@Toucan:
Me too, Bach is my favorite composer by a long shot and probably about 80% of what I practice is Bach. I've been playing since I was about 4/5 and I am 28 now. I pretty much finishedThough in my college years I had extremely limited access to piano's and I lost most of my repertoire. I also finished music school i.e. I got the maximum number of 6 degrees, you can get one every 2 years. I've had lessons in both jazz (from a successful Jazz artist actually) and classical music. About a year ago I went to rehab (physically dependence problem for benzo's and a general lifestyle problem with K and other stuff) and there was a piano there and lots of spare time. I started playing again, an insane amount actually... and not long after I got back home I picked up private lessons and was lucky enough to find a Bach expert.
It's not uncommon for me to play 1 1/2 or 2 hours in a day. About the Goldbergs: I can play 60% of them decently or well; and another 25% badly to half-decent; but perfecting hardly any of them because of the difficulty level. And recently I also picked up a habit of playing those I know in a way or style I never did before, either that or recognizable improvisations of them. Not sure if obvious but that's one of many training methods that improves control and development of feeling for the essence of the piece. Not quite sure how to to explain it but since I've picked up these lessons I'm trying to work on getting a better understanding of classical music in a sense that goes beyond the technical, beyond just practising by repeating it a lot. What I'm talking about is also partially related to the phenomenon of 'being in the "zone" ' in the context of sports. There are peculiar states of mind involved that may work better when you actually think
less about it all. There is also a spiritual component but it can get esoteric when you try to talk about it.
I'm not saying I got a lot better at that aspect (although in general things are going well), but nevertheless I find it interesting and during my lesson today I got pretty eye-opening help with playing fugues.
Another thing is that I have perfect pitch and that I can basically play everything that I am able to sing or whistle - depending on the complexity and difficulty in a simplified manner - and optionally added improvisation. And in my early years I was taught using the unusual Suzuki method.
What kind of things are on your repertoire? Am I understanding correctly that your instrument is the piano, as well? Recording piano's is quite the arts in and of itself. Because the thing is just so huge it can be quite hard (esp for us amateurs) to get a proper vantage point that captures the sound well with the right acoustics. Seems like a big challenge to me, fortunately I can use my housemate's digital piano which actually has quite good key suspension / mechanisms.
I've played the piano while tripping, occasionally. A lot of the time I'm spacing out too much or feel either out of it and dissociated or instead overly fixated... anyway apart from the joy of playfully messing around a bit I find the stumbling blocks frustration. There are a few exceptions, mainly one time when I was on mescaline for the first time... during the comeup I had a very cathartic emotional overflow and release after some holotropic rebirth-y stuff laying on the floor. Then I got up to play a nostalgic track (Hot Chocolate / "Put me together again") and re-experienced a lot of memories and emotions extraordinarily vividly.
@kid:
funny vids - and I think that PAS is psychoactive substance, it follows from or is implied by the context as well as being mentioned right before being abbreviated for the first time.
@ben: Clark is cool, I love Diesel Raven, Rob Lee and
this remix of Kuedo.
@johannes: I too am pleased and impressed that you used MDMA in this evidently worthwhile and exemplary way - a report would be great indeed. My first time on LSD was guided by my dad, or in any case he was a sitter for me. And an especially appropriate one as well since he did some acid in his younger days. When I was far into my trip I gave him high quality MDMA crystals which he never had before, but unfortunately it didn't really work out - took a long time to hit, then suddenly he because very confused and scattered, then threw up. After that he claimed the effects died down again which is a little bit strange, apparently like your dad it was hard to spot for him. Though I don't remember seeing symptoms like cuddly behavior or whatever. Peculiar enough he also had very limited effects from nitrous which I didn't know is possible...
Much later after that acid trip of mine we also tripped together namely on half a portion of mushrooms in soup. I say portion because it came from the smartshop. A portion is about 1/8th. Maybe it didn't cool quickly enough, like with tea (either because it is more able to lose heat or is consumed quicker? idk), because it was relatively weak for us even for that dose. But I did remember the proportions of body part sizes were severely fucked up for me. It was not a typical visual for me, because it didn't really breathe or undulate or shift and was rather like conceptual distortion. I guess it was localized micropsia and macropsia.
I wish I had more therapeutic experiences together with my parents, especially with my dad. My mother is plenty open and she works as a sort of welfare work sector in a therapist-like role and there would be little to be gained from tripping with my mother IMO. She has understanding of plenty of things I stand for and has affinity for Zen-buddhism. She's not religious but one of her best friends is a franciscan pater (priest) she frequently joins on franciscan pilgrimage treks to Assisi (Italy). While that obviously is not 100% secular, it's still quite casual - anyway my point is that she gets why I am a bit of a Zen-buddhist if anything, and what the philosophy and metaphysics mean to me. Unlike my father, who only gets the gist matter-of-factly. He suppresses a lot of emotion and often claims that he isn't really suppressing but that he is just phlegmatic. A lot of the time it is quite wonderful and easy to deal with, and I have that trait in a mild form in terms of behavior and in social context, but where my dad deems is mostly unnecessary to contemplate the profound I can be obsessed with it instead which can sometimes be very good and other times quite bad.
It hurts me a little bit that my father is not interested to mystically realize our nature, existentially. There are several ways to express or interpret "you don't know what you are missing." one way is really a bit tragic, and another way is a consolation
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edit:
finale? im watching the 6th season 6 episode, 2 more arent out though
I've watched 14 episodes of the 6th season, maybe you are looking in the wrong places... watching on cable in a lagging country, instead of online?
Also, last night I started composing a fugue for the first time and although it needs to be checked for errors, I have about 1 or 1
1/
2 minute completed successfully so far. :D
