When I first played “Flight of the Bumblebee”, I was happy about my performance, at least for the most part, during the first ten years or so, but I eventually started to feel there was something missing. What it really needed was for my partner to play it at the same time on another piano, duelling bumble bees, as it were. And after a few years of that, we thought the experience could stand to be enhanced if we rearranged Rachmaninoff's transcription (or most of it) for stride piano. That actually worked. For a while. Of course we increased the tempo a bit, and then a bit more, and that's when I noticed my partner was having some difficulty, which I guess everyone knows about.

I had to get a newer, faster partner. That worked out well for a bit. Then I read an interesting article in Psychology Today that explained how people had been wrong about bumble bees' wings for years, they didn't realise they were exploiting air viscosity!

Oops! New partner! And a lot more practice. And more vaseline, of course.

Labels: New Improved