_This past week has seen countless mentions of the 15 year old Korean girl, Park Ji Min, singing a cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" on the Korean talent show KPop Star.

This is a talented young singer who did a great cover of the track. However I have a simple question:

Would we be as impressed by this performance if she was singing an original song?

Here in Australia I've seen this footage countless times this week and there are blogs all over the web mentioning the video. The media are certainly captivated by what she has done. But let's just be reminded that this is a very loyal performance of a song we have all heard before. Are we impressed by how like-sounding she is to Adele's original? Impressed by the young age? A combination of both?

I have written before of the way people listen to commercial radio and popular music - as it is generally easy, non-challenging and most of all familiar.

A greater level of talent would be required to not just nail a vocal performance, but to have actually composed the song. Again, I'm not discrediting this girl's performance. I am simply lamenting my belief that if she did compose an original song and perform it to the same level of expertise, we would probably never hear of it.

The sad, beautiful truth is that so much of the world's great original music will never find its audience.

_I was recently asked via a contact on YouTube whether the digital piano I play, the Yamaha P-155, is a good choice.

I have just replied and thought many other people could be wondering the same thing, as I did prior to making a purchase some time ago.

The detailed specs for the piano can be found on Yamaha's website. For those who are less interested in the numbers and specs, following is a summary of my responses to the questions I was asked earlier:

- Before I purchased, I had trialled the P-155 for touch and sound alongside some high end Kawai and Roland digital pianos and it stacked up easily as well (and in the case of the Kawai MP6 which is generally at a significantly higher price point, the P-155 sounded and felt better, more realistic, under the fingers).

- Many years ago I held the belief that keyboards with internal speakers were "low end", not as professional as those you have to plug in to external speakers. While sometimes a truism, this is not a solid rule. The quality of the internal speakers in the P-155 is fine, and part of the appeal for me with this model was the ability to sit down and just turn it on and play. Having played with synths in a studio environment for years, it is refreshing and more natural to have no need to put headphones on, turn speakers on, wait for the piano to boot up etc. It was closer to the experience of playing a real piano.

- Something you wouldn't think of and most people wouldn't think to mention - when you use a keyboard of some substance which has internal speakers, because the sound is created inside the keyboard there is a slight vibration you can feel through the keys as you play them - a sensation which feels a little more natural like the resonance generated by the strings of an acoustic piano.

- Like a wine, a car, or a restaurant meal, some people will judge an instrument's quality or lack thereof by price tag alone. This is a shame. Interestingly though, the Yamaha P-155 which retails in Australia for $2,199 actually uses the same AWM Dynamic Stereo Sampling sound engine as the Yamaha Modus H11 which retails for $18,999+. In other words, the wrapper may be different but the sound you're paying for is exactly the same.

As I did prior to purchasing, listening to and comparing clips of various piano performances on YouTube is a good way to get a feel for the quality of sound and sensitivity you can reproduce with various digital pianos. Hear the Yamaha P-155 put through it's paces further here.

Happy listening.

Last weekend I recorded a performance of my composition "Before April". In a strange coincidence, a few days later I read this post about the "Out Back Project", a 15-minute audio piece to be composed from the memories contributors have of their backyard. I immediately contacted the talent behind the project and am pleased to contribute my track as the score.

The title "Before April" refers to the time shortly before the arrival of my first child. At the time I was living in Sydney, in a unit, with a tiny grassed area flanked by a very tall graffitied concrete wall, the only thing separating us from the Gore Hill Freeway into Sydney.

I composed this track thinking of the complete unknown that lay ahead for us with the pending arrival, as I looked out to our very limited living space outdoors. That April we moved to Newcastle, returning to our roots, closer to family, in our first home with a large and varied outdoor environment for our little guy to explore. We have not looked back since, and the concrete wall I once saw from the window of my studio has been replaced with the top of citrus trees, rooves and an expanse of sky.

With that, please enjoy the track via the YouTube clip above. If it connects with you, you can download the track in the format of your choice from here. Enjoy.

Last weekend the world saw the Eurovision 2011 final. Overall, I found the artists this year entertaining, but I didn't really connect with any of the performances.

Some people may find the idea of connecting with any Eurovision performance laughable, but this year's event got me thinking back to something very memorable from a few years ago.

In 2009 I was in love when I saw Iceland's Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir. At the age of 19 she performed an incredibly strong song with confidence, power and a stand-out level of emotion. She was pitch-perfect, nailed the dynamics and just owned the arena. The stage backdrop and visual effects were tasteful, appropriate and relevant. And of course she looked gorgeous. It's astounding she didn't win.

The purpose of this post is simply to share my impression of how much I enjoyed that performance. Eurovision is often treated as comical fodder in the Western world. There are of course some great artists who perform on that world stage - though many, such as Jóhanna, don't seem to achieve recognition worthy of their talent despite such massive but fleeting exposure.

If you find a connection with a performance on any scale, spread the word. Let the artist know. Let others know. There are many undiscovered gems the world over.

Muscle memory is an amazing thing. The process of repeating a movement so frequently that it is committed to your memory, such that you no longer need to think about the action, it can just happen.

I've often thought how great muscle memory is as a musician. When learning a new track you will listen to it over and over - in some cases hundreds of times - before you feel fluent in the performance, not needing to think your way from one note to the next. There's a real sense of freedom when you can breeze through a once difficult part of a performance, later reflecting on how much repetition went into getting it to sound so "easy".

Sometimes I'll sit down at the keyboard and without any effort play through a piece I haven't thought of in years. No sheet music, no accompaniment, no recent listening - just the action stored in the brain... and it can sound as good as it ever did.

Earlier this week a friend of mine, learning piano, commented on wanting to learn the track "Army" by Ben Folds. In particular he mentioned the left hand arpeggios playing so quickly at times (check for example 1 minute 15 seconds into the video below).  

At first this would require a lot of conscious effort, but in time would be done with ease - as this performance shows!

Just today I was playing Dark Knight (below), a composition of mine well over 10 years old. The piece starts with a fairly complex left hand part, which continues regularly to keep the tempo well after the right hand melody joins in. Having not played the track in quite some time, this once tricky left hand line came out again with relative ease. 

Muscle memory - a musician's best friend.

I was recently asked to prepare a piano and vocal arrangement of a piece of music as a gift. In order to do so, I had to work through a series of steps: learn the music by ear, record the music (in data form) and transform that musical data into sheet music.

As this was a piece I had never heard before, something became evident when learning the music by ear - especially when playing my private recording of it alongside the original. There were slight but noticeable shifts in tempo.

So what? Well, I believe there is something inherently human about music, and as you remove elements of "human-ness" you diminish the emotional connection with the listener - and in turn the appeal.

I have written before about quantizing, a process often used in music to sharpen up the accuracy of timing. This can be especially useful in projects such as music notation where timing must be spot on to produce an accurate result. This tool certainly has a value.

However the process of quantizing takes away one of the human elements of music. As mentioned in my Auto-tune commentary, we are not robots and should not strive to sound that way! It is natural to move slightly ahead of or slightly behind the beat from time to time when performing. A perfect snapping into the strict timing of the beat simply sounds un-natural.

Take for example the song "Forever" by Ben Harper (below). The song generally sits around 83-85bpm, however in some sections this becomes more swift, in a way not likely to be noticed unless you are clicking a metronome of some kind along with the track. These subtle variations help give the song life and help strengthen the connection between performer and listener. The listener is washed along with the song.

Let your music have life.