Stars Jingling
RESTARTING O-NEW IN THE MIDDLE OF THREE SCHOOL PROJECTS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA
But I shall persevere! Caught up to Maou (just need to pull up the posts) and hopefully I’m back in the Musical Monday mood. But for now, posts will be approximately this long, lest I spend more effort on O-New than on school!!
LOLLIPOPS
I CHALLENGE ANYONE HERE TO PLAY THIS AT NORMAL SPEED. I also challenge anyone there and anyone not here, as well as people who can’t hear/are bears/rare hares
(Sorry for lack of comeback post so soon after new season. I just watched some episodes of Maou something something which marks the first episode of anime I’ve watched in like four months or something. Currently busy with district science fair stuff but that’ll be over tomorrow.)
Kirby Transcriptions
Here’s a transcription of a Kirby song (I’ve been transcribing lots of Kirby songs!). It’s what happens when you eat spicy curry. I’d accelerate it 800% but after several months of inactivity my fingers would probably fall off. EXCEPT THEY CAN’T CAUSE IT’S SPRING so they’d probably spring off, which is just as bad.
:(
But I’m coming back to posting now, and this post proves it.
JUST KIDDING HAPPY APRIL FOOLS. Oh, it’s not April Fools anymore? Now what…
Birds, Snails, and Pretty Colours
O-New is a blog, so I’m going to do blog-like things on it today. This includes things like posting low-quality videos nobody wants to see and images of ~daily life~ because apparently bloggers do that.
In other words, pictures of birds, snails, and pretty colours.
戸松遥 – Q&A リサイタル! (TV Size) Transcription
I’M A TRANSCRIBER, NOT A PERFORMER
The song here is Q&A Recital!, by Haruka Tomatsu; Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun’s first OP theme.
(Music sheets (.pdf) download link)
(MIDI file download link; what this cover would sound like if I weren’t so shit at playing)
(Makemusic Finale file download link; the only reason I said ‘Makemusic’ is because it starts with ‘m’, like all the other links do)
Sorry for the horrible quality and all those mistakes. They were the product of sleepless school-induced stress and mental delusion that I could transcribe something among mountains of homework. Two words: nope. nope. nope. (I was lying about it being two words. I also apologize in advance for my lack of capitalization.)
I’m also sorry about measure 13. The melody is in the right hand, but the chords obviously glossed it over. Then again, I think the bassline was actually more interesting than the melody so that could be a good thing orz
Musikalisches Bilderbuch, No. 5 Weisse Und Schwarze Tasten II
According to the German Wikipedia, István Szelényi (no, don’t ask me how to pronounce that) was a not-German and yes-Hungarian pianist and composer, born in 1904. He studied at the Budapest Academy of Music and liked performing and editing Liszt cause they’re both Hungarian and hungary for the satiater that is ~romantic music~. Except Szelényi had “the drive to write a tonal and intelligible, while contemporary music close.” Which means that he was actually an expressionist.
He composed Musikalisches Bilderbuch (Musical Picture-Book) in 1967, just 5 years before his death at 68 years old. This Reliable Source (totally not copied from German Wikipedia) suggests that Musical Picture-Book “is one of the most stimulating educational collections of piano music of the 20th century.”
So why does nobody have a numbered song list of it?!
Music of Our Time, Book 2, Twotone
(Yes, I’m digging through old RCM pieces now that it’s finally over. Do have a listen to Das Artige Kind, another simple study.)
The title of this post is somewhat misleading because Music of Our Time, Book 2 isn’t called ‘Twotone’. Twotone is one of the pieces in the book, but I don’t know which one. Imagine it as ‘Music of Our Time, Book 2, No. ???: Twotone,’ and it doesn’t seem as confusing. Of course, ‘No. ???’ looks appallingly ugly and I wouldn’t write such a travesty if my life depended on it, but…
Music of Our Time was actually a collaboration by renowned Canadian composer Jean Coulthard, and her two students David Duke and Joan Hansen. (I really don’t know how to properly Oxford comma this sentence, so I’ll just leave it as-is.) Twotone was written by Joan Hansen, an enigmatic mortgage sales representative-cum-composer.
…Yeah, that’s not the Joan Hansen we’re talking about. Probably shouldn’t go into so much detail on a composer when we have such a short little piece to talk about.
I really like the polytonality of this. (There’s… not much more to like. What can you like about 11 bars of music?) You can distinctly hear the two different hands, and the dissonances and parallel fifths actually sound alright. The key switch in the middle section seems a bit trivial, since the left hand F-major chord in bar 7 is still natural, and you don’t actually encounter any c-sharps in the right hand there. Actually, you don’t encounter any c-sharps in the entire piece…
If the dynamics aren’t contrasting enough, blame my camera: it automatically makes soft sounds louder and loud sounds softer. I think I did pretty well, though. I fessed up at bar 10 – there’s a two-beat rest, and I only rested for one. I hope nobody uses my recording to help them learn this piece… (which isn’t in the syllabus anymore, lol)
In two words, this piece is pretty cute.
Die Anfangs-Stunden, Op. 117, No. 19 Das Artige Kind
it is late I am late today we will talk about CORNELIUS GURLITT’s marvellous étude, DAS ARTIGE KIND.
cornelius gurlitt was a classmate of the son of the leipzig conservatory head (and subsequently studied with him). he was a pretty cool guy, became a Professor of Music at the accademia nazionale di santa cecilia (which is supposedly a pretty cool thing to get). he didn’t write music to entertain, but to educate, so he wrote many studies like das artige kind
‘das artige kind’ in english is ‘the good/kind/polite child’. i think. i don’t german, i don’t want to be guilty crown
‘die anfangs-stunden’ means ‘the first lessons’, and this collection in english is ‘the first lessons: 34 short pieces for the pianoforte (opus 117)’. as you expect, das artige kind is the 19th short piece in this collection
you can read the music right here but BEWARE it may possibly be illegal somewhere i don’t know this guy’s been dead for 111 years, alright
BUT WAIT
if you scroll down you’ll see a difference; it’s played up an octave on the second part. well my OFFICIAL ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC NEW PIANO SERIES STUDIES ALBUM 1 & 2 suggests otherwise. what i play comes from my rcm studies book, not the gurlitt collection version (the publisher’s name isn’t even listed there…)
what’s more, i don’t even know when he composed this, or even when it was first published. that’s why for composition date i just wrote ‘between 1820-1901’, since it’s doubtful he composed this before his birth or after his death
anyways that is all. see if you can spot the bulbasaur hidden among my pants
Parallel 5ths
Oh hey, another Musical Monday!
Remember last Musical Monday, when I posted about Stephen Chatman’s Ginger Snaps? Neither do I! Here’s another composition that features parallel fifths like there’s no tomorrow. What’s it called?
…Parallel 5ths.
Preludes for Piano, Book 3, No. 3 Ginger Snaps
Welcome to another (late) Musical Monday! Today’s piece of music is titled… wait, I’ll let you guys guess…
..that’s right! It’s titled Friday, featuring the beloved Rebecca Black Ginger Snaps, written by Stephen Chatman in his music collection, Preludes for Piano, Book 3 between 1999 and 2001. Yep, it’s a recent (21st-century!) composition, and as you’d expect from recent compositions, it defies conventions a little bit.
パラダイム (TV Size) Transcription
Is that what you guys see there! A KOKORO CONNECT OP piano transcription? With sheet music?!
BY MADOKA, IT IS!! Wow!!! Amazing!!!! I should really start watching the anime I’m going to blog this season now instead of transcribing random OPs! …really
Le Pianiste Virtuose en 60 Exercices, Nos. 21 – 43
It’s time for the long-awaited sequel to Charles-Louis Hanon’s Le Pianiste Virtuose en 60 Exercices!! Well, not really, because Le Pianiste Virtuose en 60 Exercices (The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises) doesn’t have a sequel. No, this is the sequel to my first post about the Virtuoso Pianist, and in this part, we’ll cover pianos, fingers, and not much else. If you’re reading this series for the first time, do read the first post’s introduction first. Really. Seriously. Honestly. Lie. Wait, no, it’s not a lie, it’s a -ly
We’ve moved past the Preparatory Exercises, so now, it’s time for harder exercises. In fact, you could even say they’re ‘Transcendent Exercises For Preparing The Fingers For The Virtuoso Exercises’. That’s what Hanon says. I mean, said, because he’s dead (hey, that rhymes), which means… woohoo, we’re still doing preparatory exercises…
2012 Summer Anime Preview
You know how our season previews go. There’s a basic formula to all of them. First, a summary, then a picture, then a disclaimer talking about how I stole all this information from other blogs, and then the actual post, written by me, Mushyrulez, all by myself.
WELL GUESS WHAT?! WE’RE SWITCHING THINGS UP A BIT THIS YEAR. How?
Firstly, there WON’T BE A PICTURE after a summary which is this summary which is this sentence and the sentences immediately before and after this. In fact, THERE MAY NOT BE ANY PICTURES AT ALL!!!
Secondly, there WON’T BE A DISCLAIMER after a picture because, wow, we’ve actually done NO research this time!! That means no embedded chart, no witty quips, no snide references to MAL, no NOTHING AT ALL. Since there’s something. You can’t have nothing if you have something, which is why we don’t have nothing. In fact, this new preview is so much worse than older previews that we recommend you just read the older ones instead!!
Thirdly, there WON’T BE ANY TRAILER LINKS because we’re too lazy to go search them up for you!! I know, simply horrible, right? WRONG, because it takes you lazy ducks all of ten seconds to go search ‘generic fanservice shit anime #101 trailer’ on YouTube while it takes us thirty to embed said trailer onto our page. No, we’re not being hypocritical, we’re being hyper-critical. Of your laziness.
Finally, we’re not going to spend thirty million hours writing this post and adding stupid ‘potential’ ratings so that we can publish it before we’re ten weeks into the season. Thirty hours is enough.
A Two-Feet Long Diary: Month 6
Aw yeah, look at my sweet frog pajamas. They’re like hakase’s pajamas except 1) hakase doesn’t have frog pajamas 2) that’s a sweater 3) those are feet 4) IT’S TIME FOR A FEET VIDEO AGAIN
Engrish Soramimi: Call Me Maybe… Later
Welcome back to another bout of bad Engrish soramimi! Why do I say ‘bad Engrish soramimi’? Because the singer’s Engrish is bad, its inherent badness is Engrish, and my soramimi isn’t actual soramimi, it’s just a bad mondegreen. Why is it a bad mondegreen? Because the singer’s Engrish is bad.
But how can the singer’s Engrish be bad? ‘Call Me Maybe’ is an English song, sung by an English singer, right?
No, we’re not talking about ‘Call Me Maybe’… we’re talking about ‘Call Me Later’, a 1970s R&B song by FOXY.
Wait actually no that’s in English too wait that’s not right
Le Pianiste Virtuose en 60 Exercices, Nos. 1 – 20
It’s Musical Monday, and perhaps just playing Czerny all the time has gotten a little boring for you guys. But don’t sweat, because I’ve got something much more exciting prepared, just for you: Hanon exercises, instead!
Charles-Louis Hanon’s Le Pianiste Virtuose en 60 Exercices (The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercise) is an (in)famous collection of (you guessed it) 60 piano exercises, meant for developing finger and wrist strength, agility, endurance, flexbility, suppleness, you name it. Ask any piano teacher or pianist what the most useful book of exercises are for the piano, and half will probably name Hanon’s. Ask the ones that don’t what the most harmful book of exercises are for the piano, and chances are, they’ll probably all name Hanon’s.
But: you must have at least a year of keyboarding experience before starting Hanon practice. Starting it too early will a) dumb down your musical sense b) force you into amateurish hand postures and c) be impossible to play. If you’re here and want to learn how to play piano, Lypur’s ‘Learn How to Play Piano’ playlist is the perfect tutorial for you! Well, maybe it’s not perfect, and maybe it’s not for you, but do give it a shot. (Look, he’s even made a video about the Virtuoso Pianist and Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel!)
Like it or hate it, every pianist has encountered Hanon’s exercises sometime in their lifetime. Thus, in this series of posts, I’ll be venturing to play them all. Like a Pokémon master but without the Poké, without the mon, without the mast, and without the er.
Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel, Op. 599, Nos. 41 – 60
Two posts ago, I began my quest. My quest to play all 100 exercises in Carl Czerny’s book of beginner piano études, Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel. What is a piano étude? Well, my previous post explains this and much less (that is to say, it does not explain much more than this), and I strongly suggest you start from the very beginning if you are trying to learn piano.
Actually, if you are trying to learn piano, I strongly suggest you do not try Czerny’s piano exercises at all. The learning curve is too steep, and without a proper piano teacher, your form and posture will be all incorrect. I do not count as a proper piano teacher because my form and posture is already incorrect and its incorrectness is already incorrigible.
This post, we’ll talk about posture, technique, and another guy, Hanon, ‘s exercises. That’s improper grammar and punctuation, but I want to pronounce ‘Hanon’ with pauses at each end, and ‘s exercises together as one word, because English is stupid and French liaisons sound really, really good. Unlike my performances of the following exercises.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Genius and Science World’s Redesign (x-post Frivolous Verbosities)
This is from Frivolous Verbosities. If you like it, go there for more of my weird stuff!
Today I went to the Da Vinci: The Genius exhibition at the Telus World of Science, brought there by Grande Exhibitions, an exhibition company that travels worldwide.
There I was not only amazed at Leonardo’s genius and the incredible creation of his designs and blueprints. I was also amazed by the tremendous amount of work done to Science World.
Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel, Op. 599, Nos. 21 – 40
Last post, I announced my great expedition to record all 100 exercises from Carl Czerny’s book of études, Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel (no, don’t ask me how to pronounce that).
This Musical Monday, you will learn about accidentals and key signatures, the qualities of an étude, and of the history behind this collection.
But without further ado, let us begin with post two (hey, that was a rhyming couplet!).
شيء من شيء ~ Paradigm Shift
Something can’t be made from nothing. So what’s it from?
Something’s from something.
Download Links
Sheet music, replete with broken Unicode Arabic;
Mspaint image, replete with broken pixellated Arabic;
Finale file, replete with broken Unicode Arabic.
I’m Sic [sic]
C’mon, I’ve got a 39.7 degree (Celsius! NOT FAHRENHEIT!) fever, you should be proud of me for coming up with even a lame pun like that.
So I’ve got the most splitting headache, have been lying in bed for the past eighteen hours, and I accidentally ingested Advil because I thought I had a fever when really I’ve got a viral infection. I wish O-New were a viral infection; then everybody would read our posts. On the other hand, everybody, everywhere will laugh at the QUALITY of our posts forever and ever and ever ._.
Anyways, note to self: when you have a viral infection, DO NOT SWALLOW ADVIL (nor anvils) because it will make you feel the most nauseous since you were forced to sit in a bus seat with your backpack suffocating yourself because of your carsickness. I never sit down on the bus. B(
In conclusion, I finally realized that what I dream about is always influenced by my outside environment. Is it freezing? Then I dream of standing in the dark outside the central public library while all the streetlights broke and some rabid werewolf chases me up into a military-grade cargo elevator that leads up into the main library when a really cute girl walks by and then I realize that I’m naked. Am I excessively sweating from excessive amounts of Tylenol? Then I dream of excessively sweating from excessive amounts of Tylenol. Except, no, I don’t dream, I stay awake sweating for an hour
:(
P.S. Getting a doctor’s note for missing my French and Science project presentations costs $15 because it’s not covered by the Medical Services Plan. When I grow up, I want to be a doctor’s-note-writer. If I write one every 5 minutes, I’ll earn like, $180 an hour.
P.P.S. This post is too shot, so have a video of my hand.
Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel, Op. 599, Nos. 1 – 20
Alright, guys, it’s time for a new piano project!
That sentence was misleading, because it somewhat implies that I have completed older piano projects, whereas in fact, I have not completed any piano projects! Nor started any, for that matter… until now.
What is the project? The project is to play all 100 pieces in Carl Czerny’s Erster Wiener Lehrmeister im Pianofortespiel (lit. “First Viennese Masters in Piano Playing” (courtesy of Google Translate), or ‘Practical Exercises for Beginners on the Pianoforte’), Opus 599.
Les Gymnopédies
I TOLD YOU GUYS I WOULD GIVE YOU MUSIC VIDEOS
SO HERE YOU GO
VIDEOS OF MUSIC. THREE OF THEM. SCROLL DOWN.
O-New 