i was hoping that some of you more seasoned players would help me settle a long term debate i have been having wity some colleagues in relation to the link below. at 3 mins 10 seconds the piano player plays a song which i believe nobody on earth past or present could possible play. maybe i am wrong? what do you think?



thanks
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it does sound like two people are playing.
either that, or some mighty incredible hand-crossing.
pay close attention to 43 seconds into the video. the left hand is clearly being played while he does double octaves with both hands.

i'm gonna call bs
any movie that lists a "re-recording mixer" in the film crew credits is suspect.
hiromi's stride piano exhibition her  "the tom & jerry show" would beat that in a contest:

its a close one jazz+ but i disagree. she is amazing........
for reference, the first piece is "the crave."  the second piece is "the fingerbreaker/fingerbuster".

i've seen this movie several times and i'm pretty sure that the final piece is impossible.  also, almost all of the pieces from the movie are in the soundtrack book, but that final one is conspicuously absent, probably because there's no way for two hands to play it.

however the point in all this for those who haven't seen the film is that he's a tatum-esque musical prodigy who just may be the best on the planet.  hence the bit of fantasy with that last piece.
you guys are talking about a "hollywood" production. it seems as if you are discussing it as if it were a reality? i guarantee you hiromi would win the gold medal over those uninteresting, grim, unmusical, artificial, cartoon like characters. hiromi would win on the artistic merits alone.
by the way they sped up the audio in that hollywood production.
hiromi is beyond description.  i vote for her hands down.
i would like to point out that one of those "uninteresting, grim, unmusical, artificial, cartoon like characters" is supposed to be jelly roll morton, and that the two "real" pieces are his compositions.  

in real life, morton won a number of competitions on both the strength of his original music and his fantastic classical repertoire that he had memorized over the years.
it really is possible to play the piano so fast that the strings become hot enough to light a cigarette off of.

everyone knows that.
well, the two real pieces suck.  the emporer has no clothes.
those tunes are nothing more than mechanical finger exercises.  i don't care who wrote them.


forget cigarettes. throw a couple of steaks on the strings!
funny i watched that movie long ago.  i never questioned whether the piece was real or not.  never really thought about how they did it.
i just sat back and enjoyed one of the best movies i have ever watched in my life.  what a story!  i loved that movie.
yeah. when i'm really working out at the piano, sometimes i like to take a couple ears of corn, wrap 'em in tin foil with a little salt and butter, throw 'em over some of the bass notes, right around b1, so they cook nice and slow. meanwhile, i might take a piece of salmon put it on the upper-middle register, so it gets a good, fast sear on it.
i'm a really big fan of jelly roll. maybe a listen to the original recordings would  garner more respect.

"the crave" is an excellent example of jelly's famous "spanish tinge".
i agree mike.  the piano duel is actually a small part of what is a very good film and in many ways a valentine to music.

cynbad, while i agree with you that the fingerbreaker is not one of jelly's best pieces (as suggested in the movie, he wrote it with the specific intent of creating "the most difficult piece of jazz music" ever written), i think that the crave is one of his classics.
i can do that trick.

on the silicone chip of my electronic keyboard.
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