The funniest thing breadboy is that I'm reading all of your posts, and, I really can't even force myself to believe that you are anything other a very intelligent human being. You do make excellent arguments and counterpoints, which is why it's so amusing that when it comes down to it, your intent on remaining naive is the only thing that's going to keep you from your goals. It's like the recent college graduate who storms into a corporation "knowing everything" but in reality knows nothing.
Personally, I’ll bet you’ve made plenty of claims that something is easy without actually doing it.
No, I don't think I have, but as you yourself say (I think, I'm not going to go back and find it), proving a negative is difficult, so I won't try.
Is being a garbage man easy? Is driving a bus easy? Is reading a children’s book easy? The answer to each of these is yes, if you are a normal adult with a college education, and fluent in English.
You could argue it's easy to be a garbage man if you can do manual labor and have in fact ever picked up garbage. (Most of us have many times over in our lives). You could argue that it's easy to drive a bus if you have in fact driven a large vehicle at one point in time (most of us have at some point in our lives). It's easy to read a childrens book if you in fact have learned to read (all of us have, or we wouldn't be taking part in these forums.) You and I can call them "easy" because we have in fact experienced most or all of what is necessary to perform these activities well. Or have we? Emotionally, is it easy to be a garbage man or a bus driver? I couldn't say, my guess is that it might not be, it might be very difficult as you are working hard at early hours for little wage in a profession that is held with little regard by society. In that sense it may in fact be very hard, but I won't claim an argument having not had the experience to support it. Just as I won't claim that Mozart is easy having never learned to play any of it, regardless what it sounds or looks like on the score, as the score is only a model of the music, and until you have the education in your mind and experience in your fingers to recreate that model in an appropriate fashion, you have no idea how easy it may in fact be. Some things are deceptively difficult.
You do not have to engage in any of these activities to ascertain the level of difficulty involved, you just know.
And this is where your argument fails (the only place as far as I can tell.) You don’t just
know, you
assume if it’s based on anything other than experience (and even then you might be wrong.) Your assumption could perhaps be correct, but accepting assumed knowledge as fact in the absence of experience is naive (and possibly dangerous). In addition, since you are clearly a fan (or at least a reader) of the Chang book, for a virtuoso pianist to perform the Fantaisie Impromptu, it is in fact easy. The execution of it is easy, but only after a massive amount of hard work has been put in to make it easy for the player at that time in their experience.
You, having only played piano 4 or 5 months, can only assume at how easy a given piece of music will be to play. The pieces you are stating you want to play “ASAP” are well outside the range of anything you have physically experienced playing. I can watch the garbage man go by every week, and watch the bus driver pick up the kids every morning, but I can't claim to understand their experience and while it's easy for me to say "it'd be so easy to be a bus driver", in fact, I'd have to have prepared myself in dealing with children, and have experienced the responsibility of holding their lives in my hands every morning, in order to claim that profession is easy. For the bus driver, whom through experience knows the best way to deal with this every morning, it might well have become easy for him. Hand you the keys and you might be pulling your hair out by the end of the 2nd day. It's all in context.
Besides the character assassination that’s not quite what I did.
It is not your character I, or anybody else (I hope!) is attacking. It's the naivety in light of otherwise intelligent arguments.
Lets hope I have at least some idea of what it takes to reach my goals (a piano, music, a teacher, etc.)
I will grant you that. You are physically prepared. I'm not sure you are prepared intellectually. Get past the idea that you can achieve the level of performance you are striving for quickly without first developing the tools to facilitate that process, and I think you’ll be well on your way.
Humble - Marked by meekness or modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful.
Are you really going to agree that every great pianist throughout the 300 (or so) year history of the piano has been humble?
Ok, I’ll give you this. According to definition, you are right, you don't have to be humble to be a great pianist. It’s just one of those things that will help you be a better person. A better person is a happier person, is a more patient person, is more willing to patiently tackle the challenges before them. Required? No. Helpful? Probably. By the way, characteristics of the human condition can only be semantically defined by dictionary entries.
IF your life experience prevents you from having any meaningful understanding of what humility is about, I feel sorry for you. I don’t judge you, I only feel sorry.
I will not dispute that sight reading has many wonderful uses, and that theory can make memorizing music much quicker as patterns that would not appear normally pop out. I also won’t take issue with the notion that sight reading and musical theory are both integral parts of any music education.
Gee, ya think?? You would think then, that since it is so clear to you what tools are necessary to play the difficult pieces as soon as possible, that you would want to develop those tools. What makes you think you can get from point A to B w/o any of the necessary tools? Surely you *can* get from point A to B with all of the wrong tools (or none at all) but it will take you considerably longer. Your question was about how to reach that point "as soon as possible." Develop these tools and you will proceed with far fewer obstacles. For somebody who clearly possesses (and this is not said in jest) intelligence and excellent debating skills, again, it baffles me to think that you actually believe the core of your argument.
could you give me some things that are impossible to play without knowledge of musical theory
jazz.
I will grant you that you can learn to execute difficult piano music without any knowledge of music theory. The score is there, go through it with brute force and learn it. But again, you want to speed this process up, so develop the tools that will enable you to do so. And theory doesn't have to only encompass the language of music (scales/chords etc.) - The historical context and intent of a piece of repertoir can and often is more important than its harmonic analysis, and without that your "interpretation" (if you can call it that) is probably going to sound aweful regardless how many of the notes you hit correctly. (or it might not, you could be one of those few genius players who don't need any of this. more power to ya, I doubt this is the case though)
Lol!!
In this instance no, I am not using google to get my information. I certainly don’t think there is anything wrong with doing that however.
I was only hoping to lighten the mood with that comment. LOL. There is only something wrong with that if you portray the knowledge gained from it as having come from your experience, rather than "hey I just looked this up to prove my point" (which is fine as well if it's referenced). If all of your comparisons of repertoire and composers and pianists contained in the previous posts came from the knowledge in your head, wonderful. But if you pulled it all from google just before writing it into your arguments, then you’re even worse off than I imagine. I don’t believe that to be the case, but that’s where I’d see a problem with spewing google’d, rather than learned facts.
Patience my friend. Good luck to you breadboy!
Oh and ps. I too would love to hear a recording of your completed Für Elise. I’m assuming you’ve finished it by now?
-Paul
Topic: should i start the fantasie impromptu?