Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin's 24 Études (My interpretation)

The opus numbers were included. That makes the names superfluous, not shorthand.

Yup... these are midi for sure! Ergo: there's no way of knowing how much is "real" (actually played in raw and unedited) and how much is "fake" (heavily edited or completely sequenced).

Having myself done loads of this kind of thing with Bach's WTC primarily, I have to say that these are a cut above the norm: Chopin does not readily lend itself to sequencing, and even live performances that have been edited are usually easy to spot. Why? Well because as many of the above posts have said: they're oddly "unmusical," both in the rigidity of the tempi and in the fakeness of the piano tone (albeit sampled, not just synthed).

The sampled instrument used in this instance--which I haven't got time to look up--is to my ears merely "OK" but not exactly "convincing"! Most of them aren't.

Still, interesting work and above the norm for this sort of thing.

JG

And, besides the use of the nicknames and the possibility of them being ersatz, it would have been better had they been posted in Members Recordings.

Oh...I didn't see that. Oops.

I don't see it as what I would call a prank necessarily, but I knew what I was listening to within two measures and immediately hit "stop" and posted my initial statement above.

Pending what Guy might tell us....I'd say not at all anywhere.


Guy, looks like you've been stripped naked.

I don't know that he was being dishonest. A sequence is just a performance recording. Audio recordings are just as easy to manipulate. I think it would be pretty tedious to "program" (as in entering each note individually) the Chopin etudes. It seems he has an interest in computer instrument models which I think would be indispensable to a modern composer. I doubt that Guy thinks this is a prank, though it may have been a little sly to call them "my interpretations." These are still very good even for sequences, if that's what they are. My biggest problem is that these should be in the members recordings forum.

Interesting. If what johngrant says is right, (and as long as poor Guy doesn't speak up, I guess we're all going to speak for him)... it's almost like these recordings are as much a reflection of Guy's composing talents as his pure performing talents. (This view makes more sense if you think of composing as computer-aided studio editing, rather than the traditional venue of writing manuscript at a piano.)

Boy are we a demanding bunch!

-J

You don't think it should routinely be said, upfront, if a posted recording represents something other than actual playing in the usual sense, and that it's dishonest not to?

I do.

Some are, of course, intending to be dishonest in this way and some are not. However, I do, yes, think one should at least add something even if it's tiny print.

I'll agree with stores/Damon over Mark on this one! (Even though it's a matter of language, on which I often agree with Mark. )

While I think that, if these were sequenced, Guy should have said so, I don't think that it's necessarily dishonest, let along a prank, for him to not. He probably has a very different perspective, one more informed by pop music and studio editing software, than you do. Than most of us do.

-J

Huh....looked to me like Stores agreed with me!



Let me put it this way: I critiqued it as though it were actual playing. With something that I know is just "sequencing," first of all I wouldn't be nearly as interested to get much into it, and even if I did, I would consider it in a very different way -- as I think just about everyone else would too.

IMO we need and deserve to know what something is.

You guys ought to recognize an ad when you see / hear one.

Well come on, I only listened to three of them but there wasn't a note glitch in any. (he dropped a beat in 10-3) Many of the crescendos and other dynamics had a precision to them that defied humanity. It seemed obvious it was edited. The piano timbre remained consistent throughout. It seemed obvious it was digital. Didn't Pollini make a billion edits in his etudes?

"Digital" doesn't in itself mean the other stuff that this apparently is.


I don't know -- but regardless, being aware of the irony of what I'm going to say, yet meaning it, I would say that our standards are higher than those for commercial recordings.

When someone posts his/her performance of something, don't we expect that what we're hearing is exactly how it was played, unless the person says otherwise? Maybe I've been mistaken, but I sure have.

And this isn't an idiosyncratic standard that I'm making up. After all, isn't this the standard for audition recordings? Stop me if I'm wrong, but.....if someone sent an edited or doctored recording as part of an application to a conservatory or university or competition, and if it were discovered, the person would be disqualified or booted out -- and disgraced.

It was/is. If you've listened to enough pianists/pianos after two measures (like I stated above) you know immediately what you're hearing.

You are correct, sir. I've witnessed it a few times.

Yes, if it were sufficiently edited.

But, again, you're looking at this from a very traditional perspective, that embraced by the world of conservatories, competitions, and our rich tradition. I think it's a perspective we all share to a large degree. But, for example, a classically trained musician who works in a recording studio post-editing (say) movie soundtracks will have a very different perspective on what constitutes a "valid" recording. Gould might have had a different perspective today, for that matter.

-J

Fine.

Let's decide what's OUR standard.

I suggested what I think it should be: The expectation is that any posted recording of one's playing is genuine, for-real, straightforward, 'that was it,' no doctoring or editing -- unless the person says otherwise, in which case whatever they did is OK.

I so move.

While I'm responding, it may take awhile to hit the send button as I haven't laughed this long for some time.



First, this isn't a university. Second, I think most recordings here are of the low edit variety, but in this particular case, I would like to re - Andromaque's post and add a to Beets. It could be worse. It could be "Partypianist performs Chopin's Opus 10 and 25"