MPD » music

Still practicing

Mike — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 07:27:56 +0000

I’ve been practicing piano more and trying to record a little bit every Saturday and trying to plan out a good strategy for becoming a better jazz pianist. My current plan is a little inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, which I read last month, but I’m going to give it two months to see how it’s working before describing it on the blog. In the meantime, here are some recordings of me practicing:

Last week I played ‘Satin Doll’ by Duke Ellington.

Today I played ‘I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good’ (also by Duke Ellington).

Maple Leaf Rag – new piano

Mike — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 04:11:25 +0000

Last month, I decided it was time for me finally get a piano here in Beijing. Since then, I’ve practiced almost every morning, which is a great feeling. My goal is to not only get back to where I used to be, but to actually become a decent jazz pianist.

I’ll occasionally post recordings of my playing here, to track my progress. This is my first one.

To start, I thought I should learn a technically demanding piece, and I picked Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin because stride piano grew out of ragtime, but in ragtime, everything is written down, so it would be a good start.

This recording isn’t the best I’ve played it over the last month (or even the last day), but I realized this morning that I’ve been trying so hard to make a 100% perfect recording that I’m sacrificing time actually improving my overall technique. Therefore, this is me playing Maple Leaf Rag this morning:

Maple Leaf Rag

Any suggestions for something I should record next?

Dancing for Engineers

Mike — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:51:07 +0000

Now here’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. I started going to salsa dancing lessons fairly regularly this fall, but am having a hard time remembering the long sequences of complex moves that I learn in the MIT lessons (which are great, by the way). Even when I can remember them, it’s hard to do them on the dance floor with a girl who doesn’t also know what is coming, while staying on the beat, etc. etc. So, at some point this fall, I thought to myself that there must be a better way to learn enough sequences of moves not to bore a good follower to tears.

As I thought about the problem, I realized that salsa dancing (and most partner dances) is really a finite-state machine. We have X number of states (the positions that you end up in on beat 1), and transitions between the states (twirls, etc.). Naturally, I thought of creating a diagram with states and transitions and tracing paths through the diagram to come up with new sequences. This way, if I could memorize a few positions and all the different transitions between them, I could come up with lots of sequences on my own without ever having to memorize a two-minute series of steps. Each set of steps would be at most 8 or 16 beats long.

Still, I didn’t know exactly what to call each state, what precisely is considered a transition, or most importantly, how to present this information in a usable manner. Last week, I was again thinking about this and realized that since a finite-state diagram is also a directed graph, and the web is a directed graph, a webpage made perfect sense for a presentation mechanism. Moreover, if I used a wiki, I could start adding pieces very easily, even if I don’t know the best terminology or have the perfect definition of each state. Plus, other people can add their own moves to the wiki and eventually, we can all learn from each other.

Thus, yesterday morning, I started a new website: salsa.wikidot.com. So far it’s not much; I have a few positions and moves described, and I plan to add more. I feel a little bit like I shouldn’t actually be the one adding content, since I’m so new at dancing and don’t really know how to describe everything. However, I also think that a lot of times we just need to start doing something even if we don’t know how, so there it is. I have it set up so that it will be easy to add photos and videos of the steps if I ever get that far. Should be fun. Hopefully this helps someone someday.

It Won’t Be Soon Before Long – Maroon 5

Mike — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:46:42 +0000

I just finished listening to Maroon 5′s new album, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long. I have to say, on the first listen, it’s not as good as their first effort, Songs About Jane, but perhaps it needs to grow on me.

Chen said it best when she described many of the new songs as “more poppy” than before. For example, the first single, Makes Me Wonder, is definitely a dance song – so much so, that it almost sounds like disco. However, after a few listens, I have begun to appreciate it a bit more; it can certainly get stuck in your head.

One of Adam Levine’s talents has always been picking the right words for the music and using the accents in those words to help progress the song, rather than just finding something with the right number of syllables. For example in She Will Be Loved, at one point, he sings, “It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, it’s compromise that moves us along.” If you even just try to say those words, they have rhythm. He continues to write surprisingly good lyrics occasionally through this CD.

One final comment on the CD before I list my favorite tracks – many of the songs have been heavily inspired by the band’s influences, so sometimes, they come across sounding like an older genre. I’ve already mentioned that Makes Me Wonder sounds like disco, but listen to Won’t Go Home Without You and Not Falling Apart alongside 80′s classics like Eye in the Sky, Missing You, and I Just Called to Say I Love You, and you’ll really see what I mean.

Overall, this is a pretty good second album. Most of the songs really are catchy and should do pretty well in clubs, on the radio, etc. I’d recommend people who like Maroon 5 listen to it.

So, I haven’t really had much time to form opinions, I but I think my favorite songs from this album are:

Back At Your Door
Makes Me Wonder (maybe because I’ve heard it the most)
If I Never See Your Face Again
Wake Up Call

Useful Guitar Hero

Mike — Tue, 22 May 2007 03:30:44 +0000

When I bought my MIDI cable a while ago, I had assumed that mostly I’d be recording myself play piano, and I have done that a bit. However, it turns out that there is more to having a MIDI keyboard than recording. You can also play games with it.

One of my favorites is Synthesia – a Guitar Hero clone, but for piano. I love the concept of this; Guitar Hero is such a fun and addictive game that some people will play for long hours to become good at it. Why not use the same format to teach people a useful skill?

The first thing you do when starting Synthesia is load a .mid file that you want to play. Generally, piano scores work best. Then, you choose which tracks you want to play, and which you want to play automatically as accompaniment. Once all this is set up, you can begin to play. The format is the same as Guitar Hero – bars roll down the screen, and you have to hit the correct keys as the bars hit the bottom. You score points by hitting notes at the right time, depending how fast you have the song playing (you can play from 10% to 400% of the original speed), and how many notes you hit in a row. At the end, the game grades you and provides you with a number of statistics.

I actually think that it’s not really the format of scrolling, colored bars that makes Guitar Hero addictive; it’s the instant feedback. This provides a goal that is very easy to visualize and you can immediately try to improve it by playing again. Beyond being immediate, it’s also a precise number. What piano teacher can tell you that you hit 97% of the correct notes and only struck 5 extra notes not in the song? People have a very strong desire to be scored and ranked.

In fact, to get a little off topic, this is the same phenomena used by many online projects to encourage participation. For example, message boards often display post counts next to member names and give higher-posters special designations. These designations may not actually mean anything, but some people will strive to become “the best” by constantly responding to every post. I actually thought there some studies done on this topic, but I’m having a difficult time finding any to link to right now… Perhaps I should write a more in depth post later. In any case, for a quick example of what I’m talking about, try playing this simple paper-airplane throwing game knowing that I scored 114.199.

Finally, to get back to the original point of this post, if you have a MIDI-compatible keyboard, definitely try out Synthesia. The only complaint I have is that it would be nice to have a sheet-music mode as well for those people who would also like to learn to sight read a bit better. For a lot of free MIDI files of classical piano music, see the Mutopia Project.

Local Music

Mike — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:29:58 +0000

A few months ago, my friend Louis Matteo performed with his band, The Modern Minstrels, at the All-Asia bar on Mass Ave. Of course, I went, because concerts are always fun, and I especially wanted to support my friend. The big surprise of the evening, though, was his opening act – Katelyn Benton. Katelyn played piano with a bass accompaniment, and even though her drummer never showed up, I really liked her piano style and voice. I decided to look for any of her future concerts in the hopes of catching the whole band together.

Well, tonight was the night. I convinced Batya to head out with me at 6:00 for the 6:30 concert. Since we were a little early, we stopped by Toscanini’s for some ice cream first. By the time we got back to the bar, the music was just starting. As expected, Katelyn’s band was really good. Her music is generally upbeat, and has a sort of bluesy feel to it. Apparently, she’s from Denver, but has a little bit of Louisiana influences via her grandmother (or aunt? She told a story about it, but I don’t remember all the details). If you want to hear a few samples of her music, you should check out her myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/katelynbenton.

After her band’s first set was done, the bass and drummer left the stage, and two guys with guitars, Will Knox and Kyle James Hauser, came up. For this section of the concert, the three of them took turns playing generally solo pieces that they had either composed or just really liked. Will and Kyle are in a band together, but tonight Will was a little better than Kyle. Apparently Kyle has only played solo twice in two years, so he hasn’t had much practice performing like this. Batya and I were both having a great time listening to the three of them, so we left slightly reluctantly when she had to go to a meeting at 8:30.
There seems to be a pretty vibrant local music scene in Boston, and I never really knew about it until this year. I’m excited, though, because maybe if I keep going to events like these, I’ll be able to continue to hear good artists and my network will just expand. I’m looking forward to hearing more.

Midi is Great

Mike — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 05:29:34 +0000

Well, my new Midi-to-USB converter arrived in the mail today, so now I can use my Casio WK-1630 keyboard as an input to my computer. Combined with GarageBand, I think I’m going to have a lot of fun. I love the fact that I can transcribe the music I play as I play it, even when I’m just improvising. Far too often, I make up something that I kind of like, then I forget it and can never get it back. Now I can.

So far, however, I’ve only recorded one piece – it’s just me making stuff up without a plan, so there are a few shaky parts. Perhaps now that I have it transcribed, though, I’ll go back and improve upon it… Listen if you wish.

Improv Song (m4a)

Improv Song (mp3)