You are my fucking hero

I want to say is poetic how it all fits, but that seems redundant.

Was it coincidence that you found something so fitting, like, did you just read a lot of poems? Or do you have a method for finding something to fit a theme/tone like that?

How did you not include those lines in the story? That is the cherry on top.

Loving it!

Post this in /r/storiesfromyourschool.
Also do you mind editing my subreddit into the post?

Thank you for that bittersweet story.

I can feel your cringe physically although it reminds me of my own awkward teenager moment.

I was part of the St. John's Ambulance Brigade as a school club and at one of our national meets, we were given a paper with a role and to introduce ourselves in that manner.

Mine was "Ballerina". And I was the first to go. So in front of around 200 people, I thought "fuck it, go do it and get it over with", I ran up to the stage and did a leap with a mid-air twirl. Bowed femininely and introduced myself and my school while in that stuffy uniform.

As a guy, I walked down embarrassed and promised to kill myself and ensure CPR won't resuscitate me. To my horror, everyone else haphazardly did their introduction, just walking up normally and using words to "play their role"; "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Officer So-and-so from...".

Sometimes at night I bury myself in the pillow when my mind replayed that moment. Looking back, it did help me get to know more people...

Yay, now the whole class hates me!

I loved this story and glad you made top marks. I had a similar assignment in 10th grade. We got to choose any song and just add a verse of lyrics to it that made sense with the song. We had a choice to sing it recite it to class. I didn't have the guts to sing so I read my song lyrics aloud. I chose Tool "stinkfist" and still remember my added lyrics 16 years later.

I really admire you for singing your song!

Edit: words Edit 2: forgot to mention I made top grade, too! I was really proud of myself because I didn't add only a verse but another chorus(the chorus changes a bit each time).

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Dude those trills had me cracking the fuck up

I'd like to think that the chord she marked wrong was just one final honest mistake you goaded out of her.

I didn't ACE assignments

You didn't A-minor assignments?

The twiddle diddles are my fav 🙊

I've known a number of managers of each type:

• Malicious bastards who think they're smarter than everyone and are infuriated when someone doesn't pay them the proper deference
• People who take their job far too seriously and are annoyed by people who don't.

The first group are the ones who would have hammered you just for being smarter than the prof. They would come up with some interpretation of the rules that they could say you violated, give you an "F" and fail you for the semester.

The second group will seize upon any legitimate opportunity to fuck you hard. But when you absolutely nail it the way you did, they respect that (even if grudgingly) and will be completely professional about it.

I have a sneaking suspicion your professor was of the second type.

Absolutely A+ post. I could tell it wasn't embellished from the start, and the MIDI was icing on the cake after a fun story. Those little trills would be such a bitch to site read and get the jumps right haha.

So much dedication showing in this story, and this comment here. Much respect here for that :D

Honestly it seems like she got what she wanted. Even if just to spite her you put time and effort into an assignment and challenged yourself to for something other than coast. I call it a win all around.

Trust me she had a choice. She could have fucked you and dared you to go fix it.

The only one handing out Fs that day was you

You'd they'd be A minors when you ACE them.

3 points for a mislabeled note...sounds a bit steep.

I bet having to give you the 100% was the absolute worst part for her.

Hey, it was all a low-key effort to engage you all along op. And it succeeded!

I was a music major, when I was taking music theory we were required to use finale ( school had a computer lab in the music department with keyboards and finale/sibellius for student use), because we learned quickly that most of us had terrible handwriting and the professor didn't want to attempt to interpret it after the first semester's class.

My justice boner is throbbing so hard right now

Ugh. So. SATISFYING.

Thank you for sharing the story! And good on your principal for not being a lazy ass about it :)

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!!!

AAAAHHHHHH!!

She asked me multiple times if I should even be in advanced English just because I didn't care to write a paper on why J.D. Salinger chose the color red for Holden's hat.

English teachers like that can fucking burn. They're the kind of teacher that ruins a perfectly good class that can be enjoyed by many students.

I feel you. My high school English teacher was a crotchety old pirate who gave me C’s and called me shallow every single year on my report cards. When I got to college they had everyone write an essay during the first class to gauge our skill level. I and 5 other students scored well enough on the essay that we were given a grade of 90% and we didn’t have to actually take the class.

And I finished philosophy with an 87%. Shallow my ass.

You lost me at a perfect paper.

One of my AP English teachers was like that. I hated her. I went to class the literal bare minimum days that required her to give me a grade, and I turned in every single assignment that was required by the syllabus.

She even told me not to bother to take the AP exam, there was no point.

The second teacher kept her honest. I received A's for both semesters, AND I achieved the first 5 (highest score) ever for AP English taught at my school.

Now, when I run into her at the store, she tells my kids I was one of her favorite students, lmao.

And I tell them the truth.

I had an English teacher in high school who docked 15 marks (so 85 out of 100) from a poetry assignment because I wasn't old enough to be depressed. I went and asked her why she cut that much, her exact words were "14 year olds shouldn't be so jaded about life. I hope this will encourage you to be happier."

Right. That worked a treat.

On the upside, it could be the case that struggling through that hags course made you a much stronger writer!

Pics or it didn’t happen

My high school English teacher actually starting giving the class more 'free write' journal time after I started using mine to write a story. I should see if that journal is still around and try and finish that story someday.

I just took a college course in English. I'm 44.

I just threw together essays on the fly, learned how to cite sources on-the-fly (and re-learn it for every paper because who remembers this shit?) and turned in the rough draft.

Sadly, the prof says my work was better than 90% of the other crap she had to read.

why J.D. Salinger chose the color red for Holden's hat.

I was only in “honors” English, not AP, because for my entire HS career I refused to accept that any piece of literature could be metaphorical unless there was specific text indicating it was metaphorical.

My senior year, the honors English teacher also taught AP and said that she teaches the two levels identically, with the exception of two semester-long reading & paper writing assignments that AP gets and honors doesn’t.

This teacher was referred to as “sergeant last name” because she was incredibly rigid, and rumor has it she was a sergeant in the army reserves.

She had little sayings that I hated at the time, but love now. She would say things like “you will be up the proverbial creek without a paddle” and “that is a large amount of male bovine excrement.”

I decided this woman was insane when we read a poem called “Ode to the West Wind” and she tried telling us they the “west wind” was a metaphor for time, bringing death and new life, and that the leaves are poets that have come before and blah blah blah. Even re-reading that poem now, 15 years later, it’s just a garbage piece.

I argued that the dude who wrote it had gone to the park, in the autumn and wrote he poem because he liked the way the leaves were blowing around. I asked her what evidence she had of her metaphorical meaning. She tried pointing to a few things in the poem and I countered them with my literal view.

She eventually told me that “experts have all come to a consensus.”

I said something about the experts coming to a consensus about the emperors clothes and that we were supposed to be learning to read and interpret literature, not to read the consensus opinions of experts.

The rest of the year followed much the same way, but I did actively participate, make strong arguments to defend my literal views, and so I got an A.

The School of Hard Knocks. One of the classes is "Management of Body-Selling for Income Generation through Prostitution".

One of the Virginia state colleges

The school none of us go to.

Asking for a friend...

SUNY OCC is near Syracuse, NY. It’s a two year junior college. Good school.

Sounds like Penn State.

Literally any.

What’s funny is my high school music teacher did in fact have a thing with one of the students, pretty sure they went to jail... age is just a number eh?

Don't escalate to upper management, escalate to HR. Especially in discrimination situations, HR takes that shit seriously because they don't want to get sued. Management will stick together and sweep it under the rug.

It was the English, writing and rhetoric department that was notorious for it, abstract grading rubrics

Ya like dahgs?

College professors with tenure can do whatever the fuck they want

She sounds like an OK teacher. It helps to be liked to teach, but it's not required. If she did hold a grudge, she was obviously professional enough not to act on it.

What would be your reaction if she nailed it?

Just like “fuck... alrighty, respect.”?

Plot twist her perceived abrasiveness was just a ploy to trick you into realizing your full songwriting potential.

she sounds like a good teacher, she pushed you to work hard on that final project! You did a lot better than when you didn't try so good teacher

Well it's already one of my favorite instrumental songs, so, well done. Thanks for sharing!

Sounds like although she might have been a pain in the ass, this and the fact that she gave you a fair grade (ok, 3% less at first, but mistakes can happen) sounds like she wasn't too bad.

I like that little rapid twiddly bit (I'm not a musical anything). It seems to serve as a subtle "fuck you" distraction to anyone playing it.

I don't know much about Piano, (played trumpet for about 6 years), but that was a good listen and great story! Thanks for sharing the glory!

Hot damn, I can hear how frustrating it'd be to sight read this. Well done 2009-you.

I don't know much about music but that piece sounds beautiful. Great story too.

That's beautiful!!! It really sends the image of a flitting bird

Is there a way to download it? That might make a nice ringtone. :)

Wow, beautiful job. I didn't expect it to sound so good from your description! I love the trill. This is my favorite malicious compliance story so far!

Wow, I genuinely like that. Can't quite work out how all the lines fit in though.

Ah, there's no trill after from the door, so I'm having trouble getting that line.

The Finale thing you have, is that as a midi file? If so, should be relatively easy to turn it into a sheet.

I’m getting a Final Fantasy vibe, very cool.

I don't understand how you have the file in Finale, but don't have the sheet music. Isn't Finale software for writing sheet music?

It’s so good! It seem you really wanted to make that bitch of a teacher pay for it.

It sounds awesome!

Should've used a strange time signature too. Those are a PITA to sightread.

Dude that piece sounds like it'd be a really nice retro-rpg shop soundtrack

I really enjoyed that. thank you!

Wow I got goosebumps. This is a really cool piece!

I assume it's in Eb minor given all keys are flats except one? Personally I feel it lacks tension and release, which makes the resolution to the tonic key in the end seem not there at all.

Really nice!

That was beautiful for such a short piece, so good in fact I wouldn't be surprised if it was used somewhere for a production. Good work I love it.

Could I have a download link please, I would love to use it as my ringtone or something.

This is so good, dude.

I laughed so hard at that oh my god

This music, paired with the peom and your story, is my favourite thing that I've seen on reddit all day. I'm going to say goodnight Reddit, on that note!

As a pianist... you magnificent bastard.

It’s beautiful

Wow, thats actually really nice I dont know much about music but I can tell some work definitely went into it

Reminds me of Runescape music

The tweeting sounds like picking up a coin in Mario.

sounds like a beginning of an anime

That was beautiful.

Your song very strangely reminds me of Davy Jones' Lullaby from Pirates of the Caribbean, aside from the bird tweets. Very beautiful music btw. Do you still write?

That sounds perfect for the part in an anime or Japanese/Japanese-inspired action movie where the protagonist is beaten into the ground, gets up grinning, and wipes the blood from his mouth (right before the part where he shows off the move he's been spending all this offscreen practice on). Without the trills, it would be great for just about any "This bad situation didn't break my spirit... It just made me more resolute, and I'm looking forward to ending the situation" moment.

Pretty good

This is a great piece, by the way. I love it. I don't really know anything about music theory but it sounds like you have skill!

That sounds great, I really like it. I could imagine the sheet music being complicated but it does sound really nice.

Well it sounds crappy, congrats, you're not a composer.

Please provide the original sheet, I'm interested.

Sounds like trash

Sounds like a shitty ringtone.

I think (I'm on my cell so it's hard to compare) that on 14 there's a wrong note. Excuse my lack of musical knowledge: in the original one of the notes sounds (to me) "out of key" (half a step up) while in the transcription they all seem to follow it in that bit. I may just be mishearing, though

Don't have the sheet music readily available, but I have the piece linked in and edit now, if that'll sate your curiosity!

I can't read music so I have no idea how correct this is, but this is what I came up with.

^{Hi, I'm a bot for linking direct images of albums with only 1 image}

https://i.imgur.com/1DiwCy3.png

^{Source | Why? | Creator | ignoreme | deletthis}

Did you guys use a software or something? Because holy fuck, those 15th gaps.

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Plus you flipped her the minor bird!

I read an interview with Rothfuss once (either that or I was at a book signing and he spoke about it) where he says something along the lines that he was proud that actual musicians thought he must be one too, because of that scene. But he doesn't actually play.

Great, now I have to go reread the series. 🙄😩

FYI he does it the other way around. It's an injoke among musicians and rich snobs, he looks like he can barely play a basic piece, and the snobs all assume he's mediocre at best. Then breezes through another very difficult piece. But they don't understand the difficulty of each and are left confused, there was some laughing and goofing after the first by the musicians who understood, and the snobs who were being dicks, while all the musicians the player really respects start really making a scene laughing their asses off the second, making the snobs confused and embarrassed at not only not being in on the joke, but understanding what it could possibly be.

There was actually a really interesting YouTube video where a pianist and his student played the piano (with and without sightreading) with an eye tracking software. I don't know if that's the case for most pianists how they play, but it was certainly interesting to see.

https://youtu.be/GVvY8KfXXgE

I'm not a professional musician by any means, but did play the piano regularly for a number of years.

When I memorized a piece, didn't think of the notes so much as the sound. Like, my brain was humming it as I went along.

For sight reading, it is like typing on a computer keyboard if you're translating a document. You can memorize a few chunks at a time and move along pretty well as you hands will be used to certain word structures in much the same way that a musician would be able to pick up on the key and where their fingers should go.

The video in answer to this question irritates me to no end because the professor reading is a piss poor sightreader. He's looking at his hands for what amounts to a hymn. There are no large leaps. There's nothing particularly difficult, yet he's still checking his hands. If you want to see a good sighreader, go watch Tom Brier. He's not looking down at all and he's playing very large leaps.

Good sightreaders rarely look down. The god-tier ones virtually never do as they've made a point of developing their proprioception to basically never have to. Even the middle-of-the-road accompanists I work with who aren't full time musicians read better than that professors... harder music, never looking down. The really great ones seem almost inhuman by what they can read, how quickly and completely eyes up. I suspect that while most decent readers can get by with a few glances and say "close enough" the really great ones really made a point to eliminate looking altogether regardless of the interval.

So the reality is, most actual working performance musicians are very good readers, but many college professors aren't. Why? Because, like in many academic pursuits, the academic world and the real world aren't the same. Most piano professors got a "performance" degree in which they were trained to be classical concert pianists (a job which mathematically may as well not exist). This means a lot of focus on difficult rep and memorization... not reading... not stylistic versatility... not ear or comping skills.

So what job can you get with a piano performance degree... well, piano professor. So most people who teach these performance degrees have never really performed. Sure, they've played hard rept at venues provided by the school they went to, but virtually none of them have experience making a living as a working pianist. And their teachers didn't, and their teacher's teachers didn't It's just a continuing cycle of ivory tower ignorance. On the bright side, that seems to be ending. For one, there are no more of those jobs because people who land them stay until they die. People are slowly becoming increasingly aware that mot performance degrees will land you no work and focus on the wrong skill sets.

Check out these trumpet job numbers. You literally have an equal shot playing professional sports. Now, it's not that there aren't jobs out there, it's just that performance degrees prepare people for orchestral positions and classical work, while in the real world most people are expected to have jazz and contemporary skills as well as classical skills. There's very little room for specialists any more because so many people can do it all. Schools haven't caught up to the real world at all.

Music programs are very bad at informing their students of these realities. In my opinion, performance degrees for undergrads shouldn't even be a thing. They take advantage of naive kids and leave them with no marketable skills, no teaching certification in many states, and a huge debt. It's just fucking predatory. But to make it worse, sometimes it's not even malice... it's ignorance. The schools just don't know. Besides, nobody needs a performance degree to perform. Practice like you want to perform. Nobody cares about your sheepskin at an audition. They care if you have the skills to play the job.

As for sightreading, a huge component of good sightreading is theory knowledge. Your brain is doing a process of elimination and chunking info together. So if you're in the key of C, you already know 5 notes you won't be playing. You cross them off your mental list and go on high alert if you see accidentals. Additionally, for most standard music, you know you're going to end up with a lot of I, IV, V, and iv chords and maybe some V/Vs. A good player will know all of their diatonic chords in every key. So you're primed for what's likely and tend to guess ahead subconsciously.

Taking it up a notch, you probably know common progressions and know which chords are likely to follow other chords. And then to the chunking. Good readers aren't reading individual notes at all. If I see C E G B, I don't see 4 different notes... I see Cmaj7. The better a reader gets, the faster they at quickly analyzing and recognizing familiar chords and likewise, they have the technical facility to make those shapes.

Even if those notes aren't played as a chord, often melodic structure are just outlines of certain chord shapes. You hand will see that the overall outline is shaped somewhere around a G7 and you'll jump to that shape an execute the melodic fragment from within it.

Likewise, rhythm is like a snapshot. Good readers are usually seeing a whole bar or two at once of rhythm and just immediately knowing how it all goes and how things line up vertically.

There definitely is an approach that can be like speed reading where you're essentially playing the harmonic structure, or guessing it while ensuring melodic content is mostly correct. You're often not actually playing what's on the page, but faking the middle while maintain the feel and harmony. It's definitely a less accurate way of reading, but sometimes necessary if you're doing work as a rehearsal pianist and may literally be looking at a complicated accompaniment for the very first time in rehearsal.

But really, I think it's more like sounding out big words as a child versus just speaking them as an adult. You don't have to sound out opportunity. You just read it as a single unit. Likewise, large jargony words might slow down some but not people who either specialize in that area or are more familiar with them. Something like deoxyribonucleic acid. It would be a nightmare for a child, but less and less so to people who are familiar with it or work in a field where they see it a lot.

With music you get more familiar with reading styles you read more. Many amazing church pianists fall apart reading pop or jazz tunes because the chords are all unfamiliar and the rhythms absolutely destroy them. Reading a variety of styles with a variety of harmonic and rhythmic languages is important to being a good and rounded reader. Like anything else, the more times your brain has to access a particular set of movements or thoughts, the faster you get at it. Making yourself recognize chords and practicing reading a lot makes you faster at it. It's why most people are more comfortable in C than in other keys. They've just seen it more and have gotten used to processing it faster mentally and their hands are more used to executing technical patterns found within that key.

So eventually you don't really have to speed read most things... you literally just read so fast that it's a non-issue. You see, most people can read words faster than they can say them without even trying to speed read. But music rarely has that problem. So if you're very fast a processing the notes on the page and associating them what your hands need to do, you have to rely less and and less on the cheat-and-fill-in method. But many people get good enough and literally just don't care to progress because they are rarely asked to... so the plateau. I work with plenty of people are various levels who do well enough to get their paycheck and so they stopped working on personal improvement long ago. I really hope I never become one of them, though I can understand why they are the way they are.

When you're reading sheet music as you play, where are your eyes looking at the moments your fingers are hitting the keys? How many beats ahead are you looking?

When my fingers are hitting the keys, my eyes are likely on the next bar. Better readers than me are likely reading every further ahead. It depends on a tempo, density and other factors. I suspect the best readers are just consistently about a bar ahead. I read much better on trumpet than piano and I really just don't need to look much further ahead unless the piece is blistering fast. If a piece is really slow, I might just be looking at random things...people watching, spacing out.

In most piano situations though, I have to not only keep my eye on the music, but have a conductor/soloist/drummer/bassist out of the corner of my eye for the sake of communication. So looking at my hands is even more of a no-no. I've got too much important shit to look at. But most pianists have notoriously bad rhythm and very little capacity for following conductors due problems within piano culture, many of which I mentioned above, that just let certain skills slip. Sort of how wind players (except horns) tend to have shoddy ears, or vocalists tend to have terrible rhythm. Too many teachers let instruments get away with compounding weaknesses that are inherently to that instrument rather than addressing them.

As a trumpet player, I break the song into little phrases of a few notes. Once I start playing the phrase, I look ahead to the next phrase to prepare them. I'm probably a beat or two ahead of what I'm playing. I'm rarely more than 4 notes ahead. I'm sure this distance increases with skill level though.

Professional piano accompanists are reading entire phrases ahead when they sight read.

In concert band/orchestra pieces I generally read slightly ahead. In jazz I look at the entire phrase so I can understand how each note fits functionally. It's an automatic process for most musicians

I will admit, I was on the vocal side of things, and have damn near perfect pitch hearing. Sight reading came naturally to me, and I had background in Theatre and Opera so I usually memorized pieces even if I didn't need to.

I did do Marching Band/Concert Band/Jazz Band in high school, and I was... not good. I mean I could slap a bass, but clarinet and sax I was less than 1st chair I will say.

Basically I never really thought about it for vocal sheet music, and instrumental sheet music I was more fumbling through pieces trying to remember fingerings.

What makes ZUN's music characteristic apart from the ZUNpets?

Sounds the same, but the notation for a given length of note is different.

The difference is where the strong downbeat lies, and how the notes feel subdivided. Teacher Jack Sidney Brown puts it:

"In 3/4, there are three pulses per measure, each of which can be subdivided into two 8th notes. In 6/8 (unless the tempo is very very slow), there are two pulses per measure, each of which can be subdivided into three 8th notes. (This is a common example of the difference between simple meter and compound meter.)"

to go along with what retrosteve said, 3/4 is Apple-Apple-Apple while 6/8 is Pineapple-Pineapple

The difference is in what kind of note gets the beat. In 3/4 the quarter note gets the beat, and there are three quarter notes per measure. In 6/8, the eighth note gets the beat. For some pieces the difference is difficult to discern as a listener, but in most cases it’s a noticeable difference as a player.

basically two main reasons: the key signature and the little bird twiddles.

a key signature tells you what notes are altered in a particular key. the notes on a piano are named with the letters A B C D E F and G, and depending on the key signature any number of these notes could be raised (sharp) or lowered (flat). so in OP's song they wrote a song in the key of e-flat minor, which means the notes in the key are A flat, B flat, C flat, D flat, E flat, F (not flat!), and G flat. since the F isn't flat, the player can't just think "oh everything is flat, i don't have to worry about which notes are and which aren't". they have to keep an eye out for the one note that isn't flat because it could show up anywhere. and since the chords move relatively quickly in OP's song, the player has to think fast to avoid overlooking that one note.

the bird twiddles are a pain because the main melody of the song is played with the keys in the middle of the piano's range. to play the twiddles you have to take your right hand and quickly reach toward the right side of the piano to where the higher pitches are, make sure you find the correct notes, then quickly reach back down to where your right hand just was to continue playing the melody.

No one's a winner in that movie, most of all those people who see it who aren't musicians and walk away thinking they understand something about how a person becomes a skilled musician.

I watched that movie the night before I started my undergrad in Music Performance and it gave me nightmares.

How could she believe that this would "destroy" this person? I believe you are assuming this from the directed context of the story, that in her glance to OP she believed that OP would choose something "embarrassing" because of "low effort" and is directing this assignment out of spite. Right?

The problem is that doesn't make sense. Low effort producing "correct" work suggests an advanced understanding of the subject matter, consequently: it would be illogical to assume that OP would even fail if they put in only "low" effort. The perceived goal from the beginning was to get OP to put effort in, which was accomplished. Now, anyone can argue that she was actually motivated by only spite, or was jealous that OP was able to skate by with low effort, which of course I have to agree because I don't know her true intentions nor does anyone else. ...but again, the entire basis of this story is built around the effort put in. There was effort put in, and she may or may not appreciate this victory. The emotional motivation doesn't matter.

Can you ELI5 what her comment meant.

Sure, I'm not disqualifying the post's placement in this sub. His intent is malicious and he complied. Doesn't mean that she didn't get what she wanted as well. So the price was embarrassment, she's a teacher, she knows how to deal with embarrassment. In the end, she wanted her student to actually do the work (what a bitch, right?!) and she got what she wanted. It's sad to me that teachers who take an interest in their students are villainized in stories like this. I mean, she's actually doing her fucking job here and this guy's like 'fuck, I don't get to be lazy so I'll just try to embarrass her!'. Why is the drive to embarrass her so motivating, but the fact that she actually gives a fuck about him and wants him to try just completely overlooked? Sad.

It's the icing on the cake for sure

The poem definitely seems to have been picked quite intentionally. Not just for the jab in its name, but also the one in its lyrics.

I have wished a bird would fly away, And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me. The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong In wanting to silence any song.

I took two semesters of music theory as an elective, it wasn't a particular fancy school, and you may be thinking of something more involved when you think of 'playing test' but I definitely recall having to come up to the piano and play very simple things to demonstrate a grasp of the concept being tested. Seems like a playing test to me. And OP never said they went to prestigious school. My musical instructors ranged vastly in skill level.

I feel like calling it a humblebrag or bullshit might be projecting a little bit on your part. They could be full of shit, but you could just as likely be out of touch with what a run of the mill musical education program looks like too.

My comment was removed, but I was saying pretty much the same thing. I studied music for about 15 years, and did so as an undergraduate as well, and none of this sounds accurate.

E flat minor is not difficult to play, and a competent sight reader wouldn't have trouble with that piece. Also, nobody refers to E flat as "the one with 6 flats in the key."

Oh well, it was still kind of a fun read.

So either it's fabricated/highly exaggerated or his university hired the most incompetent person they could find for the position.

OP already stated that his professor is a flute player, not a pianist.

All the professors I had (and several students too) could play this piece after looking at it for 5 seconds. This is the dumbest part about this post.

This. OP wanted to make the most difficult thing he could think of so he decided the left hand should consist entirely of block chords using almost exclusively half and quarter notes? This would be totally trivial for any professor I've ever had.

Furthermore, the big trick was supposed to be that he wrote it in Eb minor? Really, that's the big dirty trick? Every music student knows all of their scales inside and out after a few semesters. The way OP tells it it sounds like this is the first time she's ever encountered such an alien concept as six flats in her life.

The first one because after seeing the music the professor glares straight at op. "O OP, no one else could possibly have made such a tempestuous piece, I know it can only be thee!" Yeah right

Or she could read his name written on the assignment that he turned in. I mean, of all the things to doubt, that one's pretty plausible.

thank you i thought i was alone

/r/iamverysmart

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That's completely fair to question, but kinda weak to assume I hadn't written my name on my homework assignment and accusing me of humblebragging through it. It's also a little flawed to say all university professors know their shit. Trailing spouses are a thing, and her husband was extremely talented and courted by the university. She was a decent(-ish) teacher, but not performer. Currently, as I'm aware, the university has some younger professors teaching theory and are quite talented on the piano. Had I taken the course a few years ago instead of a decade ago, none of this would have gone down--'Sauce' (if he still went by that nickname while teaching) wouldn't have had a bit of trouble playing this.

Also, the playing tests (as I've mentioned elsewhere) were literally a simple thing like "play the C major scale" (F and G were the other two) with a little sticker on middle C for us to start on in case we couldn't find it. The bar was set amazingly low, as were her expectations. Going into something expecting throwaway-level writing puts you in a state of mind that's hard to pull yourself out of if you're presented with a challenge you're unprepared for.

As far as enharmonic equivalencies, you're right: weird we were on the same page. My only guess is that she either assumed I'd written in flats because it was a piano piece, or overheard me talking about it with my friends in the class, since I'd had this planned for weeks. Also, definitely didn't know that was a Phrygian chord when I wrote it--it just sounded like an interesting progression. TIL.

And here you are wasting time on a sub dedicated to gloating about minor malicious comeuppances. Why come to this sub if you act like some malicious compliance is stupid because the receiving person probably will never think of OP again? I didn’t know that had to declare each other mortal enemies for it to be good enough for you.

Let's just jump in!

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No, it was sublime. The extra effort to follow the letter of the demand to perfection while making it backfire on the original demand-er is exactly why I came to this sub. Too often the posts here are things like "my wife told me to just put the bag down anywhere, so I put it in a puddle". Yours was more Lex Luthor level.

I had a similar sort of thing happen when I was a sophomore, but it was a writing class. It doesn't quite fit with malicious compliance, though.

I was in this class, Creative Writing - Short Fiction, because I wanted to get better at writing short stories. It was a small class, and the teacher was almost certainly an adjunct, now that I think about it. She had been nominated for a literary award once, twenty years previous, but couldn't teach a starving dog how to eat steak.

She had some bohemian idea about everybody bringing in whatever they happened to be writing at the time and workshopping it. Trouble was, we didn't have the first clue how to begin, most of us. Rather than teach us anything useful about structure or plot, imagery...rather than analyze a few short stories, take them apart and play around with the elements, she sort of gave up and told us anecdotes about living in Paris in the sixties. Those of us who bothered to show up got used to setting her up with a leading question and letting her riff off on some tangent for the next hour.

The dean must have told her that she needed to base our semester grades on something concrete because one day we came in to find her passing out blue exam books. She said we were taking a midterm and she wrote a topic on the board for us to write about in the books. Whatever.

While she was passing out the books, one of my classmates asked her about the controversy of the day, some sports talking head made a potentially racist comment.

Did I mention she was African American and none of the students were?

She suddenly flipped out, shouting at the kid about how he shouldn't make racist comments, considering what "his people" had been through (the kid wore a chaim necklace, so: Jewish, I guess she thought). She got in his face and shouted at him for at least three whole minutes (and try that if you don't think it's a long time).

I couldn't stand it and I couldn't see how to get her to stop. So, for the first time in my dweebish academic career, I stood up. I grabbed my coat and bookbag, dropped the blank blue book on the teacher's desk, and said, "I'm sorry, I can't take an exam under these conditions," and headed for the door.

The teacher rounded on me cussed me out, insulted my mother, and after I got out into the hallway, threw a shoe at me!

I was pretty sure she was going to flunk me if she could, and I had a scholarship riding on my GPA. So I went to visit the dean the next day. He said he understood my concern and would support my decision never to go back to the class, but said my grade had to be based on something. I should write my final project and submit it to him (plus agree to let her apologize in person, which turned out to be unpleasant but a learning experience...maybe for both of us).

I went off and wrote the HELL out of that short story. I went through rewrite after rewrite, had all sorts of people critique it, put it away and then got it out a week later for more rewrites...

It was beautiful. It was poetic and eerie and concise. The imagery sang and whispered. I turned it in to the dean and got an A on the story and the course. I published that story the first place I submitted it, later.

And I never would have bothered working so hard if that woman hadn't pissed me off and scared me. Taught me a lot. Thanks for reminding me.

That, good sir, is the devil speaking.

Just played it on the piano, improvising moderately. It sounds great as a slow march without the trills. The flirtation with E major in the middle has much potential for creating interesting harmonies. The piece as a whole, if played with perfect fourths and fifths in both hands, sounds like it was influenced by central Asian music.

It's not about not checking the key; it's about that key being abnormally hard to sight-read. Any musician who sees that key knows right away they're in for a bad time (though most professional musicians are competent in all keys, it's still natural to be more comfortable reading the more common ones).

A student with perfect pitch would recognize the key based on the tonic (Eb, the root note of the scale) and the fact that it's minor. Other structural cues would help. The non-scale notes could also be noticeable by the fact they sounded wrong.

It's pretty believable and the fact that OP posted the song (in an edit) is convincing. It's very good fiction if it's fiction.

What a great answer.

so many of the posts on this sub are "I was a shitty student lololol! how dare my teacher expect me respect them, or my education!"

On the flip side, it's not like OP did anything bad to the teacher or anything. He composed a bit of a hard piece of music, the teacher spent a few seconds playing it, and life goes on.

In the end you're there for the degree, if you're already acing the class no one should be upset at you for being apathetic.

And then, after he gets and A, he still wants to rub the teacher's face in it.

Teachers are there to teach students, not embarrass them... Who hurt you?

Alright so here's an elaboration on what he meant, for those that have zero or limited background in music theory.

So every piece of music has a specific key assigned to it. This informs the performer which notes on the keyboard will be used for the duration of the piece*. The key of C major, for example, uses seven white keys and zero black keys. The key of A major will use four black keys and three white keys. C minor will use three black keys and four white keys. 80% of pieces never have more than three black keys assigned to it (leaving four white keys). This is because musicians tend to perform in keys that mostly use the white keys on a piano. Thus musicians are generally more comfortable playing in these keys, especially if they are sight reading a piece (performing it without ever seeing it before, so no chance to prepare or practice it).

The key of E flat minor will use five black keys and two white keys. It is rarely used (E minor and D minor are both right next door, and handle much better. They both have only one black key and six white keys).

* The key for a piece is a general guideline. There are almost always parts in a piece that instruct the performer to go "off the path" for one reason or another and play out of key. A note that is normally played on the black key might temporarily be played on the white key for one or more sections of the piece. This can make the key of E flat minor even more difficult to play. It would be harder to get into a flow with the already-difficult key when there are constant small changes. Imagine you're driving through the woods in a Ford Pinto. And this isn't you in the 70s driving a Pinto. This is one that was found under a pile of rubble at your local junkyard in 2018. There was a family of raccoons living in the trunk. It doesn't even have tires. And yet through the woods you drive, because those are your instructions. But your directions are being given by a GPS. You know how most GPS units will give you some notice? "In five hundred feet, turn left." Well this GPS is shouting directions at you the moment you need to take them. "OY MOTHER FUCKER TAKE A LEFT AT THE TREE" And you're just like "dude, there are hundreds of trees, which tree are you..." "HEY YOU MISSED THE TURN DIPSHIT. CALCULATING NEW ROUTE." "Dude I don't even have tires ffs" "AY DRIVE UP THAT WATERFALL"

Yeah I know, but did you get the joke tho

He was underachieving and she wanted him to work harder and she got him to do it! That is some excellent teaching.

Well to be fair, you can maliciously comply with people who don’t deserve it. We’re accustomed to bad guy stories because reading about harm to bad people feels more enjoyable, but this sub isn’t prorevenge or justiceboners or anything.

That said I think a lot of people have hangups over teachers and assume the worst of their crotchety old ways. I’m glad to see a lot of people recognising what the teacher had to work with/what they were trying to do.

The whole thing is like a humblebrag. I was so good i didn't need to pay attention in class. Composed a masterpiece that even the teacher couldn't play.

I like your optimism, but they're reading this thread to her in purgatory as we speak.

OP said in another comment that she was a flutist.

Is it possible to have more than 7 flats ? Why, for what key ?

As someone who does not play music and is tone deaf: Ok, but what does the version with mistakes sound like?

Now that's interesting. I've always noticed that for Brass players, flats are usually easier. As a Trumpet (and somewhat Mellophone and Trombone) player myself, the physics of the instrument just lends itself to flats rather than sharps. As opposed to string instruments, where you have a set note and can only go up from there (making sharps easier to think about), brass you go from your set harmonic downward by lengthening your instrument (making flats easier to think about). It's also part of the reason why most band pieces use flats in the key signature, and orchestra pieces use sharps in the key signature.

Yeah that’s typical for the flute though I’m pretty sure, C instruments play more flats at the beginning because the others have to play less sharps that way.

The proof is in the pudding!

Pianos learn sharps first typically.

Petty revenge is like... the whole point of this subreddit tbh. I think your malicious compliance was a thing of beauty.

It worked out really well for me because I was swamped at the time. I was put in two AP classes that I don't think I should have been in. I remember having my older brother teach me some of the math for my AP chemistry class because I hadn't learned how to do it yet. I was in wrestling and had a girlfriend that was out of highscool so I was usually out fooling around with her and then finishing my homework an hour before school started. I think the Diablo 2 expansion set came out that year as well. So, that only eats up about a million hours a day of a 16 year olds time. That class ended up being a very well needed midday nap to keep me halfway able to think properly at the end of the semester for finals.

I just played it and it's pretty fun, btw!

Did you throw in any double flats? That would have been amazing.

That's how I saw it. Glad I'm not alone.

Also some reposted pictures on /r/funny for cheap Karma

Wtf

(Thanks)

So because you didn't notice it, no one else did? Huh

Now I need to go find a piano on campus to try this on.

I'm now probably overly cynical thinking everything has an ulterior motive. If this is all true and organic, I am pretty damn impressed. Either way it was entertaining :)

Thats sensible. You don't sound like "that guy".

I'm also invested in your mother's career specializing in teaching gifted children. Did she focus on that in her education training or adapt into it? Curious about methods she learned or created. Sounds really interesting. What were some of her methods as a parent to make sure you didn't get by with shit? Know what, just put your mom on.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

You are a bot.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

Yeah. I like to pretend that you are all not real, just figments of my imagination.

Everyone on Reddit is a bot except you.

Cool story, albert.

Brothers in arms

It's rare to see a fellow musician post here and it's refreshing since my "music theory" isn't enough to write in any key I want

Aw, np. If you ever start taking commissions lmk lol