Tag: forlorn

Finishing on a Low Note

I usually associate “finishing” with sporting events. Think about the finish line of a car race, the eighteenth hole of a golf tournament, or the ticking seconds of the clock as a football game runs out of time. In these scenarios, the finish can be a tense, hold-your-breath moment, triggering a burst of euphoria if your favorite takes the win. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to reflect on the completion of my Lego Grand Piano. Tense? Hardly. Held my breath? Not at all. Euphoria? Anything but. No, this finish feels a little forlorn.

Three thousand, six hundred, and sixty-two tiny pieces ago, I began the assembly of Lego’s Grand Piano, just about the closest gift to “perfect” my wife has ever given me.  Piano is inextricably connected with my childhood – hours upon hours of practice and playing and determined progress at a tender age, eventually succumbing to other temptations of time.  Piano introduced me to commitment, skill, and patience, even frustration and disappointment.  My parent’s big, black grand sat patiently in our living room, beckoning me to play every time I passed by.  The instrument was always perfectly tuned and sparklingly clean, thanks to my mother’s weekly persistence with a dust cloth.  I can still hear her sweeping the eighty-eight keys from one end to the other – a delightfully musical moment.

Korg’s “Sampling Grand” keyboard

Believe it or not, the Lego Grand Piano is the second gift of a piano from my wife.  On our wedding day in 1987, she presented me with Korg’s “Sampling Grand”, an electronic keyboard with weighted keys and surprisingly realistic sound, much less expensive than the real thing.  Thirty-five years later, the Korg still plays like a champ and still earns a spot in our living room. (Unlike the Lego version, the Korg was already assembled when I got it.)

The start-to-finish journey of my Lego Grand Piano has been a more enjoyable ride than I expected.  When I opened the box last Christmas, I remember my jaw dropping a little, not only because I never saw the gift coming but because of the sheer complexity of the project staring up at me from the box  That’s a complicated-looking instrument, I thought.  That’s a ton of pieces, I also thought.

The unopened Lego box sat on my home office desk for a couple of weeks, looking elegant without even being touched.  My curiosity eventually got the better of me and I finally had a look inside.  Talk about intimidating.  A 500-page instruction manual awaited, along with forty-odd individual bags of pieces.  Even though this was a twenty-one-step journey, some steps involved “sub-bags” of tiny, tiny pieces, grouped separately so as not to escape!  Was I really brave enough to dive into this mess?

Contents of the box

The first chapter – shared with you readers on January 6th of this year (a date we Americans wish to forget) – spoke to my hesitation when I wrote an entire post about building the piano without actually building anything.  I just poked around the box and marveled at the contents and felt pretty good about even opening up the box.  But I did get started seven days later, and the subsequent journey was wholly satisfying and something of a weekly escape.

Leftovers

At first, I made several mistakes as the piano began to take shape.  Since the pieces are small it’s easy to place them backward, or even mistake one for another.  I also fretted when extra pieces remained after a given section of the build. (For the record, there were 38 extra pieces when all was said and done.  I can fit all of them into the palm of my hand.)  There were at least two instances where I had to disassemble several pieces to get back to the point where I’d done something wrong.  Those moments were utterly unnerving and confidence-shattering (take your pick).

[Author’s Note: After weeks and weeks of building the Lego Grand Piano, it only now occurs to me I’m describing one type of keyboard while typing on another. Don’t you just love the coincidence?]

So let’s finish this post by revisiting “finishing”.  What should be a moment of triumph feels a tad sad instead.  After the first few weeks, the build of the Lego Grand Piano became a weekly treat, accompanied by some of my favorite classical music.  Many stages were mini-surprises, not knowing what section I was building until the last piece was in place.  And of course, sharing the progress with all of you was also fun.  One reader admitted she would first scroll to the bottom of a post before reading my weekly topic.  She couldn’t wait to find out how the piano was coming along.

So, here we are now, finally done.  Next week’s post will feel a little empty without a reference to the Lego Grand Piano.  By total coincidence, my daughter got married this past weekend, also the end of a journey (months of planning and all).  My son just turned 30 yesterday, the finish line of his 20’s.  And soon, my wife and I will point our cars east for our move to South Carolina, the finish of our days in Colorado.  To be finished is to be sad?  You bet it is.

I’ll dive into another Lego build one of these days, I promise.  Maybe I’ll even take you along for the ride again.  In the meantime, I’ll flip the hidden switch and play the piano every now and then.  I’ll also find an acrylic box in which I can display this magnificent project.  After all, with my mother’s good habits in mind, I don’t want it gathering dust.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #21

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

The finále of the Lego Grand Piano assembly, as expected, was the build of the pianist’s bench and the placement of the sheet music onto the stand.  Bag #21 – of 21 bags of pieces – was bigger than I expected.  I mean, a bench is a seat with four legs, right?  Not according to Lego.  This bench raises and lowers with the little dials you see on the sides, to accommodate the height of our fictitious pianist.

       

Let’s give credit where credit is due.  The Lego Grand Piano was designed by the guy you see below, Donny Chen, a 33-year-old piano teacher and tuner from Guangzhou, China.  No surprise, Donny’s passions are the piano and Lego.  He’s a lot smarter than I am, evidenced by this quote: “I’ve always seen toys as something to be imagined, not just played with”.  Me, I just played with toys.

[Pianist’s Note: The Lego Grand Piano DOES play, I know it does.  I just have to figure out two things.  One, how did I manage to disconnect the cable to the sound box buried deep within the piano frame?  Two, how the heck am I going to get it reconnected?  That’ll take more time than I have today and is part of why I “finished on a low note”.  But I’ll share a concert with you when you least expect it – I promise. “Stay tuned”.]

Donny Chen

Running Build Time: 14.0 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Jarratt and Reedman’s Hooked on Classics. Leftover pieces: 1

Conductor’s Note: Apologies to the purists but I just couldn’t resist this somewhat tongue-in-cheek accompaniment to the final chapter of the Lego Grand Piano.  Hooked on Classics is a top-ten Billboard Hot 100 hit from 1981, a mashed-up perversion of bits of the world’s most recognized classical pieces… overlaid on a drum track.  It was recorded by Louis Clark and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and bred several spin-offs (ex. Hooked on Romance)  Hooked on Classics came along just as I was wrapping up my childhood piano “career”.  I much prefer the originals of the several classical pieces in Hooked but maybe this peppy number is your cup of tea.  Have a listen:

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Ribbons and Bows

My wife and I went to the movies the day after Christmas. The theater lobby looked a little forlorn after the holiday rush. There weren’t many patrons besides the two of us. The employees wandered here and there without seemingly much to do. The concessions were woefully under-stocked. In fact, as we stood at the counter, we realized there were no nachos, no hot dogs, and not a single bottle of water to be found. Did all those “Star Wars” groupies buy up everything before us?  Did a link go missing in the supply chain? Can we blame the aliens?  Ah, but popcorn.  At least they had popcorn.

I can’t see a movie without cradling a big ol’ tub of theater popcorn.  Don’t ask me what chains the two together, but popcorn and movies are a heaven-on-earth marriage.  It’s like that Kacey Musgraves Christmas song about a ribbon without a bow.  The movie might be Oscar-worthy but there’s a big something missing without popcorn.  The next time you watch “Field of Dreams”, consider the ball field is surrounded by acres and acres of corn.  As if you need a metaphor.

Popcorn wasn’t always an option at the movies.  In the early 1900’s, the theater-going experience was different.  The auditoriums were much smaller.  The carpets and seats were lush and expensive.  The patrons tended towards upper-crust.  And the movies themselves… had no sound.  Any one of those reasons made popcorn a poor concession choice.  Theaters didn’t want kernels ground into their pricey floor coverings.  Patrons didn’t want a snack associated with the lower-class circuses and sporting events of the time.  Most importantly, no one wanted to hear crunching and munching while trying to read the subtitles of a silent movie.

The Great Depression – and “talkies” – ushered in the union of popcorn and movies.  A broader cross-section of patrons sought the theater for an inexpensive distraction to the hard times.  Popcorn was easy to mass-produce, and the smell and pop created an effective lure for the concession stand.  Crunching and munching was no longer a concern up against soundtracks.  And popcorn was affordable, even to those who could barely scrape together enough for the movie itself.

Do you prefer “mushroom” or “butterfly”?

There’s a little science behind popcorn to get it from husk to Hollywood.  Growers developed the appealing “butterfly bud”, with several “ears” to trap the butter and salt.  Growers also worked to shape popcorn to take up as much room in the bag as possible (less air), giving a more satisfying feel to the overall weight.  They coined terms like “expansion rate” and “mouth feel” and “finger control” – anything to make you buy more of the fluffy stuff.

All this talk of popcorn reminds me of a children’s book about a farmer who grew acres and acres of corn.  He’d store his corn in giant metal silos next to his field.  One summer day, the silos got so hot the corn inside started to pop.  The farmer heard the sound and climbed on the roof of one of the silos to see what was going on.  Suddenly the silo burst open, and the roof started rising above all that popcorn.  Up, up, up went the farmer.  When the popping finally stopped, the farmer was high up in the sky with no way to get down.  His neighbors came from miles around to try to help him.  The fire department’s ladders weren’t long enough.  The town had no helicopter.  Finally, the people talked it over and realized all they had to do was start eating the popcorn straight from the silo.  Down, down, down came the farmer until he was safe.

As much as I love popcorn, I only seem to eat it at the movies.  When my son was in college, he admitted to going to the theater, buying popcorn at the concession stand, and… leaving the building.  Who does that?  Then again, there’s nothing wrong with the idea (high price aside).  It’s like having turkey when it’s not Thanksgiving.  Or dessert before dinner.  Seems a little off, but really, why not?

As for me, I’ll continue to enjoy my popcorn with my movie.  I’ll pay the ridiculous price for the shrinking bag, and still eat too much.  The only problem with this scenario?  Finding decent movies anymore.  They seem to be fewer and further, at least on the big screen.  Thank goodness for Netflix and my air popper.

Some content sourced from the Wall Street Journal article, “How AMC Gets Its Popcorn From Stalk to ‘Star Wars'”, and from the Smithsonian Magazine article, “Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?”