One you’ve heard a lot of times. Otherwise, you just have to try different ones and see what you like. I like Mozart (Marriage of Figaro, Magic Flute). The music is pretty and it’s a little more laid-back than some of the dramatic Italian operas (Turandot), German ones (Wagner), and it doesn’t sound like a party (Carmen).

Tosca is one of my favorites, and Fidelio too. You can always find arias or clips on Youtube to get an idea if you might like something.

You might try lieder (classical songs) too. They tend to be more soothing. It’s usually just a singer and a piano, no big orchestra. I like Schubert, something like Die Schöne Müllerin (the Fair Maid of the Mill), or Brahms.

There wouldn’t be any “h” if you thought of it in terms of Spanish sounds.

If you really get into the weeds, the funky spelling can sometimes give you a clue about how the word is pronounced. (But only sometimes.) For example, “rhetoric” can have a bit of an “h” sound, especially in British English. I notice it some in American English too, but it can vary from person to person.

Or “gnats.” The “n” is a tiny bit different than if you said “Nats,” like the baseball team. You obviously don’t say the “g,” but the tongue comes up a little in the back of your mouth, almost like you were going to say a “g.”

That’s nothing to worry about, it’s just something I’ve noticed.

It sounds like you’re thinking about the words and playing with them, which is always a good way to learn. I remember being a kid and laughing about g-nats and k-nees. You know, when you say all the letters and really exaggerate. After a while, you just know it.

My go-to is to look at the word for a while, listen to the pronunciation a few times, and try to say it. If I hear the word again, I can usually see it too. I get a transcript in my head when someone says something, or even when I think something. It’s just always there.

If I forget the spelling, the transcript will get blurry or stop. So it’s usually easy to remember the spelling, and if I forget it, I really want to look it up.

I don’t need glasses. Haven’t had my hearing tested, but I think it might be better than average. I can hear high frequencies annoyingly well, 20kHz or a little more (checked with a spectrum analyzer). It’s fun to listen to the high harmonics in music. Vacuum cleaners and electric cars are less fun.

I can usually hear my muscles and bones moving. It’s very quiet and low frequency, and the muscles rumble. I can usually tune it out though.

Hearing is a backup sense.

That might vary by person, but for me it’s not. If I had to pick between being able to see and being able to hear, it’d be hearing, hands down. Being able to see is amazing and I’d miss it, but hearing is just a whole other dimension.

Being able to know how someone is feeling, just by hearing their voice. Listening to music and hearing all the shapes, colors, and feelings that come with it. The colors aren’t always ones you can see, like blue or yellow. It’s hard to describe. I’ll close my eyes and just listen at a concert (not the whole time) and same with TV, a lot of times. I usually remember it better that way.

If I have to find something in a backpack, I’ll often do it by feel. I probably look like a raccoon washing its food, but it just works for me. You can tell things apart by feel and sound.

It’s impressive to see the big ones in person. It takes them about 70 years to get 6 feet tall. They can live to be 150 and weigh over a ton. Seeing how the sun reflects off of the stone cliffs at sunset is neat too (Arizona). And how many stars you can see at night.

I don’t miss the desert (I’m made for the cold), but there are fascinating things about it.

!lemmySilver

Show some love to a big bird, and the light is amazing too.

Ohhh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

There are different ones for different kinds of writing (general, academic, journalism, and more). Chicago Manual of Style is one of the general ones. It’s good, and considered authoritative, but you have to buy a copy or an online subscription.

A free one that I like is Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab from a university). It’s easy to understand and has good info.

Fascinating. It almost seems like it would be a liability having a hole to your lungs right in the middle of your tongue. But I guess it works when you can just swallow your food whole and maybe don’t even have to drink water (?). Maybe a short path to the lungs is helpful for flying.

The title picture is amazing, both the mom’s expression and the fluffy chick that’s all mouth. Do you happen to know what the hole in the roof of their mouth is? At least it looks like a hole.

A light swoosh is a good way to put it. You can hear it a little bit when they take off and land, but otherwise it’s really quiet. They’re impressively big up close.

It looks so pretty like that. The eagle owls are striking too. Their orange eyes don’t stand out as much as you might think.

That’s an interesting piece, and what a tempo. I had forgotten that Bach (CPE anyway, I forget about JS and the others) wrote those really short piano pieces. Seems like they would take quite a bit of skill to play.

I like the style of the channel you linked. Direct, no fluff, lots of useful info. The kind of thing it’s getting harder and harder to find, unless you already know about it. I watched one of his videos on Für Elise. That’s one of the first songs I remember hearing on the piano, and the first one I tried to play.

I originally just wanted a cheap-ish keyboard so I could learn the pitches for singing. That’s really what I’d love to learn. But the piano is starting to win me over.

What song are you working on? I’d be curious to look for the sheet music on Musescore and try to look for the things you mentioned. It’s one thing to read about it, and another to sit down and try to read/play through it yourself. And then it’s usually easier to hear in other songs too.

Have you learned about this just from piano lessons, or are there other places (online or otherwise) that you go to learn or get inspiration?

Ohhhh. That makes sense and answered one of my other questions too (how do you change keys). There’s probably a lot more to learn about that too, but for now I’m just happy that that clicked. Sometimes you just need the right explanation:)

I was going to write more, but I’ve been up way too long and I gotta go conk out.

I’ve heard that a lot, and I always thought it had to do with lazy talking (not moving your mouth much). I do think that’s part of it, and some people do that more than others.

But the thing about having a potato in your mouth is it pushes your tongue down and back, into your throat. Which is something you need to say the American “r” and a lot of other sounds, like “w” and the dark L like in “pull.” It’s hard to teach, and very hard to unlearn. It’s part of the characteristic American sound.

German is basically the opposite. You can see the difference here, with a German speaker talking in an MRI. There’s a lot of space between the back of the tongue and the back wall of the throat. And here’s a picture of someone saying an American “r”. The base of the tongue is all bunched up in the throat.

Funny, I was just learning about dominants. I think I get the idea of secondary dominants, but the technical language kind of makes my head spin.

I used to think I didn’t have a musical bone in me, but it turns out I do. It pretty much got started because a friend showed me his keyboard that felt almost exactly like a real piano. And let me fiddle with his electric guitar. It just sounded so cool.

Well punned :)

And yeah, I like the juxtaposition when opposites intersect.

Fascinating! Maybe I’ll get a chance to stop by there if I’m ever in Pittsburgh.

It looks so small in that picture, but like a lot of small birds, they know how to project. The one around here is pretty active, and you can tell how far it goes by how the sound changes. It moves pretty fast.