2024-01-26-061332.m4a \ stacker news ~mostly

2024-01-26-061332.m4a files.ekzyis.com/public/music/2024-01-26-061332.m4a

1390 sats \ 12 comments \ @ek 26 Jan mostly_harmless

I think learning how to play an instrument is one of the best lessons to learn How to Fail.

To learn a song, you have to divide it into parts. And then you have to play every part (which is usually just a few seconds) over and over and over again until you are satisfied. There are no shortcuts. And when you nailed every part down individually, you have to do it all over again with the transitions between every part.

This is my progress from a song you can hopefully recognize. I started learning this song about five days ago. I try to play every evening before going to bed and sometimes also after waking up.

I think the key is to not play long but regularly. It's kind of a duh moment since I heard exactly this a lot of times in my life already—and not even relating to playing piano.

It's like with almost everything: Consistency is key. Everything else comes after that.

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390 sats \ 3 replies \ @0fje0 26 Jan

Cool! Not sure what I expected to hear. Probably guitar or something.

Instead, it instantly took me back to an experience many years ago that started my own quest to master a particular piece of music.

The experience?

Sitting in a pub with team mates in an after-game 'social' with the other team and it's about time to call it a day and go home, when this much older guy (I believe he was the team manager or something) sits down at the piano and starts playing the most beautiful melody I'd ever heard.

What made it extra special was that he timed his 'performance' to perfection. The after-game excitement was all but over, the pub got just quiet enough, you could sense everyone was thinking wtf is this burly guy gonna do with a piano? Embarrass himself?

And out comes this exquisite piece of music.

I decided on the spot that I needed to learn that music - and the timing part - and try to recreate that magic if and when I get the opportunity.

My practising must have sounded a lot like yours - except you seem to progress a lot faster. Keep at it!

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 26 Jan

Oh, just realized I ignored everything else you said in my previous response haha

Instead, it instantly took me back to an experience many years ago that started my own quest to master a particular piece of music.

The experience?

Sitting in a pub with team mates in an after-game 'social' with the other team and it's about time to call it a day and go home, when this much older guy (I believe he was the team manager or something) sits down at the piano and starts playing the most beautiful melody I'd ever heard.

What made it extra special was that he timed his 'performance' to perfection. The after-game excitement was all but over, the pub got just quiet enough, you could sense everyone was thinking wtf is this burly guy gonna do with a piano? Embarrass himself?

And out comes this exquisite piece of music.

Wow, cool story :) Reminds me how I always wanted to be the guy who plays guitar at a camp fire. But so far, there were always people who could play guitar a lot better than me so I rather listened to them playing guitar. It's also scary to put yourself into the spotlight and play something. People most likely wouldn't tell you if you suck and will just sit through it; hoping you'll stop soon lol

I decided on the spot that I needed to learn that music - and the timing part - and try to recreate that magic if and when I get the opportunity.

So you also play piano? Did you get this opportunity yet?

My practising must have sounded a lot like yours - except you seem to progress a lot faster. Keep at it!

Have been practicing this part of the song for five evenings now. So what you hear is not the first time that I am trying to play this part haha

163 sats \ 0 replies \ @0fje0 26 Jan

So you also play piano?

Sad;y, no. Despite my late Mom having been a piano teacher, lol. But she patiently taught me that one specific piece: Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 (which you may know as the "Moonlight Sonata").

Did you get this opportunity yet?

Yes, it was many years ago and it felt almost as good as the pub guy's! I doubt I'd be able to do it again without re-learing the piece. I don't even have access to a piano these days.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 26 Jan

Cool! Not sure what I expected to hear. Probably guitar or something.

Oh, I could also pack out my guitar again. It must have been at least 5 years since I played some guitar.

I learned electronic guitar when I was still in school (so when I was around 15 years old) but for some reason, my right shoulder (strumming hand) always started to hurt fast while playing. Maybe my posture was just bad or the guitar was not the right size? I never figured it out. I really liked it but that took the fun out of it after some while. Constant pain. And additionally comes the pain from holding the strings down with the left hand which gets worse when you didn't play for a while (less hard skin at the finger tips).

I even started to play western guitar at one point. That hurt even more lol. Then I realized that maybe I should just learn piano for less pain.

313 sats \ 1 reply \ @mo 26 Jan

I like the fact that you host your stuff... do you run a home server to?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 26 Jan

I used to for network monitoring but after my SSD failed, I didn't set it up again. This here is hosted on a VPS in the cloud.

I still want to run one though. Again to monitor my network but also for local backups. Storage is quite expensive in the cloud.

313 sats \ 4 replies \ @Bitman 26 Jan

Thanks for sharing. We remember you mentioning learning piano.

I don't know the piece though. It sounds a bit like a saloon piano ditty in Westworld - but that's a flying guess.

Keep it up though. I'm sure your practice outline is a good one. It's got a pleasant sound.

Maybe, when you've got it mastered, incorporate it into our saloon somehow!

But don't make it sound 'perfect' I like the homely and move away from the autotuning side of life...

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek OP 26 Jan

It sounds a bit like a saloon piano ditty in Westworld - but that's a flying guess.

Oh, interesting! Good that I didn't just tell the song then. In that case, you wouldn't have told me this, I guess :)

You also reminded me that I thought about Westworld a lot recently. I only watched a few episodes in the past then stopped even though I liked it. But I also associated it with the @saloon.

Maybe, when you've got it mastered, incorporate it into our saloon somehow!

Mhh, interesting. @k00b and me discussed that we want to support more media formats in the future (including audio). So that would mean you could upload audio directly into the saloon and it would show up as a player with media control. No need to click a link.

But don't make it sound 'perfect' I like the homely and move away from the autotuning side of life...

I also like this! No editing, just raw sound. I also want to show this since I don't like how most people only show their success. But the road to their success is actually more interesting. We should embrace our "failures" :)

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bitman 26 Jan

https://movie-sounds.org/quotes/601/glad-to-be-of-service--2.mp3

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 26 Jan

Mhh, using residential IP, no VPN. (Also doesn't work with VPN)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 26 Jan

Hmm, strange.

If you could access it, you'd have heard the original elevator voice on '80s H2G2. We are on Mostly Harmless after all...

Maybe you'll have better luck with... https://movie-sounds.org/tv-series-sound-clips/quotes-with-sound-clips-from-the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy/glad-to-be-of-service-6j7

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 26 Jan

I noticed that I have missed to give a more elaborate in-depth explanation why I think learning how to play ~~an instrument~~ a song¹ and I think that might not be obvious so let me explain.²

it's about quantity not quality

Rehearsing the same part 1000 times is a lot better than to have a great setup. You don't need a great app which automatically scrolls the piano sheet for you, great lighting or the best music-stool to "git gud".

embrace your weakness

I suck at not obsessing over mistakes so I will force myself to just continue playing if I made a single (or a few) mistakes. I used to have a guitar teacher, he told me this and I still learn every day a little bit more how true it is:

A great musician is the one who keeps playing after mistakes since it's highly likely that no one even noticed it.

I also tend to play faster than I should when I don't know what I am doing. I think it's because I immediately want to recognize the song and thus play it in the same speed. But the skill is to realize that you're not ready yet and play intentionally slower than your max speed. You need to find your own weak speed.

surround yourself with failures

Surround yourself with your own failures by recording yourself during a practice session. Don't only record yourself when you think you can play the full song with zero mistakes now. You need to record your failures. If you do this, you'll quickly see that your latest failure is less of a failure than the failure before.

steer into skids

Don't play easy songs all the time. Play the songs think you can't play yet because it's too fast, seems to require four hands or has too many weird notations that you've never seen.

Learning songs are just proxies for learning an instrument, but it's better to explain what I want to explain by applying it to learning a particular song. ↩
I believe this is a great example comment for why we need pinned comments ↩

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