I tried out Rondo alla turca, and it's almost like a puzzle, because it's mixing left and right hand into one stream, and if you were used to doing those two separately, you're going to futz it
Touch Pianist
61–70 of 240 posts
Re: Touch Pianist
#62Great choice of song! If you ever have access to a piano, I highly recommended trying to fumble your way through Beethoven's moonlight sonata, even if you don't know how to play piano. Not quite sure how to put it into words, but it's absolutely exhilarating hearing your own fingers produce these huge sounds and intense chord progressions. Every time I managed to find the right chord I'd get such a rush. "Oh no he di…
Not sure that was the goal, but the text accompanying the first run makes it seem like I'm supposed to get the rhythm exactly in the spacing indicated on paper/screen. But one thing I love about the moonlight sonata is exactly how amazing one can play with the spacing of the notes. So yeah, I had a lot of fun with this but I'm not sure it's the best choice of piece. :P
What you're talking about is called playing rubato (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato), and I think that is part of the point here. The control that you get over the timing allows you to express yourself musically / perform the music with your own interpretation.
The instructions may be a bit unclear, but I think they are suggesting that it works better artistically if you play some parts evenly (the three-note sequences that repeat) and add your timing variations to the other parts. This creates a kind of a baseline of regularity that makes the variations stand out by contrast. (It also gives the feeling that you're capable of even, steady timing and the timing variations you do incorporate are there on purpose.)
Re: Touch Pianist
#63Love it ! I allways want to learn and play piano !
Re: Touch Pianist
#64Re: Touch Pianist
#65This was one of the first pieces I tried to learn as a kid. I would just restart it repeatedly because my Casio keyboard had a library of classical music on it that one could listen to by hitting a function key and then a unique white key. I think it's something that Casio did in the late 80s - mid 90s. They don't seem to use the old song library much or at all anymore, but I thought it was a great feature.
So I'd just restart from the beginning and learn the next note. Guess-and-check. As an adult I've continually tried to learn to read sheet music, with frustration. So I learned jazz theory and invented my own music theory system. Now I encode most pieces harmonically in my brain. It would be cool to see this kind of indication in the app, so for example, the first couple lines:
3/4
|C#mi| | | |C#mi/B | | | |
|A | |D/F#| |G#5(b6)|C#mi/G#|G#sus|G#7 |
...
Re: Touch Pianist
#66I love the way how NOONE mentions that it is not available on android:
"We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.earslap.to...
Re: Touch Pianist
#67No audio on the website. No audio or graphics in the app (except menus). iPhone 12 mini on latest iOS 16
Re: Touch Pianist
#68I'm not sure I get it. On desktop I just click to play the next beat? On mobile there's no audio (in Safari or Chrome). And the track selection appears to be broken? Have I missed something? What's the pull here?
I had audio in Safari. But it didn't start right away.
How long does it take to start? I've given it a few minutes and still nothing. I'm on fast stable wifi and the audio worked immediately on a desktop on the same wifi so I can't imagine it's having trouble downloading the samples.
Re: Touch Pianist
#69Oh man! Thank you for posting this. I saw this here on HN years ago and loved it, and then could never find it again. Judging by the YouTube videos linked from the page, it looks like 8 years ago?! I got chills playing through it. Awesome to see that it's still up on the internet after all those years.
It's interesting to compare the comments here to the original launch 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490372
And the Reddit post from the same time: https://old.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/34vcmz...
Re: Touch Pianist
#70This is a great kind of thing for getting people into music. There's a piano in my local pub and when people say they "can't play piano" I'll play a 2-5-1 in C and tell them to hit any of the white notes. People love that they can make up their own tunes having never played before.
And then you show them the black blues note...
I was miserable for most of my piano lessons (I learned to sheet read well – I become a fairly adept piano-playing robot – but I never sort of "figured out" music more generally.) That said, one lesson my teacher played a basic blues chord progression and told me to hit anything on the blues G scale however I wanted. That was one of the most fun times I've had making music ever. Well, the only time that has been fun, actually.