Author: Rauf Aliev

Very interesting from @[100000022300673:2048:Evgeniya Timonova]. The whole channel is cool, I recommend it. Also, there’s an interesting interview with Evgeniya – http://bg.ru/education/evgenija_timonova_o_tom_kak_delaetsja_videoblog_vs-20477/

https://youtu.be/n8moLsg_eT8

Working to Rachmaninoff and Kultyshev. Every time I listen to this concert, I can’t figure out – how can professional pianists play a forty-minute piece from memory! It’s most noticeable that they shouldn’t make mistakes. And it’s not even the most complex or longest concert, though it is far from simple.

The chasm between me and professional pianists is so deep that it seems, to even understand how they do it, one must dedicate a lifetime to music.

With other areas of art, everything is significantly simpler. In theatre, for example, performing for three hours and reciting lines from memory, although difficult, is understandable. With painters, there’s no magic at all – just a generally comprehensible craft, and there’s no hurry, no real-time requirements. For singers, for example, the density of information isn’t as heavy as it is with musicians: roughly speaking, a performer might sing lyrics that fit on three pages for an hour, and it’s still just words, whereas a musician in an hour plays through a substantial stack of notes.

If only all composers employed similar principles. But while popular music and jazz might share basics, the difference between Debussy, Rachmaninov, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Bach in classical music is just enormous. Essentially, the only commonalities are melody, rhythm, and harmony. And I cannot grasp how performers remember all this so well?

An explanation is starting to form. If you work long enough with a single piece, you begin to understand/perceive it on different scales. Here are three major parts, each divides into five smaller ones, each of these five into seven, and each of these seven consists of a few blocks and so on. I assume that within a single work there must be a plethora of repetitions and echoes, built on the same principles, which allows a musician to find commonalities between, say, a melody at the fifth level of this hierarchy (which lasts about 30 seconds) and the same melody at the fourth level (which with slight modifications stretches for about 10 minutes). Plus, both with slight or significant changes are repeated in different forms. As a result, you get such a story.

Moreover, there are many types of musical ear, including absolute and harmonic. After decades of daily friendship with the piano, you play with “spinal reflex” – just as when you drive a car, you can think about work, talk about life with a passenger, and still not run a red light?.. the brain gradually stops controlling the details, and operates “on a large scale”. And the details are automatic. A harmonic ear allows a musician to place their fingers on the right keys immediately as the next chord sounds in their head – and here too, “with the spinal reflex”. The same goes for melody and rhythm.

But, even though I’ve explained it to myself, I still can’t believe how they do it 🙂

A beautiful concert, give it a listen.

@[100000569108009:2048:Ivan Shapovalov]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYSZeTbh2g0

Lisa was asked to bring a “compass” to school. It was a revelation to me that this meant a pair of compasses.

http://thetruesize.com is a cool resource, bookmark it

http://thetruesize.com/

Summer is slowly coming to our cozy courtyard

After three months of burgers and sitting around, I decided to start running again. Today 7.4km, 5:30min/km, 68m elevation gain. https://www.strava.com/activities/562686801

It turns out that there’s an actual spaceport in my area. NASA Wallops is located in the neighboring state, just a 3-hour drive away. In July this year, they will be launching Antares with the Cygnus cargo spacecraft (OA-5). The last time they tried to do this, there was an accident – the rocket exploded a few dozen meters above the ground, and the spaceport was damaged. It has since been repaired, and soon there will be another attempt.

I plan to go there in July to watch the launch. Of course, they won’t let you onto the spaceport, but there are many places nearby with a great view. For example, the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, where wild horses live. Moreover, all this is located by the ocean. http://vaspace.org/

Masha yesterday:

– Mom, why haven’t I seen a single “Opel” here?

But it’s true. Observant. Why?

Please recommend the most interesting TED talks?

No event here is complete without a tea-coffee break. Whether it’s a parent-teacher meeting at school or English language courses. The refreshments are voluntarily organized by the participants themselves. Most often, the table is heaving with cookies and cakes. This is the set we bought at the Russian store. A kilogram of “Alenka” candies costs around 1700-1800 rubles when converted.