New Piano...um...USED Piano :)

I guess the title says it all - we got a new-for-us piano a couple weeks ago. It is a 10-year-old Clavinova. I LOVE messing around with digital pianos. This one does not have a full keyboard (it only has 76 keys), but I love playing it and seeing what kinds of fun tones I can play my favorite songs with. I suppose these are the marks of a truly mediocre pianist. Oh well, I don't care. I love the thing. I am happy that we splurged pre-tax refund. :)

S also loves the piano. I had forgottten what it is like to live with him and a piano in the same house. (We used to have a piano in the house we were renting right after we got married). S's piano playing style reminds me of a cross between radio station remixes and CD collection infomercials.

As a kid, I used to love CD collection infomercials. I would hear one snipet of a song I liked and then I would leave the tv on that channel to see if there were more songs I liked, which there usually were. I never bought any music of course, but for some reason I was happy to be entertained by these infomercials. Well, now I have my own infomercial living in my home. S has between 4 and 6 songs that he has memorized over the years. Every now and again he will pull out a new one that I haven't heard, but for the most part they are all very familiar to me by now. They include: Canon in D, Sonata Pathetique, Jurassic Park, the song that is playing when they say "One Grecian Urn" in some movie, and perhaps one more. S will sit down at the piano and do something like this: He will start with Sonata Pathetique (which I LOVE), and right when I remember how much I love it, it will all of a sudden be Canon in D! And that will suddenly morph into Jurassic Park! He never plays more than 5-10 seconds of any one song without changing to the next. Fortunately, the songs repeat themselves without neglecting any one song or adding any other songs to the list. So I get used to it, right? :)

Also, S rarely plays any song at the composer's tempo - they go much faster. Canon in D is even jazzed up a bit with different rhythms and ornamentation. It is just like when radio stations try to play little bits and pieces of some popular songs all in the same tempo, even when the songs are not meant to be at that tempo, or when they make a hip-hop version of a country song. Really, his style just cracks me up. I am glad that he enjoys playing the piano. And I am glad that he wanted to get this piano for our family as much as I did. If only we could get Boo to take an interest... (he isn't even yet interested in his baby piano). :)