Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner I get it. Some folks think you can learn something from Youtube.

You need to check your source again. That quote is a western invention.

What he did say is:

"I have spent a whole day without eating and a whole night without sleeping in order to think--but I got nothing out of it. Thinking cannot compare with studying."

But recording them in a few months is not the same thing as learning them in a few months. Plus maybe the world's greatest pianists could learn them more quickly and have greater musical insight than you. </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unlikely....kbk went to the British museum... :rolleyes:

nm

I generally agree that when you are in the middle of working on a piece and still forming your own ideas about it, it is best not to listen other pianists playing it. Especially really great performances, because they often are just too compelling to resist being influenced. And it is good to avoid listening to other performances not only because of the influence, but because it will rob you of the experience of really discovering what you personally make of it, of figuring out for yourself "how it should go". And I think that experience is one of the most important and rewarding you can have if you are serious about music.

But, on the other hand, there's a major flaw in this idea if you try to make it a real hard and fast rule, because it would mean you can't listen to ANYTHING until after you yourself have mastered it, and that just ain't gonna happen. In fact, a recording or performance is often the thing that prompts me to start on a piece in the first place, so I'm sort of "pre-influenced" in those cases. That can't be helped, I guess.

Yes, learn them more quickly but why a greater insight? I'm probably higher qualified or at least equally so in the 'insight' side of music. I could probably do a far better job on historical and theoretical analysis than most, and to get an acceptable interpretation you need that input. What comes through when I listen to a work that I've study is rarely the composer. What I end up hearing is the performer's idiosyncrasies.

I doubt it though it's indubitably bastardized. I like you quote, good food for thought.
To some extent but it's very much a different and less rewarding experience.

Well, we aren't all alike, obviously. Although not exactly what you are talking about, I have often had the experience of watching a YouTube video and had my playing improve in some technical way from it. But for me, it's not very consciously directed - more often it just happens spontaneously, and sometimes it is really a surprise. I think this is because because visually we absorb a lot of information without realizing it, and being interested in playing piano, I'm just naturally attuned to what pianists are doing to achieve their results, and my subconscious mind has learned to sometimes take what I can use. But it's not entirely below consciousness, because I will often realize that one thing or another a pianist is doing has caught my attention, and later find that I'm doing something similar (or trying to, anyway). But basically it is a kind of learning by osmosis, and it really does happen to some extent.

wr, that sounds a bit on the dodgy side. The mere copying of the external form of an activity rather than a movement from inside is a surface approach akin to reading poetry in a language you don't understand, whether on the unconscious or conscious level.

It's some kind of extrapolation process, I would guess. How do we learn our native language in the first place, except by copying an "external form"? We aren't born with it. At any rate, all I know is that it happens, rather than knowing how it works, and that alone would make me a happy patron of YouTube.

You are born with language though. You parse your experience of the world from day one.

The issue of listening to a work before personally engaging (grappling) with it is an interesting one. A composition is for me an intimate communication between myself and the composer. That's the meaning music has for me. I just don't get the idea of an intermediary. As for learning a piece because you like how it sounds, yes we all do it, but we only persever if we find something of our own in it. In education it's called 'ownership of knowledge' - a bit old hat now, but still as relevant.

More qualified in the insight department than world-class artists?

Do you actually think concert pianists learn the Beethoven Sonatas a few months before they record them? NO. They have had these pieces in their repertoire for YEARS and YEARS before they ever go into the studio. You think an amateur such as yourself can just come along, learn a sonata in a year, go to the museum, think about it a little, think about it some more, give a little of your magnificent 'insight', and come out with a more valid interpretation than Brendel of Kempff?

All you hear when you listen to the great masters is their idiosyncrasies? But when you play a Beethoven Sonata it's more pure, more studied, more faithful to the score, more creative, because it's taken you 18 months to learn the it, and you happen to have visited the museum a couple of times?

Quit while you're ahead.

...a very good reason for kbk not to quit, I would have thought

I couldn't have put it better myself, though you left out the years of study for my B Mus.

I think that to suggest that an amateur isn't capable of having genuinely "magnificent insight" risks over-lionising the famous at the expense of legions of very perceptive and talented non-professional musicians.

If you apply your own analysis to something, you come up with your own understanding of what the composer was getting at. And for me that's most of the fun of what this music-making lark is about - presenting my understanding of the composer's intention. To me, my own interpretation of a piece is the single most valid one there is - not because I'm arrogant (I hope) but because it's a conclusion I've reached myself. It means something on a personal level.

StuartEstell,

I am not saying an amateur isn't capable of having a fabulous interpretation of a given work. All I am saying, after briefly visiting KBK's youtube channel, is that he is simply not one of those exceptional amateurs, despite what he seems to think.

Oo.., get her.

Wow, you're so humble.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sf7-UVt8Bcc&feature=channel_page

This is KBK's idea of being highly qualified in the 'insight' side of music. It's pretty low-end amateurish playing. To be perfectly frank, I've heard greater musical insight from 8 year old children.

Forgive me for being so unforgiving. It offends me to see someone like this presenting himself on a public forum as being a more qualified, insightful artist than the great masters.

I'd be interested in the original post. It would make this thread a bit more intelligible.

Sad to see this thread's degenerated to being about me but I'm flattered you stopped to listen! That was a recording of me sight reading a piece requested by a PW member (what have you done for members JustAP?). Looks easy dunnit? Actually the dynamics (wrong in the score) took some working out, though a few days at the Museum wouldn't have hurt!
For those obsessed with me here's the thread that goes with it: http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/2/16578.html#000000

Sorry Fleeting, that was the original post!