Blue sky all over the place

So, just a few minutes ago I finished another Charmed book. (More about it later.) I was pondering if I should start Storm Front (a Dresden Files book) or the Web of Arachnos (first City of Heroes novel), which arrived today (hmm, neighbourhood? sorry about the whole window-shattering!squee.)

Right now I'm enjoying a lot myself in Paragon, so I jumped to the Web of Arachnos and while reading the acknowledgments I've found this:

Thanks to the Moody Blues, Las Ketchup, George Harrison, ..., Kylie Minogue, ... All sources of constant musical inspiration.

(emphasis mine.)
OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. LAS KETCHUP HELPED THE AUTHOR WRITE A CITY OF HEROES BOOK. LAS KETCHUP. THIS IS SO AWESOME!!
(so, yeah. Hmm... At least we didn't get the new windows yet?)

I so want to know what the author knows about them (and how he discovered them, too!). Come on! The book predates their appearence at the Eurovision Song Contest. (The book got published in 2005, las Ketchup went to 2006's ESC.)

I'm so proud of them :'D

So, my opinions about Inherit the Witch, the Charmed book, you can has them.

( Spoilers )

I can't play the piano. The only music knowledge I have is what I remember from my junior school days, and it's not really all that much.

In my school we had music as a subject almost every year. Sometimes it was music history, sometimes it was music theory. And I enjoyed music theory. I enjoyed it, alot. We also learned to play the recorder.
It was fun. Of course we never got past a basic level, but I ended being able to read a score without too much trouble.

I had lots of fun torturing my neighbours playing the recorder when I was done with my homework. Just because I wanted to. I played even the pieces we didn't practice at school, trying to see if I got them right, and what kind of music they hid.
I wasn't specially good, but I enjoyed it.

I even knew that sometime in the future I wouldn't be able to read and play a score at the same time, so I translated the sheets from score to a form I could read even if I forgot where the La is supposed to go in the pentagram. It was mostly the name of the notes with its duration floating above. That is because I was sure that, even if I forgot how to read a score, I still would remember how long a note is looking at its picture.
(And I was right. Some years after that, when I was in High School, I had to lend my recorder to my sister. While searching for it I found all my school scores and all the translations I did for "my older but dumber self". I was hit by nostalgia and an urge to slap my young self.)

Fastforward to three months ago, when I was still exposed to the awesomeness that is the Nodame Cantabile anime (and drama. And the manga, of course), and my father asked me out of the blue if I ever wanted to learn to play an instrument.
The truth is that playing the piano is something I wanted. Most of the time I didn't think about it, because I had other things to pay attention to (read: high scores in high school were my priority), and music schools were (and are?) expensive, and it's not like I wanted my parents to spend extra money just because I wanted to push some keys.
(As a side note, the violin is also that has interested me for as far as I can remember, but it seemed so much harder than the rest of the instruments.)

So I spent last Saturday's morning (my brain is slow, yes) surfing the internet and searching information about music theory books, evaluating the idea of learning by myself how to play the piano. I feel it's a bit laughable, trying to learn something like this by yourself. Because you don't know how to proper position your fingers, or what is the proper move to reach a key from another one and which finger should do it, etc.
I guess if you only aim to toy with an electric piano playing OSTs from a show, it shouldn't matter all that much. Perhaps I'm wrong. Still it's what I'm going to do.

I found some good sites that have a lot of anime sheet music:
* josh's anime sheet music collection
* Ichigo's Sheet Music
That's a good way to start. Things like "The Sunlit Garden" from Utena (a friend that studies piano teached me how to play the first part :D), anoy chocobo piece of any Final Fantasy or "Onara Taisou" from Nodame Cantabile seem really fun to play.

I've also found some solfa basic tutorials, so I'm going to give them a try. Time to see if my young self can help me remember how you read a score.
But first, I'll need to buy an electric piano.

As a bonus!link, free-scores.com. I haven't explored it yet, but it seems people can upload scores and include tips and their own playing :D

First day of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth!

So, let's start with something easy: a meme! :D

Taken from here:

What kind of topics/entries would you like to see me posting about? Any particular questions you've always wanted to ask me but have resisted because the answer would be a huge essay? Ever want to wind me up and watch me go on a particular topic? Anything you've heard me say "I should write that entry about $foo I've been meaning to write" and have been patiently waiting for?