41 is the new 21...i think...

As the calendar turns my biological clock past my 41st birthday, I'm not sure how many more of these "Benjamin Button" tales I'll be able to regale, but as long as I still have a few hairs on my balding head, I might as well enjoy them while they last:

About 2 months ago, Kyungmi and I took the boys in to the county office to have all of our passports renewed. The clerk looked at my wife and asked, "So these are your four boys?" We have three sons...Kyungmi was really, really peeved...

About a month ago, we had some visitors at Church. Following the worship service, Paul and I went to greet them and invite them to our fellowship meal downstairs. One of the ladies looked at us and asked if we were brothers. Paul (my oldest 15 year old son) and I shared a hearty laugh. To make matters worse, she said, "I thought the pastor was your father!" Um...the pastor is about the same age as I am...

A few days ago, a gentleman was going around the neighborhood asking for support for his upcoming marathon for Multiple Sclerosis. When I opened the door, he looked at me and asked if my mother or father was home. Next time, I promised Paul that I would call him over and call him, "Dad".

Sigh...i might just start dying my hair grey, this is getting ridiculous ;) No Trackbacks |

Webinar Beta #1 for "Clair de lune from Scratch"

What is a "webinar"? It's a semantic and functional mashup of the words "web" and "seminar" - simply put, a seminar on the web! The "Clair de lune from Scratch" YouTube video series has been garnering a LOT of attention and wonderful comments from folks all over the world. As terrific as the YouTube medium is, I'm limited to posting clips under 10 minutes at a time, forcing me to keep the lesson points short and right to the point (wait a minute...maybe that's a good thing...) The next step will be a series of "live" webinars to go more in depth into the piece and interact with students in realtime. With the webinar format, I'll be able to spend pretty much as much time as I want to help answer questions via email, posted video responses, realtime chat, and even passing the virtual camera to any participant with a webcam! How cool is that?

I recorded the above webinar test last night. Keep in mind, I'm still working out the bugs, and learning how to manipulate 3 different cameras on the fly. I'm going to try to replace the front camera, for example, and definitely increase the volume of the lapel voice microphone to better match the piano mic. Feel free to post any other suggestions you may have in the comments below.

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Microsoft's Courier Tablet PC 2?

The 4" pair of multi-touch screens might be too small to read music practically, but this still looks like a very cool concept, if only for researching writing material for bloggers...

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Clair de lune from Scratch: YouTube Piano Lessons for Beginners

Piano pedagogy has taken a fascinating life online, most notably within the video juggernaut YouTube. While the vast majority of video lessons appear to range from homemade "how to's" for a few phrases from popular songs to samples for subscription lesson sites or DVD packages, one thing is clear: there is a huge demand for video instructions on how to play the piano.

Can an absolute beginner use videos to learn to play a classical masterpiece with real music notation? That's the question we'd like to explore in this experimental new video lesson series, "Clair de lune from Scratch", where pianist Hugh Sung teaches Claude Debussy's masterpiece a measure at a time, combining cutting edge technologies with traditional piano pedagogy:



Participants can submit questions or comments via YouTube's comment feature, or by joining the PianoWorld.com Adult Beginners Forum. A public domain version of the "Clair de lune" score is also available as a PDF or MusicReader file from the AirTurn Piano Solos Library. MusicReader makes it easy to draw digital ink markings on the music for effective study of the score - free demo versions of MusicReader for Mac and PC can be downloaded from http://airturn.com/musicreader/musicreader. No Trackbacks |