Wimpy keyboards

I've always been dissatisfied with keyboards as replacements for pianos. None of the ones I've come across have had that feel of weight that's needed for someone who's played real pianos his whole life. We bought a Casio piano to use for the rehearsals of Grimhilda! back in 2012, and it was effective enough, but it lacked something. It hadn't been to to gym to build its muscles.

What I think it lacks, along with most keyboard pianos, is that sense of standing up to the strain of a pianist fighting to produce the right sounds. When it comes to something soft, keyboards aren't too bad, especially ones like the excellent Casio PX850. But when it comes to taking the full weight of a long-experienced pianist hammering at them, nothing beats a real piano, an instrument that stands up and takes a beating without whimpering. (Totally unconnected to this, why is wimp spelled without an 'h' when whimpering has one?)

A pianist at full throttle needs something that will not only give its all in terms of the music, but also won't buckle under pressure. The last thing you need is the feeling that your keyboard is trying to run away when you're giving it a fistful of fortissimo chords.

Creatine

I have to say I love this quote I found today...

Creatine is a dietary supplement that is promoted for its ability to enhance muscle strength and physical endurance. A study with ALS mice found that the mice had significant improvements in their survival with creatine.

The site it's on belongs to the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation. Please note that by quoting it I'm in no way denigrating the people at SPF; they mention creatine primarily to point out that it's useful for people with spastic paraplegia. What I liked about the quote was its reference to the mice.

However, my introduction to creatine, which came only moments before I found that quote, was via a site that promotes creatine for people who want to boost muscle power. Like many other supplements, creatine didn't of course start life as a dietary supplement: it's a compound formed in protein metabolism and present in much living tissue. It is involved in the supply of energy for muscular contraction. In other words we already have creatine in our system - and wouldn't do well without it.

Synthetic creatine, like many body-enhancing drugs, (if 'drugs' is the right word here) has a bad press in some countries and not others. In France it's illegal to use it for muscle-building; in Italy it's not. As a dietary supplement it's available under a number of trade names. I must admit that if I thought the reference to mice was amusing in the first quote, some of these trade names leave themselves open to speculative comment: Myoswell. Creakic Hardcore. Con-Cret Concentrated Creatine.

Myoswell? What were they thinking?

Creakic Hardcore? Quite apart from the first word, which to my ear immediately evokes a creaky old person trying to pretend to be a muscleman, the addition of 'hardcore' just provokes mirth - to me. But I'm not a serious supplement user, of course.

Con-Cret Concentrated Creatine - nice and alliterative, but the hint of 'concrete' in the hyphenated word is a bit scary...will your muscles turn to concrete (hardly much use when you're trying to be active)...?

Sometimes brand names need just a touch more thought before they're foisted on the public, I think..

Picture courtesy El Bingle.

Muscle-building

Why would I want to use this high-class, superbly stylish, everlastingly interesting blog to write about a testosterone booster. I can hardly spell the word, 'testosterone' for starters. It takes a concentrated effort, in fact, to do so.

I check out the site where they're selling these items and the sight of the chunky muscular chest - Sylvester Stallone at his most Rambo-ish - puts me right off.

I'm sure there's a good reason to have plenty of muscle, and to be able to wiggle those pecs around and impress all the girls - and the guys you'd otherwise be kicking sand in the face of - but I just can't see me hauling around all that extra muscle weight. I mean, it's not as if I need it, is it? I've managed to reach pensioner age without requiring vast quantities of hyped-up muscle, and though I'll admit I sometimes could do with a bit of extra lift when it comes to hauling the furniture around, I probably won't be going down daily to the gym to improve the situation.

And once you've got it all, you have to keep it up to scratch. No point having gone to all that effort for nothing, is there? So it's everlastingly to the gym, everlastingly posing in front of all the skinny blokes and skinnier women, or the blokes with paunches and the women with large rear ends, and everlastingly hauling yourself through some muscle-building routine while your mind goes into a mind-numbing state, saying, I....can't....stand....any....more....of....this....focus....on....MUSCLES! Give me something to think about!

Photo by Ron on Flickr.com

Extend your range by an OCTAVE!

Clicking on one of those little Google ads today – it claimed to be able to add an octave to a singer’s vocal range – I came across Brett Manning’s site, and his ad for helping young singers.

The ad is written in that typical direct marketing style – the same sort of style that once ‘helped’ thousands of men to respond to the ad for becoming a man with muscles, instead of being the bloke who had sand kicked in his face.

You read through the ad and think: there’s no way anyone can ad an octave to their voice, especially not after a couple of lessons. But Manning is talking primarily to singers in the pop world rather than the operatic one. He talks about overcoming the singer’s ‘break’ – that point in the voice when you seem to have to switch from one kind of tone to another – and he says he’s not interested in helping classical singers. That isn’t his kettle of fish. He teaches people how to avoid fatigue with singing, amongst other things.

So you get the feeling that maybe this is all a bit of a have, and that the ad isn’t really going to change anyone’s singing career all that much. That’s if you only read the ad.

If you go to Brett’s site, or check out his name on the Web, you’ll find that there are plenty of people out there claiming he can do exactly what he says, and that he has done, for hundreds of recording artists.

It’ll cost you US$199 to find out whether what he claims is true. (Though he does offer a six-month money back guarantee.) He says he spent thousands learning all the ‘secrets’ from some old guru of a singing teacher. Why are there always ‘secrets’ in these ads? They seldom turn out to be secrets at all. It’s just that ‘secrets’ is a kind of magic word in direct marketing.

Could be interesting to try, nevertheless, when I’ve got a spare $199.

The thing that intrigues me about the site, however, is the picture of Brett Manning. He looks like a 24-year-old, yet he’s supposed to have been teaching for a decade – and was learning for years before that. Maybe the photos haven’t quite been updated?