Way back when, an anonymous frequent reader of this humble blog was trying to learn to play William Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag on the piano. It has a horrible chord within five seconds of the first note, consisting of middle C, middle D flat, and high C. It's an ugly-sounding thing, and also apparently anatomically impossible. When my reader ( Read more... )

Over the last few years I've become accustomed to thinking of the World-Wide Web as a sort of magical font of any kind of information one could imagine. In many areas it's close to that, but it still has some holes, and sometimes it's startling to stumble across them. Now, I know that the original blogs were intended as compendia of links: "Look ( Read more... )

My semianonymous reader "GK" sent me, by the agency of the United States Postal Service, no less, a photocopy of a page of piano music together with a fingering question. I responded within 24 hours, because GK had taken the precaution of including a stamped, self-addressed envelope. It would have been churlishness of historic proportions not to ( Read more... )