Friday, October 01, 2010

I woke up after a twenty-five year sleep...

It's always fun when your kids are young and your family sees them after a gap of a couple months.  You've been there all along and so haven't noticed so much how much they've grown, but the grandparents do.  It's like they've got in a time machine to the future or been in a coma for a year (or been stuck on the island of Lost--my wife and I finally finished the series, by the way).

So I've been keeping up, mostly, with the technology shifts.  I don't have an iPad but it's on my list of things to buy in five years when the first wave of children in college is over.  I've blogged for six years.  I do Facebook.  I twitter.  I've self-published.  I'm looking at our publishers as they contemplate translating things into Spanish and thinking, hey, give me Google translate and an editor to fix things I miss and I'll have some books done in a few weeks.

But I had one of those time warp things happen to me earlier in the week.  I haven't hardly played any piano for twenty-five years (and truth be told, I never really did anyway).  But I thought I might try to learn a line a week of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor on Saturdays.  So I was thinking about where I could buy some sheet music...

And then I realized all I needed to do was a Google search, which brought up http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=9130, and I printed the first page for tomorrow (maybe) using the wireless in my house to send it to the wireless copier, printer, scanner in my bedroom. 

A quick look on YouTube and here is a pretty good view of the hands (and thankfully he plays slowly): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQX-hjf3TY.  And here's an audio of Rachmaninoff himself playing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXGSfJn3nKQ&feature=related.

How this planet has changed since I blasted off 25 years ago!

2 comments:

H.G. Scott said...

I wrote my dissertation to the tune of Rachmaninoff. :)

James F. McGrath said...

I used YouTube tutorial videos to help me learn some keyboard solos from old Genesis songs, too!