Color In My Piano » humor

Ideas for Upcycling Old Pianos

joy (admin) — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:59:48 +0000

What do you do when a piano is too worn for use, but too costly to repair? Here are some ideas!

Check out what how lovely this old bench looks with a fresh coat of paint!

How would you like to sleep in a piano bed?

Or perhaps you’d rather just have a piano headboard (see more here).

How about a piano garden?

How about a fish aquarium?!

This designer created a chair made out of old piano parts. Yes, you can sit in it!

The previous three photos are by the Upright Furniture Company, which specializes in making desks out of old, nonfunctional pianos.

Michelle Stitzlein creates art such as these large butterflies using upcycled objects like piano parts.

Here’s a fancy table created from an old upright!

Someday I REALLY want to do this project! This coffee table was made from the lid of a baby grand. See how this person made theirs here. I would make it taller and use it as a workspace in my piano studio. Can’t you just imagine a group of students happily working on their worksheets around this fun, curvy table?! =)

Check out this choker necklace, made from an old piano string!

This Etsy.com shop owner creates jewelry and sculptures from piano parts. I love this adorable pooch!

How about this mailbox?

Or a tool bench!

Classic Pianos in Portland has found some creative ways to recycle parts from old pianos, including artwork (above), clocks (two photos up), and more.

Seeing all these creative projects really makes me want to start a project. =)

Let me share with you one final photo. My grandparent’s piano suffered from water damage a few years ago, and the piano was deemed beyond repair. Before the piano was brought away, my husband and I took the beautiful music rack stand from the piano. I was hoping to come up with something clever to do with it as a rememberance of my grandma’s piano. The following Christmas, my husband surprised me with this:

He made the music rack into wall art! He printed photos of us and created a collage. The collage was laminated and attached to the back of the music rack. There are two small rings that allow the piece to be hung from the wall. I was so surprised and touched when I unwrapped the gift! It currently hangs in our dining room. =)

Do you have any creative piano-related projects to share?

[Visit Ideas for Upcycling Old Pianos to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Some Page Turning Humor

joy (admin) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:23:33 +0000

Whew, the semester is wrapping up! My husband and I are looking forward to graduation, although it’s certainly bittersweet. I will really miss being in school! We’ll be moving sometime over the next few months, although a lot is still up in the air. For now, I can tell you we are moving to Ohio! (Any Ohioan readers out there?)

I received this email forward from a friend of mine, and today I thought I’d share it here. Enjoy!

The following program notes are from an unidentified piano recital.

Tonight’s page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page
Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world’s leading pianists.

In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is a winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecendeted 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in “grace, swiftness, and especially poise.”

For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist’s view of the music.

She is page turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute.

Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.

[Visit Some Page Turning Humor to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

The Melodica: Piano + Recorder?

joy (admin) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:08:40 +0000

Check out the new instrument we have at my home!

I ordered this melodica on Amazon as a surprise for my husband for Valentine’s day, although I plan to make use of it too in the future. =)

To play the melodica, you must blow very gently into the mouthpiece and starting pressing the keys. The sound very much resembles the sound of an accordion. Be careful – don’t blow too hard else you may blow the reeds out of place.

It can be played two ways: with the short mouthpiece held in your hands…

Or using the tube mouthpiece sitting on a table top…….

It even comes with a carrying case……

This one is a Hohner 32-key melodica, but 37-key melodicas are also available.

Now before I leave you today, I must leave you with a few videos I found of YouTube, so that you may hear the wonderful sound of the melodica. The audio in these videos is a bit harsh; in person, the sound is a bit more pleasant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdbvEjwrPsI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kORDtq_CpUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fginccparbs

[Visit The Melodica: Piano + Recorder? to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Music-Related Pet Names

joy (admin) — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:48:51 +0000

My husband and I recently rescued a cat (pictured at right)! We spent a lot of time thinking up a name for her. I wanted to give her a music related name, but as it turned out, we ended up agreeing to name her “Kira.” But for any of you who might wish to give your pet a musical name, I’ve compiled a long list of my favorites!

Pianos

Kawai
Steinway
Stony & Clark (cute names for a pair of cats)
Mason & Hamlin
Schimmel
Yamaha
Bosendorfer
Fazioli

Tempo & Style Markings

Adagio
Allegro
Vivace
Largo
Presto
Lento
Larghetto
Grazioso

Musical Terms

Rhythm
Melody
Harmony
Polyphony
Tempo
Treble
Clef
Motif
Stretto
Echo
Major
Music
Note
Consonance
Dissonance
Sonority
Lyric
Libretto
Sonnet
Crescendo
Fortissimo
Pianissimo
Poco
Legato
Staccato
Rubato
Arpeggio
Glissando
Tremulo
Solfeggio
Melisma
Octave
Alberti (bass)
Solo
Coda
Codetta
Pantomine
Finale
A Capella
Opus
Maestro
Virtuoso
Bravo
Encore
Diva
Verismo
Jazz
Boogie Woogie
Charleston
Yodel
Avant-Garde
Phantom (as in Phantom of the Opera)
Soprano
Alto
Tenor
Bass

Musical Forms

Symphony
Overture
Opera
Sonata
Sonatina
Lullaby
Aria
Arietta
Tarantella
Fantasia
Pastorale
Kyrie
Madrigal
Rhapsody
Magnificat
Concerto
Rondo
Tocatta
Fugue
Prelude
Fantasy
Scherzo
Etude
Mazurka
Polanaise
Waltz
Impromptu
Interlude
Pavan
Intermezzo
Minuet
Sarabande
Bourée
Jig
Chaconne
Chanson
Canzone
Partita
Siciliana
Ballad / Ballade
Caprice
Serenade
Calypso
Bolero
Passacaglia
Carol
Chorale
Fanfare

Composers

Ludwig Van Barkhoven
Wolfgang Amadeus Bark
Bach
Sebastian
Johann
Scarlatti
Chopin
Brahms
Puccini / Poochini
Sinatra

Instruments

Piano
Harpsichord
Clavichord
Brass
Carillon
Xyla (short for xylophone)
Timpani
Conga
Marimba
Gong
Koto (Japanese harp-like instrument)
Didgeradoo
Banjo
Cello
Viola
Violin
Baritone
Bassoon
Oboe
Piccolo

Famous Pianists

Lang Lang
Horowitz
Argerich
Van Clibern
Richter
Rubenstein
Glenn Gould

I just love the names “Kawai” and “Steinway.” Wouldn’t it be fun to have a pet named after a piano for students to meet when they come for their lessons? =)

Sources:

[Visit Music-Related Pet Names to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Some Page-Turning Humor

joy (admin) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:09:12 +0000

I found this humorous video on YouTube today, poking fun of page turners:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWqFaGwNCMU

In all seriousness, though, I think page turning is one of the most stressful music jobs ever.

For more page turning humor, check out this post at the Good Company blog.

[Visit Some Page-Turning Humor to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Best Piano Jokes

joy (admin) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:46:05 +0000

I’ve just compiled list of kid-friendly piano jokes…read on below to check them out!

This compilation of piano jokes is also available as a pdf to give out to your students/parents, available on the Printables > Other Resources page.

* * *

Student to Teacher: “I can’t reach the brakes on this piano!”

Why is an 11-foot concert grand better than a studio upright? Because it makes a much bigger kaboom when dropped over a cliff.

Why are pianists’ fingers like lightning? They rarely strike the same place twice.

Why was the piano invented? So the pianist would have a place to put his coffee.

Did you hear about the stupid pianist who kept banging his head against the keys? He was playing by ear.

What do you call a fish musician? A piano tuna.

What’s the difference between a piano accompanist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mineshaft? A flat minor.

What do you get when you drop a piano on an army base? A flat major.

What’s the difference between a piano and a fish? You can’t tuna fish.

What did a piano player say to a tightrope walker? You better C sharp or you’ll B flat!

Why was the piano player arrested? Because he got into treble.

What do you use to tie saplings to a piano so the saplings won’t blow away? Root position cords.

What do you get if you enroll in a liberal arts program and the only subject you do well in is music? A natural major.

What’s the difference between a pianist and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four.

Two people are walking down the street. One is a pianist; the other didn’t have any money either.

How do you make a million dollars playing the piano? Start with two million.

Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racecar not called a racist?

What’s the difference between a piano and a Harley-Davidson? One of us might be able to tune a Harley.

Definition of a piano tuner: A person employed to come into the home, rearrange the furniture, and annoy the cat. The tuner’s chief purpose is to ascertain the breaking point of the piano’s strings.

Piano Tuner: I’ve come to tune the piano.

Music Teacher: But we didn’t send for you.

Piano Tuner: No, but the people who live across the street did.

How do you get two piano players to play in perfect unison? Shoot one.

Did you hear about the piano player who played in rhythm? Neither did I.

What’s the difference between a piano and an onion? No one cries when you chop up a piano.

What key is “Exploring The Cave With No Flashlight” written in? C sharp or B flat.

What do you get when an army officer puts his nose to the grindstone? A sharp major.

A note left for a pianist from his wife: “Gone Chopin, (have Liszt), Bach in a Minuet.”

The audience at a piano recital was appalled when a telephone rang just off stage. Without missing a note the soloist glanced toward the wings and called, “If that’s my agent, tell him I’m working!”

The piano player went into a coffee shop but kept fidgeting so much that he could not enjoy his coffee. Finally the server asked him what was wrong. The piano player replied, “My keys, my keys! I can’t seem to find my keys!”

My dad bought my mom a piano for her birthday. A few weeks later, I asked how she was doing with it.

“Oh,” said my dad, “I persuaded her to switch to a clarinet.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Well,” he answered, “because with a clarinet, she can’t sing….”

At a posh wedding reception in Beverly Hills the pianist falls into the swimming pool. The pianist flails furiously while calling for help, yelling, “Help me! I can’t swim!” One of the other guests who happens to be at the poolside says “So? I can’t play the piano and you don’t hear me complaining.”

Little Noah came into the house with a new harmonica. “Grandpa, do you mind if I play this in here?”

“Of course not, Noah. I love music. In fact, when your grandma and I were young, music saved my life.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it was during the famous Johnstown flood. The dam broke and when the water hit our house it knocked it right off the foundation. Grandma got on the dining room table and floated out safely.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I accompanied her on the piano!”

“Haven’t I seen your face before?” a judge demanded, looking down at the defendant.

“You have, Your Honor,” the man answered hopefully. “I gave your son piano lessons last winter.”

“Ah, yes,” recalled the judge. “Twenty years!”

Mrs. Smith needed to have her piano tuned so she asked a friend for a recommendation. She then made an appointment with the piano tuner, Mr. Oppernockity. He arrived 2 days later, tuned the piano satisfactorily, and left. Several days later Mrs. Smith noticed that the piano was terribly out of tune again. She called the tuner to complain about the tuning and to ask for a return visit to solve the problem. However, the tuner replied, “I’m sorry ma’am, but Oppernockity only tunes once!”

A pianist and singer are rehearsing “Autumn Leaves” for a concert and the pianist says:?”OK. We will start in G minor and then on the third bar, modulate to B major and go into 5/4. When you get to the bridge, modulate back down to F# minor and alternate a 4/4 bar with a 7/4 bar. On the last A section go into double time and slowly modulate back to G minor.”? The singer says: “Wow, I don’t think I can remember all of that.” The pianist says: “Well, that’s what you did last time.”

Funny music definitions:

• time signature: what you need from your boss if you forget to clock in.

• first inversion: grandpa’s battle group at Normandy.

• staccato: how you did all the ceilings in your mobile home.

• major scale: what you say after chasing wild game up a mountain: “Wow! That was a major scale!”

• aeolian mode: how you like Mama’s cherry pie.

• bach chorale: the place behind the barn where you keep the horses.

• audition: the act of putting oneself under extreme duress to satisfy the sadistic intentions of someone who has already made up his mind.

• accidentals: wrong notes.

• interval: how long it takes to find the right note. There are three kinds: 1) Major interval: a long time; 2) Minor interval: a few bars; and 3) Inverted interval: when you have to go back a bar and try again.

• metronome: a city-dwelling dwarf.

• allegro: leg fertilizer.

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate. When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, “Ah, yes, that’s Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, being played backwards.” He listened a while longer, and said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony, and it’s backwards, too. Most puzzling.” So the magistrate kept listening; “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…” Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Beethoven decomposing.”

The following program notes are from an unidentified piano recital: Tonight’s page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world’s leading pianists. In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in “grace, swiftness, and especially poise.” For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist’s view of the music. She is page turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute. Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.

* * *

Have more piano jokes to share? Post them in the comments!

Sources are from various internet sites, including:

http://playitagaindamon.tripod.com/Jokes.html
http://www.ahajokes.com/piano.html

[Visit Best Piano Jokes to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Collaborative Piano Humor

joy (admin) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:21:14 +0000

In this delightfully humorous post, Billie Whittaker shares some collaborative piano humor. She shares some humorous tendencies she has observed in collaborative pianists — such as having advanced photocopying skills, and possessing strong opinions on the ‘use of plastic music protectors’ debate. She goes on to share some of her own quirks — such as keeping a metronome in her purse at all times (I’m not the only one!!).

I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who does these things! =D

She also shares this joke:

A pianist and singer are rehearsing “Autumn Leaves” for a concert and the pianist says: “OK. We will start in g minor and then on the third bar, modulate to B major and go into 5/4. When you get to the bridge, modulate back down to f# minor and alternate a 4/4 bar with a 7/4 bar. On the last A section go into double time and slowly modulate back to g minor.”

Check out the whole post here. Also a must-see: A Brief Guide To Page-Turners.

(via The Collaborative Piano Blog)

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/candelabrumdanse/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

[Visit Collaborative Piano Humor to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Music/Christmas humor @ MMmusing blog

joy (admin) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:09:03 +0000

I discovered this charming video at the MMmusing blog. Take a listen:

The 12 Composers of Christmas

I love all of the music humor in this! Be sure to check out the rest of the MMmusing blog for other fun multimedia projects.

No Related Posts

[Visit Music/Christmas humor @ MMmusing blog to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Piano makes taking the stairs more fun!

joy (admin) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:25:56 +0000

Here’s a fun idea for making the stairs more fun to use! Watch the video below:

No Related Posts

[Visit Piano makes taking the stairs more fun! to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Using Adjectives to Capture the Imagination

joy (admin) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:42:27 +0000

One of the ideas I’ve been exploring extensively throughout the research I’m doing for my paper for college (the one about improvisation) is making music musical. This seems so obvious, but really, what would music be without musicality? Check out this video, of a robot playing the violin.

Speaking of which, have you ever had students who played like robots? ***raises hand timidly*** Yep, I have too. This is what music would be like without musicality.

What started me thinking of robots, and music, and robotic students, you may ask? Well, I came across a lovely resource over at The Piano Pedagogy Page — a handy list of adjectives.

It may seem that a list of adjectives may be more fitting for use in an English class. Maybe. But it may also be helpful in the piano lesson, in helping those certain robotic-like students get “beyond the notes.” Shoot, it might even be good reminder for me from time to time! It’s easy to fall into the trap of being overly concerning with the technique, and fail to think about what I consider to be the ultimate goal of music: to communicate expression. Music is meant to reach out and speak to people, at one level or another.

It’s so important to be teaching students musicality at an early age. It makes lessons so much more exciting, anyway. We are not trying to create little robots who can push the right buttons (i.e., the keys on the piano) at the right time, but creating little music makers.

[Visit Using Adjectives to Capture the Imagination to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Color In My Piano » humor

Ideas for Upcycling Old Pianos

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Some Page Turning Humor

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The Melodica: Piano + Recorder?

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Music-Related Pet Names

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Some Page-Turning Humor

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Best Piano Jokes

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Collaborative Piano Humor

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Music/Christmas humor @ MMmusing blog

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Piano makes taking the stairs more fun!

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Using Adjectives to Capture the Imagination

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