Teaching Little JI Robot Fingers to Play

Some of you who studied piano long enough ago might remember the John
Thompson pedagogical boook "Teaching Little Fingers to Play". Well,
this is "Teaching Little JI Robot Fingers to Play".

http://www.akjmusic.com/works.html

I guess I just came up with this for several reasons. One, I just had
my little student give a recital on the 10th, so pedagogical sounding
music has been on my mind and in my brain.

Secondly, I spied some pedagogical music on my friend Steve's piano
last night, and realized that an awful lot of great music that we take
for granted has come from the search to write something both musically
meaningful, as well as technically easy or accesible for kids. Think
of Bartòk's 'Mikrokosmos', Schumann's 'Album for the Young', works by
Prokofieff and Shostokovich, Mozart's elegant little minuets and of
course, the Bach of the 'Anna Magdelena Notebook'. Fellow lister Chris
Bailey also wrote a nice inspiring set for kids, too. I figured the
universe was trying to tell me something, and I ought to try my hand
at this game.

This is my first humble venture, sent out to my daughter Annika with
love; maybe it will become a set of pieces, but for now, a single
movement.

Alas, no human could play this on anything but a specially tailored
microtonal keyboard with lots 'o keys, hence the virtual aspect, and
the 'robot' title.

I used my own 'micro_composer' software, then Timidity++ drove
"Campbell's Tuned Harpsichord" soundfont, no doubt a very nice
soundfont indeed. Then I opened Ardour (Linux only) and applied a bit
of Freeverb3 to get a feel of a robot student recital hall.

Enjoy!
Aaron.

This is what my IE6 answered:

403 Forbidden

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.ogg on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Petr

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@...>
wrote:
>
> Some of you who studied piano long enough ago might remember the
John
> Thompson pedagogical boook "Teaching Little Fingers to Play". Well,
> this is "Teaching Little JI Robot Fingers to Play".
>
> http://www.akjmusic.com/works.html

This would be really funny with the right video.

Just so you know, the ogg version gave we a 403 - forbidden error
when I tried to download it.

> Alas, no human could play this on anything but a specially tailored
> microtonal keyboard with lots 'o keys, hence the virtual aspect, and
> the 'robot' title.

Just use your 45000 fingers. Can you tell us more aboutthe scale?

I fixed it. I don't know why but sometimes I get funny .ogg
permissions when I upload.

I should be fine now:

http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.ogg
http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.mp3

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Petr Parízek <p.parizek@...> wrote:
>
> This is what my IE6 answered:
>
> 403 Forbidden
>
> Forbidden
> You don't have permission to access
/audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.ogg on this server.
>
> Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to
use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
>
>
> Petr
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@>
> > SNIP, etc.
> > "Teaching Little JI Robot Fingers to Play".
> >
> > http://www.akjmusic.com/works.html
>
> This would be really funny with the right video.

Good idea...anyone know a video artist who would do it?

> Just so you know, the ogg version gave we a 403 - forbidden error
> when I tried to download it.

I fixed it:
http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.ogg
http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/TeachingLittleJIRobotFingersToPlay.mp3

> > Alas, no human could play this on anything but a specially tailored
> > microtonal keyboard with lots 'o keys, hence the virtual aspect, and
> > the 'robot' title.
>
> Just use your 45000 fingers. Can you tell us more about the scale?
>

It's basically free-floating 7-limit wafso-JI, implemented in
441-equal, and mostly centered on 'C major'.

-A.