Learn to play Jazz. It's like learning a language and you can "speak it" with a lot of people. It's also as hard as you want it to be if you're serious ;)
Amateur Jazz Pianist here. Purchased. I love pianoteq, but also tracking how much I'm practicing every week is great, and love the idea of the bookmarks.
Just came here to tay that Patlabor is pretty far from "obscure" as an anime. In the late 90s/early 2000's it was pretty big, although anime wasn't big in the United States yet and that could explain the author's comment?
This is a very uninformed opinion that I see very often. In bebop, LH can be deceptively simple (but actually rhythmically it's not so simple). However things have dramatically changed, Brad Mehldau who's a foundational modern jazz pianist, probably the most relevant one after the last Big Tree (Hancock, Corea, Tyner), popularized things like LH counterpoint in jazz. Some of his arrangements if you watch them in mute, you could thing he's playing a Bach Fugue almost. The amount of pianists that followed this style after the 90s, is hard to keep track of, probably every single relevant pianist took things from brad, and LH counterpoint was one of them (a big one there too was Fred Hersch, who heavily influenced Brad).
Then, I recommend you to check out what Sullivan Fortner is doing. Probably the next really heavy one that has managed to push the jazz lang forward after Brad.
Sullivan, in terms of where he's taking jazz piano is comparable to the greats in terms of impact at his current age/maturity. This is what Brad said about Sulli last May, when he saw him live in Amsterdam (where Brad lives)
> Got to hear the incomparable Sullivan Fortner last night at @bimhuis
in Amsterdam. I’m sure many of you know how unreal his music is … he just blows me away every time I get to hear him. Last night was piano solo.
> Sullivan is deep on all levels—touch, counterpoint, utter relaxation, swing, transparency of ideas, no matter how dense the texture. He takes you through the whole emotional spectrum, unabashed joy included.
> It’s completely rooted and completely original all at once. If you have the chance to hear him, don’t miss it. He is quietly revolutionizing jazz piano playing. Actually piano playing period. (And by the way he can sing like nobody’s business, if that weren’t enough!)
Hard to put it better than Brad... nails the review.
I had the privilege of taking a week long workshop with Sullivan about 6 or 7 years ago, the guy is an absolute beast. I hope we hear more about him, he deserves it.
A few days ago I asked ChatGPT to help me find an argument to perform "some filtering operation" with a world class command line tool. It confidently aswered.
I'm pretty into wine, not in the industry though. But I've tried a lot of stuff (from garbo wines, to stuff like Rayas, Haut Brion, Romanee Conti, etc... some pretty heavy hitters), and I agree that money is not the driving factor. The economics are huge, like sometimes some small producer will just explode and their production is little... but the demand might be high and suddenly you're looking at a 10 euro bottle of wine, going for 120 euros. Lot's of times it's because they actually make something pretty remarkable, but sometimes not.
Having said that, I've seen some incredible stuff. There was a tasting were a friend brought a bottle with him, it was a blind tasting and everyone was supposed to write down what their bottles were. So my friend presented his bottle concealed in aluminum paper as we used to do, and he wrote down the bottle + vintage.
At the end of the night, notes were exchanged, and there was a very very strong taster in the group. It was burgundy night, and he nailed 4/5 wines (6 in total, but the one you brought didn't count), producer, wine, and vintage. My friend told him "you didn't guess the vintage of the one I brought", I don't remember but I think my friend thought that it was a 2008 and this guy said like 2009. When they revealed the bottles, the bottle was indeed a 2009 from the same producer. My friend had taken a different bottle from his cellar and he didn't realize :^). Some folks know what they're drinking very well indeed (5/5
The brass you hear in Vangelis is probably an Oberheim OB-Xa, incredible brass sounds. The band toto made those sounds extremely popular here in the states too. Google who the Porcaro brothers were (well one is still alive and kicking :) )
The CS80 was decades ahead of it's time. I love playing with CS-80v, but I need a keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch to do it justice, and the Ensoniq models are now way too pricey. Wish I'd bought one 10 years ago when they were unpopular, available, weird and cheap.
on that ICYMI, there's one month to go before Oberheim starts shipping the OB-X8 (which contains the OB-X, OB-Xa, and OB-8 switchable filter and envelope responses)!
... but AFAIK the Blade Runner theme was famously done on a CS-80
