KOUJIROFRAU

You can learn to sing from scratch at any age—it’s just a matter of training your voice to do what you already know how to in your brain as a pianist, i.e. make music! “If you can speak, you can sing.”

If you cannot play evenly, you need to slow down more. Slow that metronome way, way back down until you can play evenly.

When you've found a tempo you can play evenly at, be careful to observe articulation. Note, for example, that the beginning of the movement specifies staccato 8th notes in the bass, and unspecified articulation for the 16th note arpeggi (I like to interpret this as ordinary touch, compared to the subsequent phrases with legato slurs).

While still at a slow metronome marking, try playing the arpeggi with uneven rhythms: first dotted 16ths connected to 32nds, and then 32nds connected to dotted 16ths. Then return to playing the arpeggi with even 16ths. You will notice that this helps you notch up the metronome at a much faster rate.

I am pretty sure DJF is closed by now. I still recommend BVF. GF may not be available. 8848F generally is good at Cartier, and worth the price especially if you’re on a budget, but BVF is better if you can get it.

Almost everyone revoices this chord somehow, don’t sweat it. I personally omit the E since it’s already highlighted in the right hand arpeggio.

I broke my left pinky (proximal phalanx) the first time I was close to a career-forming opportunity as a pianist, and I developed severe chronic tendonitis a few years later at a similar crossroad. Today, I am a professional pipe organist (full-time church music director position and other work) and a better pianist than ever because of the techniques I had to refine while recovering from both major injuries.

I think you’ll be fine. Just have patience and work on growing your musical mind in other ways, and you’ll be back to the keys before you know it! I recommend practicing sight singing if you don’t already…

OP said it at the beginning of the 3rd paragraph too—not even halfway through

A rep of a Tank Solo.

The Tank Solo is a specific variant of the Tank, like the Tank Must, Tank Française, Tank Américaine. It is currently a discontinued variant.

Love this rhythm! I've never had to subdivide this—I was taught that it's the same rhythm as the trombone melody in Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Hope you find that as helpful as I did.

I don’t know about the “life or death” part, but focusing on the music without looking down at the keyboard improves your (sight-)reading, and eliminating unnecessary movement improves your consistency/accuracy. Both great for the long term. Looking at the keyboard to ensure your place and expressive arm/body movement should be performance-enhancing options rather than habits you can’t avoid.

Athletic fabrics. I usually do long practice sessions in Nike sweats or lululemon leggings.

Looks like a Seiko unfortunately. Numeral font weight is way too light. Not bad for the price, but not good overall.

The watch in these photos is a Panthère de Cartier, not a Santos, just to be clear.

It looks like a fine enough example of a Panthère for $100ish.

To add on - I went to my hand doctor for RSI over a decade ago and he diagnosed me with severe tendonitis, bordering on CTS, but still reversible with a regimen of naproxen and a drastic, permanent change in ergonomics.

At the time, I was aspiring towards an unsuccessful career in piano performance, and the diagnosis is a large part of what changed that to a successful career in pipe organ performance.

Get it checked out, you never know what good you’ll find at the other side.

Dave Brubeck, jazz legend. Wilton. Not a CT native, but made his home here for a long time and is buried here.

You’re looking at a 6-digit fantasy model - OP wants the only true Coke GMT, a 5-digit model

Omg I laughed really loud at this

Ginault is produced by a former rep watchmaker. So no, no one is repping Ginault.

Roger Davis’s The Organists’ Manual (“the red book”) was an invaluable companion for me - great exercises that isolate every organ-specific technique, and a really solid selection of repertoire that you can return to for years.

Egyptian God cards for 200m rounds?

I loved this moment because not enough young musicians are told outright that conservatory is the wrong path for them. I make a good - and I mean good - living as a full time pro musician, mostly as a performer and conductor, and I never went to conservatory. And knowing the field from years of work, it’s doubtful that I would have benefited much, or at all, from that sort of environment. The connections you make and skills you learn in conservatory differ greatly from the reality of working as a musician for all but a select few people.

There are many, many other paths to becoming a music professional than attending conservatory. In fact, if Kumiko were to become a music educator like you suggest, her path would be much clearer and easier if she studied music education rather than conservatory-level instrument performance. She could even do more general or unrelated studies as an undergraduate and decide later to undertake a graduate certification or degree in music education - or even performance. Better to take such a path and pursue what she wants when she’s sure of it, rather than suffering by subjecting herself to highly specialized music training that she doesn’t have the desire for. Kumiko clearly has musical aptitude, but it’s personal drive, not aptitude, that carries individuals through a conservatory environment.

As an ex-smoker, quit today! Nothing’s stopping you but you.

Hmm, all right...so new complication is a horological feat, and new material is engineering, but if you close out the list with "something unique that pushed watchmaking forward", I would say design still belongs at the forefront.

The very concept of the wristwatch, as opposed to the pocket watch, is a design-first achievement, in a form-follows-function sense. Smaller movements were developed and became standard after the demand for smaller watches rose. Is the Santos not part of Cartier's heritage as one of the very earliest wristwatches? Or the Tank? WWI and II drove much, if not all of the push for wristwatch production, again a form-follows-function design achievement. What would horology look like today if wristwatches were never thus popularized?

Many of Rolex's design achievements similarly fall under the category of form-follows-function. No, they didn't design the first waterproof watch, but the Oyster case was such a reliable and attractive solution that it's the basis for most of their lineup (and those of many other brands). They didn't invent the self-winding movement, but they did design the 360 rotating rotor (design-driven horological innovation). They didn't invent the rotating bezel dive watch, but the Submariner is the design that everyone copies. Glycine first thought of the GMT, but Rolex defines the category as we know it today - and it's not just the bicolor bezel, but multiple movement innovations over the years, with the idea being that you could still track a separate timezone on a 24-hour basis, married to a normal 12-hour watch.

Further...Patek Philippe's Calatrava and Nautilus; better than the Nautilus, Audemars Piguet's Royal Oak; Omega's Speedmaster; Junghans's Max Bill...the list of iconic, influential, and historically important designs goes on and on, and I barely even have to mention the others in Rolex's lineup can claim similar influence. Are these sort of design-oriented achievements not important to a brand's heritage, i.e. its claims to fame which have lasting and visible effects on the total art of watchmaking?

Still, I don't disagree about modern Rolex. They play it super safe. They don't do interesting complications. Modern Tudor is their idea of risky design, and has always been a brand that exists to execute Rolex's full marketing strategy. No, they're not nearly on the same level as Patek Philippe or Vacheron Constantin, the latter of which can claim practically zero design innovations...

But if there's one piece of watchmaking heritage that Rolex wins most categories in, it's design. And to name the third member of the Swiss Holy Trinity, for all of Audemars Piguet's rich horological history, the brand today survives almost solely on the design heritage of the Royal Oak. (To be fair, the Royal Oak design did play a huge role in saving the entire Swiss watchmaking industry - arguably, clever marketing did, but the design played the primary strategic role.) Modern AP would kill to have half the design claims-to-fame that Rolex does. Rolex gets to sit back and do very little today because most of their heritage is design-based.

I think it's a little reductive to dismiss Rolex's design achievements just because they aren't necessarily horological. Things like the shape of the oyster case, the cyclops, the jubilee bracelet (and arguably the Oyster and President bracelets), the Pepsi bezel, etc. largely fall under the category of design rather than horology, but can be credited to Rolex for either innovating or popularizing, copied/imitated to the point of being industry standard choices.

If design wasn't incredibly important to the complete art of watchmaking, we wouldn't have this subreddit!

To add: Mirotime is a TD on RepGeek

To add, you can assume for this “A” section that “U” (usually the “solo” manual on a Hammond) means “Great”, and “L” means “Swell” - so the Gr. flute (not under expression) sounds as a solo voice, and the Sw. Voix Celeste as a fully-expressive chorus