A lecture on Contrapunto, and then some.

Today was awesome! Well, quite. I think.

I normally wake up at ~7am, but today I woke only at 10am. So, I woke up feeling very pissed and prissy. It's very annoying when you find that all of a sudden, you have 3 hours less in your day to do stuff with. And why? you wanted to lie motionless in bed for awhile. :/ So 3 hours, in which I could've played piano/use computer/read/go for morning jog/go to gym, was wasted lying in bed snoring and getting fat and old and stupid. Pffft.

Good thing the rest of the day was spent productively then. Haven't played Beethoven so well in a long time. Which is good since exam is in 2 days and I need the confidence. I miss playing Bach, though. I'll play that more after exam! Contrapunto is a bit more different from most other styles of music, such as melody with accompaniment, or chordal, in a very fundamental manner. When playing contrapunto, J.S Bach in particular, one must pay close attention to the philosophy behind it.

As opposed to having a melody line and an accompaniment, contrapunto is about 2 separate lines of melody harmonizing with one another. When each is played separately, each melody line is supposed to be perfectly acceptable by itself, without requiring any accompaniment. Hence, when playing Bach, or contrapunto in general, effort must be made to distinguish the 2 lines of melody from one another. One way to do so would be to contrast the 2 hands in terms of dynamics, articulation, time, tonality, etc. But please don't tinker with volume. Contrapunto is supposed to sound like multiple voices singing together,each singing their own thing, but each part of a bigger score. So the score cannot be dominated by 1 voice overpowering the others.

The result is an overwhelmingly amazing sound, because a listener will be able to discern the individual voices as separate melodies, but hear the voices mish-mash together to form something beautiful and grand.

After piano, met up with Josh, Cheng Feng and Thane at T3 for some TCS(Talk Cock Session), then ran one round around Bedok Reservoir. 4km. I haven't felt so weak and out of it in a long time. Must talk to Wei Jie about running together.

MANCHESTER UNITED ALL THE WAYYYYY