Added: 6 years ago
From: smalin
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  • This was made looooong before Mario guys.

  • why is everyone saying it sounds like Mario....surely the Romantic era was before the Nintendo era

  • @twink3h My thoughts exactly

  • @smalin could you make an animation for Chopin's fantasie Impromptu? I would love to see it.

  • @sehnsto Sorry, my to-do list is already way too long; I'm not taking any more requests.

  • Marios Bros... Show some respect

  • disgusting...feel so uncomfortable:( no humanity,no music

  • sounds a bit like some mario ending song

  • this music is like the music of mario bros lol but still be good

  • I'm going to make a new video game called Keyboard Hero (patent pending). It's going to be just like Guitar Hero, only instead of 5 buttons, it'll have 88 different colored buttons for notes and the screen will look just like this. Try to keep up

  • @lkampy10  lol, no doubt

  • it's like guitar hero, just on a piano.

  • wheres my 6 extra arms when I need them. XD

  • o_O OMG this song is...i cant tell you what it is

  • he was tripping when he wrote this

  • not going to lie, this music makes no sense. to me it's incoherent. 

  • @yourmaker74 I'd rather say you don't have the ability to comprehend it. :-)

  • Chopin is the greatest pianist ever to walk on this earth.....Mozart and beethoven go home!

  • i love chopin

  • is the music sped up or is it the original tempo?

  • @PianoDude1011 I think the tempo Chopin indicated was faster than this.

  • @smalin WHOA

  • this should last moree minutes

  • humm that's easy ;D

  • Rainbow!

  • how the hell did chopin do that D:

  • The second-to-last chord sounds like a harp!

  • Chopin thinking: I'm such a badass on piano , no people in all history will can play this except me!!!

    *Valentina Lisitsa comes from the future and ´play all the etudes*

    *Chopin suicides*

    End

  • @MsAlexbill If you'd heard Chopin play these, you wouldn't think so highly of Valentina Lisitsa.

  • @smalin Oh, so you have heard him play? I was under the impression he died in 1849.

  • @haiasi100 No, but I've read descriptions, and I know: Chopin could improvise this kind of thing, which meant he understood it in a very deep way. Lisitsa is good, don't get me wrong, but she doesn't play with the knowledge of someone who could improvise this music.

  • @smalin Was wondering where you'd read these descriptions and whether they're freely available in any format; this is quite splendid news to me.

  • @BlahLalaification I read them when I was school ... back in the 1970s ... I'd have to do research to find them ...

  • @smalin I'm so glad that you bring up this important fact about Chopin's playing. To most classical performers, the idea of improvisation is foreign to them, but it is the only way to understand Chopin's music (or any music for that matter) on a deeper level. Chopin reincarnated and came back as a jazz pianist. I won't say who, but he is no longer with us (and I am not speaking of Art Tatum).

  • TO FAST CANT SEE WHITENESS <:O

  • o.o it looks hard.

  • Chopin was like a mad scientist

  • I clicked on this because i thought "oooh Colors!!"

  • Ok good to know. Thank you.

  • Do you play all of these pieces, except of course ones like the wick one, on your own?

  • @lilchopin1 I play most of the keyboard solo piece myself. It usually says in the FAQ who is playing.

  • @lmc6506 nie nie umiesz

    

  • i love chopin's music!!!

  • So many notes in such a short song. Incredible.

  • Before I begin, I would like to thank you for all the beautiful music that you have posted. You have shown good taste and artistic acumen. I have an idea that I would like to, frankly, give to you. Perhaps, you will implement it. Could you do the same visual technique with actual music scores? That music score scroll across the screen and the notes visually indicated as being active with a colour as you do above, but instead of blocks, use actual notes on a score.

  • @TheGoodCybernaut  I have done a few like that.

  • crazily beautiful!

  • I can play this

  • hahahha boleeh boleeh, bagus nih

  • I'm addicted... This is probably my 14th time watching.

  • too many colors... its confusing.

  • @smalin

    No offense but out of all the chopin etudes you could've picked out, the three that you've done so far are the ones that aren't very artistic, like something people would listen to. Like you could've done, op 10 no.3,4,12 op.25 no 1, and 23. Just saying but good score thing you got here, very intertaining.

  • CRAZY! I'm playing a prelude and I'm already getting my fingers tangled!!

  • Chopin étonnante!

    Super l'amour de la chanson

  • it's looking up at the night sky for me. A million sparkling stars- or a flock of a million birds taking flight.

  • Is chopin always this restless?

  • @SloterMFmeyer Sort of, there aren't many rest points in his music. Usually if one hand stops it's so the other hand can perform mind boggling olympics. Most complete stops in his music are really just fermatas at high points.

  • @SloterMFmeyer it must be hard for him to fall asleep...

  • well.. thats Chopin for you right there.........yupp..

  • who can play this? amazing.

  • @dinkierthinker100 Check out Valentina Lisitsa's performance of this.

  • @dinkierthinker100 My brother plays this :)

  • @dinkierthinker100 "smalin" can!

  • @dinkierthinker100 Chopin...

  • Verkamp..

  • the next craze = piano hero = :O

  • did i already comment on this? i forgot..

    this is brilliant anyway, loving it. :) Thanks.

  • Now go play "guitar hero" :P

  • Insane!! lol

  • horribly chaotic. love it.

  • does anyonw know the song in this video...i am soo sorry for offending anyone

  • like mario

  • I like the chaos of this.

  • Absolutely wonderful!+5

  • I didn't really like this....the notes seemed to clash and didn't sound very nice together...and it all seemed to stay at the one volume...

  • I agree!

  • Well, it's a midi keyboard, so that's kind of a limiting factor. Plus, this video was uploaded like 4 years ago when all youtube videos had crappy sound quality.

  • Muito bom!!!!!!!!!! Excelente!

  • No imagination, no dynamics either. But it was clean and at tempo.

  • its a midi of course theres not going to be any imagination or dynamics.

  • The fact that it's MIDI has nothing to do with it; compare my performance of Clair de lune, also done with MIDI.

  • etudes are technical pieces; less emotion and more fancy finger work :)

  • an intersting bit of history, Chopin would allow only his most advanced students to study his Etudes. he most often prescribed Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum and Bach's Well Tempered Clavier and Inventions as means of technical study, as well as plenty of Mozart

  • Thanks for the enlightenement on the subject of etude. (I dont play piano myself)

    I love just about every kind of Chopin's composition, be it the waltzes, ballades, mazurkas or his nocturnes.

    It is only his etudes that i have difficulty understanding (or you may say appreciating)

    Listening to this reminds me of some of Lizts's. Equally as demanding in it's technical aspect.

  • @IOnlySleepWifTheBest can understand where youre coming from. these are my favorite of the etudes: from Op 10 - #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12. from Op 25 - #1, 4, 5, 8, 9 (love this one), 12 ( i call this one "the storm" great piece). to me these are the most musical of them. i can only play 3 the etudes, i like to think im a good pianist but DAMN theyre hard! ive only tried to play one of Liszt's etudes (la campanella) and simply gave up.

  • You're a good pianist. I really mean it.

    I've seen your Joplin's performance.

    Very well played and its tempo was just fine for me.

    Congratulation! Please make more videos of you playing the piano.

  • thank you very much. i have to admit i was very out of practice when i made those videos (i had just bought a web cam) and the piano was way out of tune. i love Joplins works (he was influenced by Chopin) and have played all of them. i do plan to make more videos but not until im in better playing shape and have a good piano. i also plan to do some Chopin and other composers as well.

  • Was Chopin mad when he wrote this??

  • @IOnlySleepWifTheBest lol no he wasnt mad. This is an etude. "etude" is french for "study". so an etude is a study of a certain type of technique, sometimes severl different techniques in one piece. this one is a study of rapid figer alterations in the right hand usually between 1/3 and 2/5 alternating. before Chopin, an etude was usually a dry piece of music. But Chopin made them masterpieces and concert pieces as well as important study material. any good pianist has studied Chopins etudes.

  • that caught me quite alot thank you

  • glad to know it helped some. except i was wrong in the fingering - its 2/3 1/5 alterations. lol had to check my book, havent played this one in a while. alot of his Etudes are great to listin to. very melodic and the real trick is trying to bring out the musical aspects of them in addition to the technical work you are learning from them. Chopins Etudes are considered to be the most difficult ones to play by many. do you play piano im guessing??

  • i play piano but no where near as good as you. i like to think for my age and how long i have been playing for im pretty good but i have no vids on youtube. and also i cant read sheet music and i know thats somthing you will all frown apon. im 15 and ive been playing for just over a year and soon i hope to learn the saxophone and thankyou for your comment

  • will every one calm the fuck down

    its music

  • i love coming on to smalin's channel because he/she always speaks smart-like and it amazes me LOL maybe im just slighty dim but i am only 15 and have only just started to listen to classical music(because ive started to play piano) ive been playing for just over a year now and stil going :) thankyou for posting

  • Music can be quantified, but isn't based on math. It's a phenomenon of ratios that can be described with math.

    Obviously, this isn't an expressive performance, but I don't think that that's the point here -- the point is for us to visualize the notes, and I appreciate the opportunity.

  • man this was really cool

  • Music is math.

  • What do you mean by that?

  • If you imagine notes,keys and chords etc, and think how numbers work, there are formula to numbers +/- , sequence, repeat formula, it's exactly the same with music, though music is however, restricted in that it is finite this is why the best music has been done in all it's possible formulations. Bit like the lottery there are only so many sequences.

  • ... and sucking the soul and fun out of music is what you have just done :)

    it's an art. it is not logical. x

  • Of course it is an art and of course it is fun I never intended to say anything otherwise. A rose is still a rose even though ther is a logical reason to it existance and I can appreciate a rose or a piece of music without having to be waware of it's logical reason for existance, can you...

  • All music is math based.. Each note is a specific frequency which is a number. Harmony is a specific mathmatical relationship between more than one frequency (note). The colors in a painting each have a frequency on the color spectrom which is also a number. Colors that match can be described as harmony in music.

  • Does that mean that painting is math based?

  • @smalin Yes. Blending colors have a mathmatical relationship. The frequency of red light that reflects off of a surface appears red, but is actually reflecting only the red frequency which has a wavelenth of 650 nm. The frequency of green light is 510 nm. So, I would say that yes, painting is math based. The brain sees and hears numbers, and thus interprets them into vision and sound. After that, begins the interpretatioin of art.

  • Okay ... then what *isn't* math-based? It's possible to apply mathematical analysis to a lot of things ... perhaps anything ... but is "susceptible to mathematical analysis" the same as "math-based"? Is it possible to do music (or any "math-based" thing) without knowing math?

  • @smalin That's a question for phylosophic debate. But in my opinion, nothing in the universe isn't math based.

  • If everything in the universe is math-based, then are you saying anything informative about music by saying "music is math-based"?

  • That's so ridiculous. Never, EVER, take a logical look at artwork, for it completely strips the painting or composition or WHAT HAVE YOU of any special meaning the artist implanted into the work of art.

    No one does fucking calculations before going at a painting. Just because someone CAN find a mathematical relation to artwork doesn't mean that art is math-based.

    But I suppose you'd have to have an eye, ear, and heart for the arts to know the difference.

  • >No one does fucking calculations before going at a painting.

    Think again, my friend. Consider Leonardo's Vitruvian Man ...

  • Ok, so I might have over exaggerated with saying "no one", haha.

    I guess I could have said "hardly anyone".

  • It depends what you call a "calculation." There are mathematical calculations, but there are other kinds, too. There are well-defined relationships other than mathematical ones (not to mention that many relationships that an artist might not think of as being "mathematical" could be described mathematically).

  • @BLACKDOTSx I agree with Smalin. Calculation permeates nature and distinguishes great arts of work from the mundane. Art education usually starts with the exploration of what proportion is. Vitruvian Man is a perfect example of such study. Is there 'proportion' in music - certain distances in notes and rhythm - that distinguishes one composition from so many others, Smalin?

  • @lottiegwa Most musical "calculations" aren't mathematical (at least, not in the conventional sense of being numeric, like, say, algebra) but related to combinatorics, perception, memory, similarity vs. contrast, etc. Proportion plays a huge role, in the sense that a whole note is twice as long as a half note, but this is a different thing than proportion in the sense of the Golden Mean, etc. Musical proportions having to do with form are determined psychologically, not mathematically.

  • @smalin Reading your answer the terms 'spatio-temporal reasoning' and 'intuitive sense/special something' come to mind. Anyway, many thanks for sharing your audio-visual music passions with us all. I really enjoy them. (PS You might find this interesting - google Chapter 14 The Irrationals)

  • @lottiegwa Actually, that story is a little inaccurate: they didn't fail at finding a rational number that was the square root of two --- they proved that there could be no such rational number. (The thing about continuing decimals is misleading too --- there are sums of infinite series of rational numbers that approximate the value; if they had been content with sums of infinite series, they would have found satisfaction.)

  • @smalin Gosh! Sir, you are very learned man with ...for your amusement... a very developed intraparietal sulcus. (^ - ^)V

  • @smalin Then there's the marvel that we are hard-wired with the kinds of receptors that resonate with these proportions, means, "calculations", etc. such that they give us ecstasy. We've been blessed!

  • @lottiegwa Wow, you guys, with all your talk about musical philosophy, must be really great composers. Oh, wait, probably not.

  • @BLACKDOTSx there are many examples that prove you wrong....think of the golden ratio or serial music ...the mathematical relations are used on purpose

  • But let me ask you this... does it bother you that some people prefer one set of mathematical relationships to another? That there sometimes is no rhyme or reason to the order a composer may wish to arrange them? The most beautiful music is music that at times defies a mathematical equation.

    Oh, did I forget to mention - math is a made up reality. It only works within the framework of what we perceive on a very base level. The reality of music is not in numbers.

  • I think he means that rhythm is entirely mathematical, and that the feeling exuded from music is based on the intervals and chordal progressions. If you take note of how intervals and chords interact, the mood of music can be understood without ever hearing it.

  • this kind of videos are better for Bach

  • wow i never thought about the symmetry in Chopin before but it makes so much sense visually. it is also interesting to see a piece you know well and be able to see how something is going to look before you hear it again. i swear i have met you before stephen becuase i have the same feeling of wonder i did almost 15 years ago seeing this. i play flamenco guitar if that is a clue. the art of fugue one is good too, really good.

  • LMAO!!!!!!!!!! because of all the colors, it made me think of guitar hero, and some poor kid playing this song, lol, he'd have NO chance

  • This is very intense.

  • colorful

  • this video sucks. it just makes it look more complicated than it actually is. ==

  • wow that was short

  • You should be a millionare, smalin, I can see hundreds of teachers being able to make use of this program. not to mention you're a great composer.

  • I'm not sure I follow the arithmetic ... even if hundreds of teachers use my software and I could charge a thousand dollars a pop for it ... that's not a million dollars (especially after taxes and other costs) ... and being a composer is one of those "yeah, than plus a couple of buck can buy you a cup of coffee" kinds of things. I doesn't seem to me that the market agrees with the "should be a millionaire" part of what you're saying ...

  • Heh, I was complimenting you man.....I'm just saying this software would be great for teaching.

  • Overall what I mean is that you should be much more well known.

  • So ... tell your friends.

  • Oh trust me, I've shown everyone I know atleast one of these videos!

  • this sounds like nintendo music.

  • That was excactly what i was going to say! lol

  • @alexander92648 chopin, in his later years, in fact composed several pieces for nintendo. this etude almost made it for super mario.

  • @alexander92648 super mario's creator was a huge fan of chopin ;)

  • @alexander92648

    thats why we love Chopin

  • Comment removed

  • I'm not sure I understand the question. You could use the harmonic coloring system (described in my detail on my web site) with any piece; the way it works is independent of what the music is doing.

  • Comment removed

  • What you propose is what's being done in this video: each pitch class (C, C-sharp, D, E-flat, etc.) has its own color.

    The interesting question is: what would it show you? I haven't written much 12-tone music, and I only studied it in school in a few classes, but my sense is that if you assigned one color to each note of the row, all you'd see is a big indecipherable mess of color.

    But, feel free to download my freeware MIDI player and drop a 12-tone piece into it and see what you get.

  • Comment removed

  • @smalin

    I think that this is similar to what Messiaen supposedly was achieving with his 12-tone music, in that he 'saw' notes and composed according to colour.

  • jesus, i think i just heard every note that could be heard

  • terrorific

  • Terrible!!!

  • Comment removed

  • Sweet! Love it!

  • Hi I would like to externalize my opinion regarding the smalin channel is very interesting, excellent proposals and wanted to give me a recommendation, I play the piano, I'm looking for a challenge that leads beyond my ability at the piano, and the recommendation I need is a piano score that is complex.

  • Q1: What's the hardest thing you can play?

    Q2: What kind of complexity do you want to increase?

    (e.g. harmonic complexity, contrapuntal complexity, rhythmic complexity, etc.)

  • thanks for answering my comment and the recommendation, I would increase the complexity of the counterpoint, which is perfect my technique I make my fingers more skillful and I'd like to recommend something very compjejo me to play and that is your pleasure of course.

  • You didn't answer Q1 ... I was wanting to know a specific piece that you _can_ play, so that I would know what a reasonable next step would be.

  • with respect to question 1 my favorite composers are Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, Debussy and being specific about what I play piano Beethoven The Tempest Sonata, the only campagnella piano, Chopin Nocturne Op 9 # 2, beethoven fur elise by mention some examples.

  • What's the hardest fugue from the WTC you have played?

  • I'd like to bring a little more of your knowledge, I have many questions to ask you, I would like to get in touch.

  • This was exactly what I needed.

    Thanks to the Machine!

  • nice!

  • must admit, i loved watching this.

  • a very powerful peice in my oppinion

  • it could be some way to read music

  • I hate to be argumentative here but, no it couldn't.

  • Depends what you mean by "to read music." It's not very well suited to reading, say, keyboard music from. Some people have used it to read vocal music, for "sing-along" applications (for people who don't read music). But you're basically right: it's not designed for performers (or composers or conductors); it's designed for listeners.

  • Sing-along music, yeah. That's a very good point but to properly read music, I can't see that working.

  • i actually used one of your videos as a way of making a song on garageband. i watched "little fugue" and put the notes in an 8 bit synth i made. ill post a video sometime.

  • i mean, as "smalin" said, to "read" but for listeners only.. or computers, i don't know! ahhaha, not for performers cause it doesnt have the directions and timing too... cool to watch

  • Standard visual representation or not it's still well played and nice to listen to.

  • lol, you all know that this is pretty much standard MIDI visual representation, right...?

  • yep. but it's easy to impress people with stuff like this :p

  • Ha, AuraStudios, the funniest part is how, if you go to just about any of these videos, there's always someone asking how he did this, even though it's right in the FAQ...

  • Wow wtf was that? I think that used every musical note known to man.

  • haha, well said

  • i love your channel

  • :-)

  • You know, as talented as Chopin is, I somehow get the feeling that Bach would smack him for his overly frenetic use of counterpoint. If they ever met

  • I don't wish to start one of those pointless, ugly, internet arguments, but I feel like Chopin uses more harmonic writing than counterpoint. I've been under the impression that counter point consists of several lines with the notes matching up rhythmically, note for note, whereas Chopin's lines seem to have varying rhythms and extensive use of chords.

  • I would suggest that both sentinel501 and AEFic read the Wikipedia entry for "counterpoint."

  • But that would be too easy? Isn't it more fun to stumble about in the dark like two blind men trying to fist fight?