I was one of the first to start lockdown by myself in Seattle. My workplace was the first to send people home. Home for me was in Canada, and they closed the border so I couldn’t get home. Throughout the lockdown, I didn’t leave the apartment and I didn’t touch a real person. When I told my neighbour that I wanted to jump out the…read more
It turns out that 1-4% of the population have synesthesia. Synesthesia is when one sense is linked to another, for example, if you see colour in music or letters. People with synesthesia have amazing long-term memory. It’s easy to tamper with memory when you have direct access to the senses that control memory. A while back, I noticed that one of my piano students never…read more
Everyone is teaching music online now. If you teach music online, you can get a lot more students. You can, in theory, teach at all hours of the day because your students can be from any time zone. Here are 8 tips to build a career teaching music online. 1. This means your pricing can be a lot more flexible. You are operating on the…read more
It’s the season of love! My friend Sydney and I wrote a piece about a robot falling in love, with a mix of Debussy. And I’m real excited about it! We wrote this to combine the fun of video games with the timelessness of Classical music. It’s an intermediate piano duet, so it’s perfect for pianists who like both video games and Classical! Arabesque was…read more
I love how the melody seems to slow and start again, the variation in the tempo and freedom in rhythm. For me, the beginning chords depict snowy, winter scene, not harsh, but ethereal. If we used the same chords sped up, we would find ourselves in a hectic icy winter scene.
Only a small proportion of people have perfect pitch, and the majority of people who have perfect pitch are autistic. Still, most musicians who don’t have it, want to get perfect pitch. After all, Mozart had it. This study led by Anna Lambrechts at the Autism Research Group in City University London recruited 18 adults who had Asperger’s and 18 adults who were neurotypical. In…read more
It’s been ten years of Artiden! This year, I realized how uniquely I perceive the world because of Asperger’s. Now I see why I’ve struggled with certain daily life activities. Thank goodness I have the discipline to keep writing. In fact, someone figured out that I had Asperger’s from my writing. Here are some personal articles about Asperger’s and more. Why I suspected that I…read more
1. “It looks like you can make eye contact and smile at the correct times.” “I look at eyebrows and I memorize social cues,” I say quickly, shrugging one shoulder. Ok. now she is going to think I memorized when to smile. We look at each other. Well, I look at her eyebrows and she looks at my eyeballs. I am wearing makeup and I…read more
There’s a social rule that says you should copy the way the other person likes to communicate. Well, it’s more of a social phenomenon, where humans like to be around others who behave similarly to themselves, such as when someone sitting across from you crosses their legs when you do. Maybe I’ve broken a social rule. If I can’t figure out a way to learn…read more
There’s a group I’m part of called Frustrated piano teachers and it’s a place where piano teachers can talk about their problems. I glance at it once in a while and most posts are written by women. There’s probably someone who will tell me that women like to talk about their problems more often, but it looks like these women also have to juggle kids…read more