"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
- Frederic Chopin - (On playing the piano)
~ Bartolomeo Cristofori, Inventor of the Piano ~
Welcome to the group, Pianists! =D
I made this group because I enjoy playing the piano and hopefully to find other people who share simliar interests =P
I mostly play piano music from different anime's and such. Here's where I find most of my sheet music:
Josh Agarrado's site :
http://josh.agarrado.net/music/anime/
Probably my favourite site. Over hundreds of different transcriptions by him, then also hundreds of submissions by different people.
Pico scores:
http://www.pico-score.com/
Less sheets, but still nevertheless contains some that aren't included in Josh's site. There's some really nice music in this from different animes including Kanon, Clannad and Air. Main problem is that it's in Japanese ^_^ [You can go to google and type in pico scores, then click 'translate this page' beside the main link. Put your pointer over the images for the description to come up. It should be just about enough to let you navigate your way around =P
Touhou Sheet music:
http://mafioness.hp.infoseek.co.jp/onngaku.htm
Has lots of Touhou sheet music but unfortunately again the site is in Japanese =( but fortunately it isnt too hard to nagivate. Choose the sheet you wish to print from the list on the left hand side and then choose the difficulty you wish to attempt. The first list of difficulties requires Kawaii (a transcription software like Finale) for the .sdf files which comes with audio. Or alternatively the second list of difficulties have the .pdf versions. These pieces shouldnt be attempted by the faint of heart! Especially the Lunatic ones =P
http://www.geocities.jp/withleafan/score.html
More sheets. This site requires Kawaii music reader. Some very nice songs =) also in Japanese =P
http://pianoscore.sakura.ne.jp/music.html
Still more sheets =P This one is also in Japanese but doesnt require Kawaii. All sheets are in .pdf format.
Please note: for the Kawaii music reader to work, your computer's non-unicode language may need to be changed to Japanese. The file can be downloaded here
http://www.kawai.co.jp/cmusic/download/freedownload/scp4.exe
** Spoiler Alert!!! click to hide or show**
If you'd like to share any others or have any questions, please leave a comment =)
Tidbits of Piano History:
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard that produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers. The hammers immediately rebound allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies them.
The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a stringed instrument. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, it is grouped with Chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of the word
pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
_Courtesy of Wikipedia_
A bit of Piano Trivia...
A 64th note is called a hemidemisemi quaver.
There are as many constellations in the sky as there are keys on the piano!
In the 18th century (around Mozart's time), some pianos had a knee pedal that has the same function as today's pedal but were operated with the knees.
Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the piano.
The world's largest piano is a Challen Concert Grand. This piano is 11 feet long, weighs more than a ton and has a string tension of over 30 tons.
Here's one for your page-turner:
** Spoiler Alert!!! click to hide or show**
The following program notes are from an unidentified piano recital.
Tonight's page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world's leading pianists.
In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in "grace, swiftness, and especially poise."
For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist's view of the music. She is page turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute.
Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.
http://www.pianoparadise.com/humor.html
and sorry bout the late reply shikana, lessons are by no means necessary but especially at the start lessons can help push you in the right direction.
