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A Digital Piano to Call My Own

Having played the piano since the age of 5, I always pictured my "grown-up" home featuring a baby grand nearside an oversized window. What I didn't realize is that city living on a limited budget does not allow for such luxuries. Sometime last year I decided that a digital/electric piano would fit the bill. It would allow me to practice in private and would definitely take up less space than an acoustic instrument. I immediately began saving, and per my usual self, began to do crazy research for the perfect digital piano under $2,000 (thank you, Piano World Forums!). Unfortunately, my job situation (or lack thereof) put a halt to my savings plan. Until I received my tax refund, that is. Having a husband who works...

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BoA in Times Square

I've had the good fortune of meeting BoA, the Korean/Japanese pop sensation. My uncle is a very powerful man in the Korean entertainment business. When I visited Korea in 2000, he was the Vice-President of Broadcasting at MBC, which is one of the main broadcasting companies in Korea. (As a side note, I'm proud to say that one of the very last showed produced under his tenure as the VP of Broadcasting was the hit drama 대장금, or Dae Jang Geum, which still remains one of the most popular dramas in Korean history.) While he holds an even higher position now, his former title was an impressive one nonetheless. He took me on a tour of the studios and I gaped and gawked,...

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Notorious Trailer

My first boyfriend was a gangsta.It was the stereotypical good girl-bad boy relationship. Although it was probably the unhealthiest relationship I've ever been in, I picked up quite a few things from him. For example, I've only tried weed a couple of times, but I can discern between the different strains and can distinguish the "good shit" from the "bad shit" just from smelling the batch. I learned the finer points of high-stakes sports betting and discovered just much hangs with one basket, one catch, or even one inch.I also learned about gangsta rap. Triple Six Mafia. N.W.A. Geto Boys. He would lecture me on the history of these rappers, politics, grudges, and their ways of life as he blasted...

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Music as Visual Art

Are you a musician? Do you play a musical instrument? Do you know how to read music? If any of these questions pertains to you, you might be interested in a composer named George Crumb. Crumb is famous for distorting his scores in shapes indicative of the mood he's trying to set. Case in point, the spiral-shaped score for "Spiral Galaxy: Aquarius": Try playing THAT. I wish I had a piano handy. A few more examples of his scores can be viewed here. (And if you can read Japanese, maybe you can tell me what the site says.) Reading about Crumb reminded me of one of my favorite painters, Wassily Kandinsky. Considered to be one of the fathers of abstract expressionism, Kandinsky was fascinated with the emotional response evoked...

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Musical Instruments

I've played the piano since I was 5, and the violin since I was 8. There was one year in elementary school when I decided to try the flute but it didn't come naturally easy to me as the piano and violin did, so I quit. Since then, I've played many different pianos and violins. But I was always sensitive to each instrument. Maybe overly sensitive - meaning I could never play as well on instruments to which I could not connect. With each new instrument, I would take at least a few minutes to get to "know" each other. I would test the responsiveness, the sound quality, the build quality. And the instruments would test my limits, challenging me to create and be creative. If I couldn't connect with...

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