Diana,

I'm a "second chance" piano student too.

I took piano at about age 11, but was frustrated by it for a few reasons. Hellene has solve one, that the music notation is irrational. Another Hellene has solved is the prompt feedback, in soft piano the software waits for you to get the right key stroke. Another frustration at that time was not knowing how the music in the method books should sound.

I liked the classical music my father played on his phonograph, and could whistle or sing the themes, but that is not what was in the method books. It seemed just opposite, they wanted us to learn to play unknown music from the page, not what we heard in our heads. I didn't want to become a musician who could sight read anything, I wanted to play the music I loved, or simplified passages from it.

In an age before electronic recording, distribution and reproduction of music, there was a need for many people who could play anything sight reading. But that age has passed. People who want to play, want to play for themselves and their friends. But mostly to better appreciate the music by playing it themselves. This is what Hellene is helping us do.

So welcome. Hellene has put a lot of music in the soft piano library, so you should be able to find things that you know and like. The sofware will allow you to work on just the measures and hand you wish, slowed down. She added the Bach Inventions just recently, after I asked for Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor BWV 578.

Please explore the library, find things that you love to hear, that you put on to hear, or hear in your memory, and work on those. Hellene is right, as we learn how to sight read we will have that wonderful tool available so we can look up the sheet music for things we like and have that to help us learn them, but she allows us to learn to sight read working on music we care about, and that is the great thing. Thanks Hellene!

Please let me know how you are doing, and perhaps we can encourage eachother.

Read More...

do you like Glen Gould's performances of them?

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Etu5tes...5SPxmxQz-EGqmO_Ir697

At the slowest tempo your transcriptions of them for soft piano are exactly the sort of thing that attract me. Some of the passages that are technically easier, but make interestingly mathematical harmonic statements are what I want to try. I will report what I work on.

I find when I listen to music, there are just a few passages or phrases that are most understandable, then as I listen again and again the piece expands around them, and becomes complete, end to end. Starting with those parts that are central to my compression is how I prefer to study, in mathematics, physics, and again now music.

Read More...

Hellene,

Thanks, yes, I found your previous email with the link, and downloaded them.

Read More...

Hellene,

Thanks for the new installation key and URL. I've just put it in the new laptop and tested it works.

Read More...

Hellene,

Yes, I do. Life in the galaxy, and all galaxies is as common as the grass, I believe.

There was a special space telescope put up that looked for planets around other stars by measuring the small ~1% decrease in the star's brightness when the planet passes between us and the star, eclipsing a small part of it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)

It was discovered that almost all stars have systems of planets. Some of those planets will be at the right distance so oceans don't boil, too close, or freeze, too far. It is expected that on some fraction of those, life will arise spontaneously. On some fraction of those it will evolve to intelligent technological life.

If on a planet around a nearby star there was a civilization similar in technology to ours, the strong radars that are used at airports to guide the planes in during heavy weather would be detected at an observatory like Green Bank, if we were lined up correctly. About 1/3 of the Green Bank telescope time is used for just such searches. They are under the name SETI, Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

I am alert to see it in my data, though Andromeda is so far away, 2.5 million light years, that I don't expect Andromeda SETI, but might accidently be pointed in the right direction so stars in our own galaxy are being detected too.

I am an atheist and scientific rationalist. I explain this to Christian religious people like this: the universe is so much bigger than when the bible was written, it makes no sense that a creator would put life on only this planet. There is a mismatch of scale. To my mind the creator and creation are the same thing, recreating itself everywhere all the time. Physics is the pattern of that recreation, but quantum mechanics teaches us that we can not predict what will happen exactly. The universe can surprise us by what it becomes. As part of that universe, we can surprise ourselves! I ask Christians this, if God has created intelligent life in many places, then if God is merciful, God must have offered salvation from sin there too, because any sufficiently intelligent creative creature sins, that is does evil things, if not intentionally, then because they don't understand the consequences of their actions, or there is no path of action that doesn't do harm. So... I ask, what was the Sermon on the Mount there? But it is sort of a tease, a way to try to make that person think on a bigger scale.

The physicist Fermi asked "where are they?", to mean, if there is technological life on planets around other stars, wouldn't we have visitors? My answer is the distances are so great, there is no practical way to make the journey, but the science fiction writers think otherwise!

Read More...

Hellene,

Thanks for asking.

I'm just ordering its replacement.

I can operate the touch pad and an on screen keyboard in the old computer, so it may become dedicated to the Allegro2 and soft piano.

It is considerate of you to put up the inventions.

In a week I meet with the three professors who work with me on the survey of the Andromeda galaxy for pulsar signals. Did I explain, we had 40 hours of the Green Bank Observatory for that, and recorded the signals received. My task is to write and operate computer programs to search the 8TB of data. I'm not spending enough time with soft mozart, but that should improve.

Read More...

My Windows laptop has failed, after many years. It will take a few days.

Read More...

Hellene,

Thank you for the considered answer.

I wasn't clear. I need to do both your program as directed for the treasures of fluent grand staff sight reading and coordination. Also, I need to mesh your notation with the notation that makes sense to me as a physicist and mathematician.

Also I must spend time on the music I love. It was being forced to learn music I didn't love as a child that drove me away from the piano. If I had been taught to play themes and passages from the Concertos and Symphonies I loved while learning to read them from full score, I would have succeeded. Before finding your teaching method I was trying that on my own. I didn't want to hide that from you, thus the attachments.

Please don't take offence, or think me ungrateful for your method. It is necessary for you to systematize and standardize, for economy of management and in order to offer interactivity at such a low price.

Human creativity requires contrariness and rebellion. Human culture requires cooperation and conformity. The tension exists in both of us, don't you think?

An example, certainly above me, is our beloved Tarkovsky. The product of his creativity we love, but he died in exile. Do you know that during his last months all he wanted was to listen to Bach?

Read More...

google translate gives an ambiguous english rendering of this.

Yes, I am working on pieces that interest me musically. I've never been able to learn things that don't interest me.This has been a lifelong problem. Teachers initially recognize in me a talented student, then are frustrated because I can not adhere to their methods. I value soft mozart, and work within it as much as I can, but as a physicist, electronic engineer, and inventor, staying strictly within it is impossible for me.

I would prefer not to hide what I'm doing, and I expect you might find it interesting, but being outside your method, not something you can supervise.I will need your email address so I can attach video and pictures and explain more clearly.

J.S.Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor BVW 578 interests me. Mozart's symphony #40 first movement interests me. I've written out parts of it in a music notation that I would like to show you combining aspects of soft piano and my own.

Keeping the .lmz format proprietary may be necessary for your business model. But can't your software read musicXML? It would free those of us who can't be constrained to more closely adhere to your methods, while being free to choose our own music.

Read More...

2/18/2018
Guess by Key ABC 1196 in 9:53 minutes
Guess by Key Solfage 1157 in 7:55 minutes

Read More...

Interesting, you mean trying the "Guess Key" drill without the note names in either ABC or DoRaMe, with the screen turned off, just by sound? I will try that later this evening. I'm only getting in ~15 minutes per day, pressure of my research. But that sounds like fun.

Read More...

2/11/2018
guess key solfage 1156 8:11

Read More...

2/10/2018
Guess by Key ABC 1050 in 8:10 minutes
Guess by Key Solfage 1009 in 8:37 minutes

Read More...

Some answers

you wrote
"Me Fa you mean?"
yes, of course

"faster than I answering your posts"
Please don't feel that you have to answer my posts quickly.

"Can you sing C major by one syllable. Ah, Oh, Uh? Do you remember the pattern and inner intervals between the scale degrees?"
Yes. I know the "sound" of the major key, confidently. I can sing the major and minor scales, thinking do-ra...te-do, or la-te...so,la. I can, slowly, play a major or minor scale starting any where on the keyboard the same way.

"Imagine... For some reason file came out as fast."
Yes, it played fast. I put it in the "Beatles" file for later. There is a key change that I didn't understand, so I need to listen to the original while looking at the score.

"Can you try R1H, L1H and P1H?"
Will try.

"The next steps will be playing with TEACHING VIDEOS"
I wanted to get to practising all the "Favorite Classics 1", but I will look at your teaching videos. I wanted to get a bit farther along before sending you a video. I'm only getting in a 20 minute practice session every second day.

I have your suggestions how to progress in an earlier email, and the lesson plan on the web site too.

Thanks for the responses!

I did read your book, but thought you might be interested in additional reports of perfect pitch in tonal languages, and successes in teaching it.

Read More...