyond a mile or so in all those years and nobody knows why.

Understandably, the film's impact fell somewhat flat here, as the spectacle of people screaming at these familiar, delightful, furry, saucer-sized, completely harmless creatures on the wall was too ridiculous for words. I used to keep a few in a large fish-bowl in the lounge. They can survive for weeks on moist cotton wool. However, we felt sorry for them after a while and let them out under the house.

Deep, dark fear ? I've been thinking for a couple of days and haven't come up with a concern I could speak of in quite those terms.  Obviously there are disquieting issues, but nothing which is exactly either deep or dark.

[zheer]

  the fear of failing in life, beeing a failure.

[pianowolfi]

Your deapest and darkest fear!!!!!(Muahahahahahaha)

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!


That evil devilish laughter! Scary enough. My deepest and darkest fear is getting lost in space. Somehow, being lonely, forever.

[Waldszenen]

Communists taking over Australia is my greatest fear.

[henrah]

Losing my cat is a pretty big fear of mine. I feel safe knowing that he's scared crapless of the main road at the end of our drive, but he will still age and get older. I don't ever want to lose him.

[thalbergmad]

Getting wiped out by Zheer.

Thal

[zheer]

Getting wiped out by Zheer.

Thal

  What do you mean , was simply looking for a way to erase the word UK from an essay.

[thalbergmad]

  What do you mean , was simply looking for a way to erase the word UK from an essay.

hahahahahahaha

Nice one

Thal

[_____]

Communists taking over Australia is my greatest fear.

I was gonna say clowns, but now that you've mentioned this it's gonna haunt me in my dreams for months.

[elspeth]

Being lonely (as distinct from being alone). Oh, and dogs, although that's improving a lot now. There were two evil ones that lived up the road from me when I was a kid and terrorised me... perfectly sensible childhood neurosis.

[prometheus]

In case it's any comfort, I used to be unable to get to sleep in my teens, because I was terrified I might die during the night

Hmm, I don't have a fear of having an heart attack in my sleep. It's generally not that had. But I can't stand it when I am aware of my own heart beat. It's very anxious. Sometimes I get really fearful. But that's only rarely the case.

[wishful thinker]

  the fear of failing in life, beeing a failure.

And who will be the judge, whether you have "failed" or not?  Do you think that you will trust their judgement? 

[zheer]

And who will be the judge, whether you have "failed" or not?  Do you think that you will trust their judgement? 

  Yea thats true, but it is a feeling you get with-in you know. However success means different things to different  people. Some seek economic success some spiritual or personal success, anyway it is an intresting journey.

[nanabush]

My greatest fear is kinda stupid.  Two cases where I'm terrified....

1) taking a shower with an opaque shower curtain, I can't see what's on the other side.
2) After taking a shower, the fogged up mirror, I always think that when I wipe the fog away, a face or something is gonna appear behind me...

[phil13]

Bees.

Phil

[henrah]

My greatest fear is kinda stupid. Two cases where I'm terrified....

1) taking a shower with an opaque shower curtain, I can't see what's on the other side.
2) After taking a shower, the fogged up mirror, I always think that when I wipe the fog away, a face or something is gonna appear behind me...

Hehe, you've really been effected by horror films haven't you? Dare you say Candyman 5 times in front of that foggy mirror??

Did you watch them when you were really, really young?
Henrah

[rimv2]

I hope this has not been posted before.

Please express your deapest and darkest fear. I want to see how different everyone's fears are.
By the way, look out for the Shadow of Fear. It's just lurking behind you.....

ihatepop

My biggest fear:


REACHING THE END AND THINKING, "I COULD HAVE DONE BETTER"

[ihatepop]

My biggest fear:


REACHING THE END AND THINKING, "I COULD HAVE DONE BETTER"

Then do better next time!!!!!!!!!!

ihatepop

[m1469]

My deepest, darkest fear would be having my deepest, darkest fears come true  .

[ihatepop]

My deepest, darkest fear would be having my deepest, darkest fears come true  .

So whats your darkest fear?

ihatepop

[ce nedra]

What m1469 is saying is that her greatest fear is fear itself, not so?

I was going to put that as mine, but you beat me to it