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The pianist is Lise Linde Kronenberg, filmed on her first birthday. It’s not clear whether the piano music was overdubbed on a pre-existing melody, or whether the orchestral accompaniment was created specifically to harmonize with her extemporaneous creation, but the result is fascinating. Try playing it for someone who can’t see your monitor, and ask them what they think of this “nouveau” piano style.
And it has an LOL ending.
It’s called “Circus Galop” or “Death Waltz”, and it’s used to test the performance of player pianos. No single person has ever played it…so far. But if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can genetically engineer a superhuman species that can perform it.
-via Boing Boing
Photo: @CanalMercer
Ranjit Bhatnagar, Astrida Valijorsky, Mimi Hui and Catarina Mota must not have listened to their mothers telling them not to play with their food ... and that's a good thing. They won top prize in creativity for the piece above, a playable (yes, playable) piano made from Jell-O called "The Resistor Jeltone," at the 2011 Cooper-Hewitt Design Scholars/Jell-O Mold Workshop.
Previously on Neatorama: Lifelike Gelatin Creations | Jell-O Cartridges
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If you love Tom Hanks playing Chopsticks on the giant piano in Big, you’ll love this: two FAO Schwartz staffers in New York City playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
One night, Robert Majkut had a dream. That dream was to recreate the piano in a grander form. So Robert took this whale of an idea and created this: an electric keyboard called the Whaletone:
It seemed to me a little imprecise, fuzzy. Shapes were looming, fading away, then replacing one another. Maybe it was the whales I saw during the day, maybe the smooth motion of waves, or maybe just many things have overlapped and blended into one animated sequence of pictures. What I saw was a grand piano – yet totally different from all I have seen before. As though it was challenging the classic notion of a piano. Soft, flowing, frozen movement of a gigantic animal.
Although I was moved by the dream, I did not appreciate its meaning at first. I realized how little had changed in this instrument over so many years. Intrigued with this discovery, I began to chase the dim picture trapped in my memory. At first, my mind lead me astray, struggling with habits, experience, intuition and beliefs. It took me a long time to sketch the form, which came across as something vaguely imitating the vision concealed in my mind. And then, one day, while working on this concept already a bit obsessively, my mind unlocked and my hand drew the piano from my dream. I immediately recognized it. I instantly knew I got it.
Monumental – like a whale emerging from the water, slow – like the movement of a giant. Charming, majestic, delicate and melodious, like romantic calls of coquetting whales…I knew it called for being made.
From that moment on, I have known that in the depths of our minds there are ready-made, complete, good ideas. Concepts, forms, choices that are beyond our comprehension until we release them. This is one of them – Whaletone – my version of a singing whale.
Link - via Doobybrain
Before young Wolfgang Mozart became the toast of Europe, the family promoted his older sister, Maria Anna Mozart.
“Virtuosic.” “A prodigy.” “Genius.” These words were written in the 1760s about Mozart—Maria Anna Mozart. When she toured Europe as a pianist, young Maria Anna wowed audiences in Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, the Hague, Germany and Switzerland. “My little girl plays the most difficult works which we have … with incredible precision and so excellently,” her father, Leopold, wrote in a letter in 1764. “What it all amounts to is this, that my little girl, although she is only 12 years old, is one of the most skillful players in Europe.”
Her younger brother learned to play as well and eventually joined her on tour. However, Maria, who the family called Nannerl, was taken off the concert circuit when she became old enough to marry. We’ll never know what could have become of her music if she’d had the same opportunities as Wolfgang. However, Smithsonian looks at Nannerl’s influence on her brother and how much she may have been responsible for his fame. Link
Are you having a woe-is-me moment? Take a quick look at this video clip of 19-year-old Chinese girl named Zheng Guigui playing Souvenirs d’enfance by Claude Lachapelle on the piano (after learning to play for only 3 years, no less!)
Now I’ve officially run out of excuses for not being able to play the piano (or not being able to do anything else for lack of perseverence, for that matter)
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via The Daily What
When Lifehacker reader David Scothern discovered that the piano he was restoring was beyond repair, he did what any good hacker would do: turn it into a case for his PC! This is one case mod that is music to my ears: Link – via Anything & Everything
Previously on Neatorama: Case Mod – The Ultimate List
Some Miami residents couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw a grand piano out in Biscayne Bay, perched atop a sandbar.
How and why the piano got there is a mystery. A grand piano weighs at least 650 pounds and is unwieldly to move, said Bob Shapiro, a salesman at Piano Music Center in Pembroke Park. “You don’t take it out there in a rowboat,” Shapiro said.
This much is clear, however: The piano isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Unless it becomes a danger to wildlife or boaters, authorities have no plans to haul it away.
“We are not responsible for removing such items,” said Jorge Pino, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Even a car can become a habitat for wildlife. Unless the item becomes a navigational hazard, the Coast Guard would not get involved.”
Even though the piano remains above water even at low high tide, no music has been heard from it. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Alison Diaz/Miami Herald)
Update: Looks like the person responsible has been found. Read about it at NeatoBambino.
Martin Spitznagel performed this ragtime medley of music from Super Mario Bros., Harry Potter movies, and Star Wars. Andrew Barrett and Tom Warner accompanied him on washboards. This performance took place at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento in 2008.
via reddit | Spitznagel’s Website
How can you improve the iconic Imperial March theme from Star Wars? Just add a little Beethoven! Here’s Richard Grayson playing (and improvising the way only Richard Grayson can) the Darth Vader theme in classical piano: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Topless Robot
Assuming that I’ve been given correction information about this Chinese-language video, Liu Wei lost his arms in an electrical accident when he was 10 years old. But he can still play the piano very well using his toes, as demonstrated on an episode of China’s Got Talent. The music starts at 2:15.
via reddit
Diego Stocco (previously at Neatorama) combined parts from a bass guitar and a piano to make a new musical instrument he calls a bassoforte. Link -via Metafilter
The photo above comes from the Spaarnestad collection in the Nationaal Archief – the National Archive of the Netherlands. The image is sourced to Great Britain and dated 1935, but carries no explanatory text other than “Piano especially designed for people who are confined to bed.”
Perhaps some Neatorama reader with a knowledge of music history can provide additional information regarding this remarkable invention.
Nationaal Archief’s Flickr photostream.
It’s one thing to play music on a modern gadget -many people can tap out “Happy Birthday” on a cell phone. It’s quite another to perform classical pieces! Believe it or not, this person is playing “Rondo Alla Turka” {audio file} from Mozart’s Piano Sonota #11 on four telephones. Link
Love video games and jazz? Well, Scott Bradlee and Ben Golder-Novick teamed up to bring you this: classic video game music in piano and saxophone!
Love 8-bit Nintendo games but not necessarily 8-bit musical
instruments? Wish you could hear the soundtracks of those games
rendered by live musicians as you play?Eight Bits of Jam will come into your living room and provide real-time acoustic soundtracks to old school games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda,
Mike Tyson’s Punch-out, and many more. All you have to do is put the television on ‘mute’ and Eight Bits of Jam will take care of the rest.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by vaughnadam81.
This Volkswagen commercial is about one effort to get people to take the stairs instead of the escalator (presumably for the exercise). The company turned a staircase at a Stockholm subway station into a piano and videotaped how travelers responded.
via Urlesque | Commercial Credits
Austrian composer Peter Ablinger digitized a recording of a child speaking and then programmed a mechanical piano to replicate the sounds. The video above is in German, but Hack a Day has provided a translation:
I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.
The content of the speech is taken from the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009.
via Gizmodo | Composer’s Webpage
Andy Woodruff noticed that Ohio has 88 counties, the same number as keys on a piano. So he went to work on a map application that assigns a note to each county. You can play a song on the map (a couple of songs are plotted out for you) or reassign the notes based on census data such as population, number of rental houses, or median age. You can even hear what a route from one place to another sounds like! Link to map. Link to the story behind it. -via the Presurfer
A short film by The People’s Republic of Animation. The musical instrument featured is a Katzenklavier (previously at Neatorama). -via Metafilter
This is part of Neatorama’s “A Day Without Cats Counter Protest” inspired by A Day Without Cats on the Internet.
Concert Hands is a gadget designed to replace traditional piano instruction by controlling the user’s hand and finger movements:
The software takes the song file and converts it to a proprietary file system where the controller box distributes the signal to the wrist pilots and finger sleeves. The finger sleeves are placed on all fingers of both hands and the user’s wrists lay gently on the wrist pilots. When the music begins the wrists pilots guide your hands across the piano to a specific location and the finger sleeves receive a pulse to indicate which key to press. The idea is after a period of time the repetitive motions and signals will develop muscle memory within the end user and enable him or her to play their favorite songs on their own.
Here’s a wonderful impromptu piano performance at the Mayo Clinic by 90-year-old Marlo Cowan and his wife of 62 years, Fran. A cheerful reminder of how to have a long life and a successful marriage.
– via crainium
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
Lots of dogs howl when people play piano, but Porter likes to make his own music.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
When he was 16 years old and despite having no formal training, Adrian Mann of New Zealand decided that he was going to build a piano. Not just any piano – but the world’s largest and longest grand piano, built from scratch entirely by hand. Four years later, he completed his masterpiece …
– via stuff
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
This one you’ve GOT to see. It’s the story of Heeah Lee, who was born with phocomelia and has pincer-like fingers, two on each hand. Yet she plays the piano like ringing a bell.
Not to be missed: Link [embedded YouTube] – via AQFL
