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Piano Secrets Masterclass for Pi Day 2022 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-17 18:11:00
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Another video already? Yes. I thought it'd take longer, because the footage I captured felt like a mess and I thought I'd have to start over, maybe with a proper script. But once I got into the editing groove it only took a couple days to wrangle the footage into something that works.

Or at least I hope it works, for its intended audience, which is pianists and the piano curious. And I'll be curious to hear if people are interested in this kind of video, though I'll probably try to do more like it either way because I enjoyed leaning into the more technical musician side of me for a video, and I have a lot of piano compositions in my backlog. I hope I'll get better at the format, because I don't usually make videos without a script. Though I did enjoy adding little text snippets to fill in where I didn't mention something out loud at the time.

I've been wanting to try out piano lectures of some sort for the past decade, and I've even attempted to film and edit them in the past. But one of the frustrations is getting the audio to not be 100% terrible, or so out of sync that I'm left with a very frustrating mess of footage and audio that hate each other, not to mention also struggling with the challenges of a new format while also simultaneously being the director, composer, writer, performer, editor, etc etc etc. So in the past I've scrapped everything and given up.

The difference this time is I finally finished upgrading all my equipment, and now it's just a lot easier for me to work with a massive pile of footage, and I have audio that syncs with my camera instead of doing its best to interrupt seven simultaneous workflows at every level of consciousness. If anyone's interested, maybe I'll do an update about my current setup sometime. I like to think next time the technical part will be so much easier that I'll also have enough brainpower left over to make the content a little less chaotic.

I'm not expecting this video to perform well, being a first try in a new format. But since I choose not to have YouTube ads it's not like it loses me anything. Y'all're the only audience that matters. So what else should I do now that I can easily record at the piano?

🐌,

Vi

Files

Piano Secrets - Masterclass for Pi 2022

I don't know who this video is for, but it's here. Now is a good time for music, I think? Stuff you can buy to support this work: https://store.dftba.com/collections/vi-hart The sheetmusic and recording for the Pi Day 2022 piano composition: https://store.dftba.com/products/piano-sheet-music-digital-download-and-mp3 Exclusive shirt, cryptic edition, doubles as a puzzle: https://store.dftba.com/products/pi-day-2022-exclusive-shirt-cryptic-edition Exclusive shirt, shiny edition, is special and shiny: https://store.dftba.com/products/pi-day-2022-exclusive-shirt-shiny-edition Triangle Pins! https://store.dftba.com/collections/vi-hart/products/triangle-pin And finally, the challenge coin and 314 digits of pi sheetmusic, available in many clefs as well as guitar tabs: https://store.dftba.com/collections/vi-hart/products/pi-chromatic-challenge-metal-coin-and-digital-download This piece is dedicated to my patrons, who have supported me with such tremendous faith through many interesting times. Extra shoutout to Caleb Wright and Ray Sidney, who have been staunch supporters of my piano, as well as Pat Devlin, David Perryman, Andew Romaner, Andrea Bi Biagio, Jodi Vezzetti, Yana Chernobilsky, David Smith, Alan Boulton, and Nancy Blachman! You can join us here: https://www.patreon.com/vihart

Comments

Erin

I have not yet watched the video (fitting it in later today) but, with your new easily-recordable powers, would you take requests? I happen to have sheet music for a song that was pretty prominent earlier in my life, which you maybe haven't heard if you weren't a Dark Dark Dark fan, and I'd be curious to see your from-the-sheet interpretation? and maybe noodling around on it? I know that like the map isn't the terrain, the notation's not the music, but I can get excited by interpretation. or excited just by experiencing secondhand joy of someone doing cool things that they're good at.

Paul

Much gratitude for this video. 🙏 I, for one, would be interested in a behind the scenes of your setup once you reach that point. That lovely Bösendorfer no doubt gives you a head start. 😏

Steven E. Newton

Thank you for your annual Pi day videos. They have become part of what I look forward to every (meteorological) Spring.

Rick Rubenstein

Quick note: the overall volume level, and particularly your voice level, seems quite low in this video.

Andrew Reid

Thanks so much for this, this is very nice. It's wonderful to have the deeper context of the decisions made during the composition, and a nice demonstration of someone exploring a piece of music like this in such a detailed way. The only downside is that I now have a strong urge to find all my music teachers from my childhood and demand of them why I was not introduced to this kind of thing many years ago.

David Peaker

I have no musical talent whatsoever, but I do love music and watching someone with talent create something wonderful is fascinating.

Andrew Reid

I second the motion for "Vi explores this piece of music" content. I don't have requests, but something that caught your (Vi's) ear, maybe including why it did so, would be very cool IMO.

vihart

That sounds like fun! For youtube purposes there may be copyright concerns

vihart

Yeah I was planning to do a voiceover and only use my live voice to remind me what I'm doing. I'll play with the micing next time!

Erin

I find the copyright of covers / re-interpretations of music fairly confusing. There's also several copyrights on a piece, right--the words, the arrangement itself, maybe also the notation, the feelings it gives people, the feelings people have when it is lost because of overzealous copyright, the collection and printing of the copyright laws themselves...

Kenny Tilton

As a music know-nothing I find this to be a fascinating glimpse into the scale of my ignorance. In a good way. +1 on the mic enhancement, and a big shout-out to my buddy in your complimentary close.

Kenny Tilton

ps. Every good craftsperson works as hard on their workflow as on the end product. I just made that up. It might not be true.

Kenny Tilton

"there may be copyright concerns". Fond memory! "Come on, Congress!" may have started me on the slippery slope to Vi Hart addiction.

Kenny Tilton

"I know [the digits of pi] and this is what they wanted to do." I once blogged about programming with the theme "The Mind is a Terrible Thing". The idea is to solve problems by turning off the mind and letting the problem drive. When coding, we start not by creating, but by _copying_ the problem into code. When we have difficulties, the problem is telling us it does not like our solution. Not every programmer hears the problem. The smartest do badly here, because they are so smart they do not even experience the difficulty. I liked Einstein's ascribed "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler." Might be a paraphrase. Anyway, it suggests a problem includes within it a solution of quantifiable simplicity. +1 Platonic realm

vihart

I like this. Respect for the end product means I'll do anything to have my workflow not get in its way, and crafting a workflow into something that works best for actually working is much harder than working on a workflow that seems optimal in the abstract.

Paul Johanson

How do your hands handle a normal keyboard?

vihart

Great video, I'd love a smaller piano key width! My hands are in the range where I can play most modern music without too much technical trouble, and I'm quite tall and relaxed so jumps are no problem, but I get significant pain if I practice certain things over and over. I can't really do10ths, but those are rare and as a composer I probably have more comfort than most people in dropping or even rearranging the notes in a way that I feel is still true to the piece rather than feeling that it is lacking. But the biggest implication is to me as a composer. What if piano music could have 10ths as a matter of course? An entire side of things this video doesn't explore is that if music becomes easier to play, composers can write music that is even harder to play. It opens up new possibilities for composition and performance. Unfortunately these new possibilities might exclude smaller handed pianists, but given that there's more than enough masterworks to last a lifetime for any pianist and that most of the demand in the piano world is for classical pieces rather than new compositions, I think overall it would be beneficial for everyone.