I'M SO NERVOUS I'M SHAKING MORE THAN A CONSTIPATED CHIHUAHUA!!!

I have to play for the piano professor tomorrow, and I don't feel ready because I don't really have anything fully prepared. However, tonight has been a good night, in terms of accomplishing stuff. I finished learning and memorizing the whole Fugue (the left handed part, anyways) and I didn't waste so much time on my Ray Charles impression, as usual.

I'm going to get back to work now, I was just excited and had to share my success. Also, I found a CD of Debussy that has my favorite piano suite ever on it, so I'm kind of pumped. Usually I can only find CD's with part of the suite, but never all four pieces together so that was a win.

My goodness, I ramble and don't make sense when I'm tired. There was no transition from point to point at all. Goat milk is far superior to Cow milk. I'm watching a silent film currently, and it's freaking me out. I think Isaac Zavalak or Zkalalskjdjf, or however you say his name (the Science Fiction writer) was clearly inspired by this monstrosity of a movie. It's storming...I've had too much sugar.

CLAP IF YOU BELIEVE! SAVE THE FAIRIES!!! AAAAAGH!!!!!

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DANCE A WALTZ?!?!?!?!

Today is Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday. I didn't do a single thing with my Saturday...except practice piano. And guitar for a little bit, but mostly I just practiced piano. We're talking piano practicing to a degree that I've never done before. Here's a short list of what I accomplished;

1. I found a song online that I've wanted to learn for a long time
2. I learned the song
3. I memorized the entire song
4. I played scales
5. I worked through rough spots on the waltz and Fugue
6. I discovered that the third piece I haven't really started on yet is actually partially memorized
7. I put on Sunglasses and smiled and pretended to be Ray Charles

I have to perform for the head of the piano department on Wednesday at 4:30 PM (I hope it's PM), and I think I'm going to play the waltz rather than the fugue. I'm going to work on both, but I just feel like the waltz is already almost completely re-memorized so I might as well play that one. Hopefully by the end of January I'll have both pieces memorized anyways and I can spend February on the last piece.

One thing that's a bit exciting is that I'm feeling a huge difference in my hands development. My left hand has really come along in a short amount of time, and I can even type these blogs faster. Wouldn't it be something if I became left handed? lol.

...but seriously. Being ambidextrous would be far superior to being left or right handed. Bach is helping me to get there too, funny enough. I started playing one of my favorite piano pieces (that's actually for Clavichord, but whatever) called Invention #13 by Bach, and it was actually just a piano exercise written to help Bach's students develop their dexterity. He has some that have only two melodies playing at once, which is relatively easy to accomplish with two hands. The tough part is playing pieces that have three or more melodies playing at once with only two hands. Bach was a winner. A real "go-getter", if you will.

TWO DAYS IN AND I'M GONNA BLOW MY BRAINS OUT WITH A NERF GUN!!!

I haven't played piano as much as I'd like to this past week, but I'm finally getting back into it and I'm not suffering from it as much as I thought. I totally figured that my hands would need more time to get back into shape, but they seem to be doing all right. But I need them to be better. Fast. By next wednesday, to be exact.

I emailed the head piano professor at Texas State last night, and he asked me to come in and talked to him. So I did. I'm not really sure what it is that he wants to talk about, but we scheduled a meeting next week and he wants me to prepare a piece for him. Yeah, in six days. I'm freaking out like crazy right now about this. This is the first time he gets to hear me play before my audition and I really want to make a good impression. So my goal for this week is simple; completely prepare and memorize the fugue. I have have of it memorized in a months time and I'm pushing myself to memorize the other half in less than a week. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna die.

Why I hate toasters but love poptarts.

I've kept this a secret for years but I have never put my poptart in the toaster, but for on a very few occasions. Is this healthy? Probably. Is it still delicious. Yes!

You see, the toaster isn't necessarily bad in itself, but it just takes so much freaking time to cook the pastry! And why go through the toaster when I can go straight to the pastry!?!? But the toaster still has it's uses. Like making toast or the frozen waffles! Mhmm. Boy, do I love me some waffles.

And can we agree on one thing? Cherry poptarts, even if they aren't your FAVORITE poptarts, are definitely the universal poptart. If you don't know what kind of poptarts your roommate gets but it's your day to buy groceries, get the cherry. Even if you're wrong, the chances are they still can appreciate the cherry ones, too.

If you clicked on my link thinking I'm going to discuss the "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus" video, you're wrong. I'm talking about poptarts and toasters. Seriously. Old Tyler would have made a post trying to be clever and use toasters and poptarts as some sort of obscure analogy to discuss the rediculousness of the video. But new Tyler will discuss toasters and poptarts because he likes them, and then straight up tell you the new video on Religion and Jesus is dumb. Most of my Christian friends are too polite and Christian to say it, but it is. I hear a lot of people sugar coat it with statements like, "He makes some valid points but I don't agree with everything he says", and "I can definitely see how he could come to that conclusion, but he is missing some major points." No. Just...no.

"What if I told you Christ came to abolish religion?" I'd say you were wrong! What if I told you Christ said the smores poptarts were the best? I'd be lying too!

I'm frustrated and not making sense. It's time to play piano and eat poptarts. Good day, all.

KNIVES CAN CUT FLESH?!?! SINCE WHEN?!

AH! KNIVES! MY ONLY WEAKNESS!

SO...

I was trying to eat a Freeze Pop the other day and in order to do that you have to open said package. Usually I just bite off the end, but for some reason I decided to use a knife. After cutting open said package I accidentally dropped the knife and my stupid reflex was to try and catch said knife. I caught it awkwardly and ended up putting a decent sized cut in my finger. This is both a win and a fail. Allow me to explain;

Win: It is a win because this is something hardcore guitarists used to do. They would slice open their finger tips and when it healed partially they would play on the cuts and suddenly the tips of your fingers have fantastic calluses. I'm going to be playing a lot of guitar this semester so yes, this is a win.

Fail: It is a fail because for a day or two I'm going to have to avoid playing piano because it hurts still. It's not excruciating pain, but it's just not comfortable. I'm better off letting it heal before I play.

Fail: It's also a fail because I cut my hand open, and in no way is that ever going to happen and not end up as a fail.

Bacon: There's no bacon involved in this story. I just think about it constantly.

I've named my keyboard Emma Watson. She responds to Hermione Granger.

SO...

I've decided that this summer I will keep an eye out and try to get a few weddings going for cash. And if I get into the school of music I will even start to give a few lessons, ideally. It all rests on my audition 55 days from now, though. I don't want to give lessons if I'm not a piano major, but I will still do a few weddings.

I may have found a Cellist to work with for gigs such as these, too! I don't know if it's for certain, but having cellists and singers on standby would be awesome for a few weddings or so, but I need to get the word out now to parishes that I'm available if I want to start getting ready for the summer.

As I sit in my living in the living room staring at a picture of a dog named Lassie (that my roommate from A&M swears is named Reveille), I begin to wonder how my life would have been different if I auditioned two years ago rather than now. And then I realize I'm hungry and the picture of Lassie starts to look like a cheese burger. How strange.


I want tacos.

In other news, I'm buying my first Chick Corea album today off of Itunes after practice. THIS...will be epic. Why do I even have this blog if I don't say anything in it?

I like bacon.

The History of the word "Pwned"...

I was going to title this blog, "Ever Get the Feeling You're Being Powned By A Fly?", but I feel like I should explain the change.

I was very unsure about the word "powned" and it's spelling, so I decided to Google it. Turns out, Powned is in fact properly spelled "Pwned". I've seen this spelling before, I just thought it was internet speak short-hand for another internet word. It's not, though.

From what I could gather from the Google machine, Pwnage came into existence on accident. A computer hacker was once trying to mod a map on World of Warcraft and one of the modifications he made was to flash the phrase "You Just Got Owned" on the screen whenever you died in the game. This failure of a nerd had misspelled Owned for Pwned and the phrase stuck with computer nerds everywhere. Eventually, it branched out into society where the CIA has been unable to contain the epic nerdage outbreak.

So what about the original title of this post? You see, I have a problem. My piano playing attracts flies. A multitude of flies, in fact, and they seem to like to land on my face while I practice. It happened a lot at home, and it's still happening at college. I only wish it were possible to drop-kick a fly...

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PRACTICE PIANO WITHOUT MY DIET CHERRY DR. PEPPER!?!?!?!

Meh. Today is gonna be my break, I guess. My back hurts, I've played piano like crazy today already, and it's 10:45 and I haven't even started playing scales yet for today. I've practiced, don't get me wrong, but scales will be continued tomorrow.

I am working on memorizing some more and I'm getting myself ready to get back into the swing of the new semester, but the big thing on my plate is preparing for the funeral tomorrow. No, it's not anybody I know. Somebody's asked me to play, which is kind of new territory for me. I've done weddings before, and I've attended funerals, but never have I ever played piano AT a funeral before. Why I emphasized "at", I'll never know...

Here's my beef for the today. Say you have a hobby, like playing the piano (or juggling fiery chainsaws whilst covered in gasoline), and you decide you really want to get on Youtube and see what other people are doing with their passion for piano or juggling dangerous weapons covered in flaming hot dangerousness. So you type in "Piano" or "Fiery Chainsaw Accident" and the first few things that appear are kind of boring. You flip through some until you get to the results that say something like this;

"Three Year Old Whiz at Debussy's Revrie", or "You Pianist Better than You" or "Kid playing with sharp fiery objects and somehow getting away with it, and being good at it."...

Those children need to not be allowed on YouTube. Prodigies should just not happen. I realize we'd be losing a lot of wonderful musical talent in the world, but I'm sure we'll get along. Or at least we need to make all prodigies take a slice of humble pie and be required to work at a McDonald's one day before they graduate college so they can taste what it's like on this side of the fence. I hate working my behind off to learn a piece to discover that there's a child somewhere in the world who could play the same thing upon exiting the womb!

I'm working myself up, here. Maybe I should play scales tonight. I need Dr. Pepper, first. To Wal-Mart! AWAY!!!

I'M A WIZARD AND I JUST STUPIFIED THAT BENCH!!!

There is a growing collection of everyday household items in my house that want to murder me and the next one is my piano bench. I sat on it and it made a weird sound that most would have translated to a squeaking sound, similar to the groans of an old house creaking but I most definitely heard it make a sound more like a voice saying "I WANT YOUR BLOOD!" so I drop kicked that sucker and got a new piano bench!

So today I'm talking about the Karate Kid, because that's what I feel like right now. Allow me to explain...

In the Karate Kid, Daniel (that's right, I even remembered that fool's name!) is training to be a ninja assassin warrior of revenge and cliche'd movies and such or something. He begins his training by doing the most random household for the benefit of his trainer, Mickey. Actually, I think Mickey trained Rocky, but whatever. About three years into his training or so (don't quote me on that number), Daniel began to wonder why he wasn't learning any martial arts but was instead acting as Mickey's (or whoever's) man-maid-servant-butler-thing. Only then would he discover that by doing these seemingly meaningless tasks would he realize that they were only seemingly meaningless and were, in fact, unseemingly meaningful. He learned how to do karate by doing chores, only proving once more that our parents are Jedi knights and we should probably listen to them.

How does this relate to me? Well, it all comes back to my audition. You see, I have three pieces I have to learn and memorize and I'm currently spending a total of 0 hours a day actually playing these pieces right now. 5 hours a day (give or take) are spent playing through exercises. And here's the craziest thing; I tried to play my songs today and they actually came out fairly decent without much actual practice. I'm spending my time getting down fundamentals first and then learning the pieces, because I don't want to learn them wrong or anything. So, scales it is. Wouldn't you know it, my band directors were right about practice habits. THEY ARE JEDI KNIGHTS TOO!!!

P.S. If this blog post gets to you before I see you again tell my family the Bench is feisty and will stop at nothing to get the flesh and blood meal it desires. Don't go near it! I play the piano only at my own risk.

P.S.P.S.P.P.S.S.S...P.
 I am very much aware that the information on the Karate Kid is incorrect so don't think I'm an idiot. Or at least don't consider me more or less of an idiot than I actually am. I only permit you to judge me of the correct level of idiocy.

Salieri VS Mozart!!!

If you haven't seen "Amadeus", you should. It's kind of legit, and although quite a bit of artistic license was taken in the telling of the story, it was actually kind of accurate. What's most amazing to me is that the story is told from Mozart's rival's point of view rather than Mozart himself. But one thing has always captured my attention, and that's the differences found in each of the composer's beginnings.

Antonio Salieri wanted to study and compose music from a very young age. He prayed for it, thought of it constantly, and made it his passion, even though his father wouldn't allow him near any instrument. Mozart, however, was thrust into a world of musical virtuosity at a very young age. He wrote full scores before he was seven years old, showing that he was a musical genius, and his contrastingly strict and harsh father forced him to pursue the greatest depth of his potential. His father's discipline and demanding nature turned Mozart into one of the greatest musicians the world has ever seen.

This isn't unlike the world of piano and the way it is being flipped on it's head currently. In the United States, piano has been taught in a very specific way. We start with the foundations, often not even beginning with how to read music, then slowly inch our way towards, dynamics, staccato vs. legato touch, Sight reading, and often ending with how to use the pedals (unfortunately). But this is starting to change now that the United State's no longer has the greatest piano players. I'd venture to say that era ended with Glenn Gould, as well as the end of the Jazz Era (before the Bebop years).

The United States is slowly beginning to pick up the Chinese approach to playing piano, which is very similar to what Mozart would have endured as a child. In China, a child is often given a difficult, classical piece of music to start their musical journey. Everything is asked of them from a young age (often five years old!); pedaling, dynamics, legato or staccato touch (depending on the song, obviously), etc. They are so successful in what they do precisely because of their attention to detail and desire to command a great amount of knowledge and skill early on. This is in everything they do, from memorizing, sight-reading, scales, or whatever. And the United States is beginning to learn our lesson.

Pushing our youth harder in music is slowly becoming the new trend, and it won't take but another generation or so until we not only have another Glenn Gould, but a new Viktor Borge and our own Lang Lang as well (some consider him to be the greatest pianist alive right now). A new breed of super pianists are on their way within the next generation or so, and I pray that they hold off until I find a secure job so I can have work too.

The point in all of this? Mozart was encouraged in his endeavors and he is known as one of the greatest musicians of all time. Salieri was NOT encouraged and he is known as the man who killed Mozart. Just saying...

MY PIANO HAS MORE SCALES THAN A DRAGON!!!

HELLLLLLLLOOOOOOO!!!!!

Guess what I've done with my day today. I bet you can't. I hope you can't. I'd probably assume you were stalking me if you could and I wouldn't even be able to do anything about it because getting a restraining order on my few readers would definitely hinder this blogs already poor readership...

So, I played scales today. That was fun. I woke up early, reviewed the fugue for my audition, saved the fridge from imploding, and played scales until my left hand literally fell off my body. I was in the middle of the Db Major scale and my left hand was like, "Hey, Tyler. We've been through some great times these past 21 years, but you are working me too hard. Here's my two weeks notice. In two weeks from now, you're gonna notice I haven't been here in two weeks. See ya!" And that was that.

So then I played Halo with my brother, played guitar with one hand (obviously), and struggled to turn to page 394 without Snape getting ticked off at me (with little success). It was somewhere between throwing a grenade at aliens and right now when I blogged about nothing (yet still successfully referenced Harry Potter) that I began to realize that during the course of this break a very significant yet not entirely unforeseeable event has occurred. When I am not by my piano, I am practically a nobody. I seem to put myself in a position where I don't have an existence away from the piano, unless that existence is to review my piano music away from the piano. I could be out with friends, but my piano is my BEST friend. I could watch a movie, but it usually ends up being a movie about a piano player (there are plenty out there, trust me). I could play video games, but that's my reserve for when my hands cramp up and playing piano is no longer an option.

I would just like to say that at first I was quite ticked off at Nintendo for making a system that worked entirely off of motion rather than pressing buttons like any video game conglomerate would have designed. But when your fingers refuse to move, just having to swing your arm to kill bad guys is kind of a blessing.

That's my post for today. I'd be icing my hand right now but thankfully my house is cold enough so I don't have to. I'm gonna go watch youtube, maybe another movie, and find SOMETHING to do with my life that doesn't have anything to do with piano.

Beethoven and Mozart and trying to murder me in my sleep...

I am in the process of completely clearing out my room, and one of the joys of this is finding things I had completely forgotten about. I have a small collection of busts of famous piano players and composers that I had assumed diasappeared off the face of the earth. But I also have two Mozart and Beethoven "action figures" that had been buried beneath my pile of junk for a while. I busted them out, set them on their piano bench accessory, and began to realize how much of a nerd I really am.


I found a Bach action figure online and I want it!!! Because that's just the type of guy I am. Am I still a nerd or does this thrust me into Geekdom? One day when I have my own place I will have my own piano, and you can bet that there will be these composer action figures up there. If only they had Debussy!!! But anyways, this is my life right now. Piano piano piano, still. Just in the nerdiest (hopefully not geekiest) way possible. Nerd is cool. Being a geek is my worst nightmare!

"I'll be Bach!" -Arnold Schwarzenegger