People are soafraidthat they may overprepare for the opportunity, and prefer to learn asneeded andas they go.
But the coming on opportunity can be intermittent, and sometimes, having win over one opportunity, there is no time to learn for theother opportunity which may come immediately.
Dear all,
Here is another message…. You may read it or you may not --- maybe I’m getting old, and specially now that I teach in school, maybe I am getting preachy…. But just take it as a message of a person who have committed many mistakes and learn a lot of lessons in life, and who want to share it so that others don’t have to commit the same.
Thank you for the accolades about the piano music, but no…. talent has nothing to do with it.
It is always flattering to be called talented, and to believe that God has endowed you with superior skills and it is always a shortcut explanation as a reason why some other succeed, and some don’t….. But no , if I have a talent, it is certainly not for music. Maybe a talent for hard work….
I studied piano for seven years while in high school and college, and went through three teachers. If there was something common on the teachers, it was that they were all female, they were not married, and their average age 45. None of them were exactly beautiful, nor did they care to be. Their idea of learning music is to give you a book to play exercise upon exercise and classical music. Many of my friends gave up, but I did not. Even worse, I had no talent…. My classmates who persisted were advancing better, and what got me to keep going was my denial -- I refuse to believe that I could not do better than them. What took some of my classmates one hour of work to do, it takes me sometimes two or three hours, so I had to work harder to get the same results.
After seven years, all I got was the ability to play exercises, and some music nobody wanted to listen. I played in some high school programs, but I ended up my piano lessons with the idea that it all has been a waste of time.
For over 20years after college, I hardly played the piano, nor did I miss it. It would have been cool if I can play modern nor pop music, but I did not have that ability or the training.
A few months ago, I decide to revive my piano playing. Not that I thought it was spectacular, but it was more to make sense out of the thousands of hours I invested before. It was just like you know you invested in a bad business before, and you want to squeeze whatever it was you paid before for what its worth.
Anyhow , maybe I am more experienced now, and moreover, the internet offers better resources to study and understand what I did before. Also knowing business and dynamics give me a better sense of what to play and how to play music that would interests people. And of course, I got the help of a few friends.
And surprise of surprise, the skills I got from playing all those finger exercises that I thought was meaningless suddenly manifest to be useful --- my fingerworks were better than most pianists.
Right now, I can play music that is a little bit more exciting, but that is only because I struggled through a lot of boring stuff that was the foundation of some skills I got. People also say that I know how to tell a lot of exciting stories. But that is only because I go through and read a lot of boring stuff to come up with a few good ones….
So, ….. talent is essential -- the talent for hard work. And life is not always exciting, and especially when you are still learning. It would be well to remember what Ignace Paderewski , one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century said when he was told he was a genius…
He said, “ Yes, but before I was a genius, I was a drudge.”
When my children will learn music, I will get them an old spinster who believes in the old school of teaching. And I will try to insure that they go through all those boring and tedious exercises… That training will be essential for them as the foundation for much better music interpretation.
What was surprising was albert einsteins heirs who made 18 million from licensing little einstein. I guess fame and being known for excellence has a way to monetize.
We need to constantly remember this, and if we are confident, there is every reason to think that it will work out -- the idea is not only to gain more against your competitors during good times, but to manage so that you will lose less than your competitors during bad times.
The last few weeks, I had the need to study and therefore listen to lots of kind of music, primarily instrumental and classical. So I started to get active on the internet… what can it do?
As you may have noted, Napster and MP3 have changed the scenery of the way people sell music. In fact, music sales has been in the downtrend the last few years because of it. While before, the only way was to go to the music store, and get the CD, now most music can be downloaded through the internet.
Apple iTunes changed the way you get legal music. They had a great price at that time which was 99 cents per song, and they are selling now music by the millions. Of course, millions of songs are also available through file sharing networks without any licensing.
The greatest offer came from providers like Zune.Net and Real Rhapsody. I was very very tempted. What it does is it offers you unlimited number of songs ( they say that they have upwards a million songs), and for the amount of about 12 to 15 dollars per month, you can download any number of songs, and listen to it. However, you have to pay per month, and the songs have usually DRM ( digital rights management ) limitations. The songs you download can be played only in about 2 or 3 computers or designated mp3 players.
The good things is as long as you are paying per month, you can listen to the songs as many as you want, but once you stop paying, then all the songs you download will not play also --- that means you have unlimited selections but only if you keep paying!
But even then, I got so excited about it – after all, we have to get over the fact that we don't have to own the songs perpetually, but just be able to listen and study it. However, there was a big letdown – the music subscription service would not accept your payment and registration if you are not a resident of the United States.
Maybe it is understandable – maybe the record companies want to release the music but even with DRM, they were still reluctant to release it to the world. But that goes to show that we are at a disadvantage when you are not known to respect IPR – such great deals are not available to you!
After some queries, I decided to register to emusic.com. It is not a all you can listen model but they have upwards a million songs. You can listen to a segment of it ( usually about 30 seconds), and if you like it, you can buy it. They have several plans, and the plan I choose was that you pay 15 dollars per month, and you can download 50 songs every month ( that means each song is about 30 cents which is cheaper than iTUnes or Amazon.com).
I have been very happy with it. By the way, lately, I also find out that if you go to myspace.com, it has a very rich music library. If you do a search on most tracks, you can find most selections, and although you can listen to it, you cannot download it. However, many of these songs were registered and uploaded by users themselves, so some are not properly labeled, or some are not so nice. But nevertheless, if you just want to know some music group, and test their music, myspace.com has probably one of the biggest sources, even Philippine song groups.
I also found out that if you are a member of Facebook, you can load an application called Music Player, and that allows you probably upwards hundreds of thousands of songs which you can listen to. The only drawback is that it is not very high quality, but nevertheless it is free!
I am sure millions of people go to the internet for music, and there are lots and lots of other resources. Please feel free to inform me if you have a good one. But unlike years ago, the internet has allowed me to buy and listen to almost virtually any music that I heard of in just a click of a mouse.
If you are a facebook user, you can go to music player, and can listen to many songs-- for free too, though you cannot download it.
However, the quality also leaves much to be desired, but then again, if you just want to listen to some songs to see if its good enough to buy, at least, you can. Some of the songs also play only a segment, not the whole song.
source: OSK Research
US Companies lead in gambling. In the above report, other than no. 3
,7,8 and no. 9 which are in Asia, company is a US company. It is
noteworthy to note that none of the top 9 companies are in Europe.
Sent from my wireless handheld
It was unfortunate to note that Gary Coleman, that lovable kid has
been having a lot of problems with his life. I was also sad to note
that Dana Plato, who played the lovable Kimberly Drummond in the
sitcom, has passed away at the age of 35 in 1999 due to probable
overdose of drugs.
It is important that we play to succeed, but it is important also to
equip ourselves to be worthy of that success. As they say, sometimes,
it is important that success does not come too fast, because the
skills you get working towards success will also be essential in
keeping you there.
