A Breeze from Alabama

Here's a lively piece called 'A Breeze from Alabama' by Scott Joplin. I'm still nursing a bit of a hand injury and so there are some flubs in playing this piece, especially about 3/4 of the way through. I usually get through that part. Anyway, decided to put this video up. I used the middle pedal to give it bit of a more muted/softer sound. And when I do get around to playing this again, hopefully it'll be in much better form! So, for now, enjoy my piece.

The video was taken using my new Sony Handycam DCR-SR68 camera. It has a great microphone to pick up the sound. Great sound quality. And no more blurry hand movements! Yay!

As you may know I'm a deaf/hh ragtime pianist. I'm not sure if there are others like me who like to play ragtime all the time. But it's good to know that there are other deaf/hh pianists out there as well.

A tuned piano...

Last week I finally got my piano tuned and it certainly sounds so much better. It was tuned by a blind piano tuner named Kevin. Real nice guy and we talked briefly over the two hours it took to tune the piano to its crisp and melodic sound. The piano really needed the tuning after two moves and then subsequently across several states to its final destination after I bought it brand new back in December 2008. Now with the ragtime pieces I'm playing they sound so much better but some pianos do sound better with certain rag pieces than other pianos, even newer ones. Even my aunt's player piano sounded really great when I played several ragtime pieces for year. Another dream of mine is to get an antique player piano someday. It'd be a really great center-piece for my house (aside from a baby grand piano) and a fun one to play on. So many rags to choose from, the list just keeps growing. Ain't that great or what?