The new Randy Newman album 'Harps & Angels' is doing well, many critics calling it the 'Album of the Year'. Here's a  voice and piano version of the autobiographical song 'Potholes'  recorded for Studio 360. Click on the Studio 360 link for an interview with Randy, including what he thinks about that  'Family Guy' sketch.

This is a chance to combine my Piano Passion with my love of rainbows. I have adored rainbows since my teens. In my younger days I would wear rainbow clothes, jewellery, carry rainbow bags. I am fortunate that where I live we have wide open skies and rainbows are easy to spot - we have SO many.

Here's my rainbow of pianos:

After decades of playing the piano in this position Linus must be crippled by now...

...man, what are they feeding that dog!

I just love! love! love! this sublime piano animation. It has charm, it's poetic, the music has been tastefully selected, the activated notes to me look accurate with the music.

a) I'm a sucker for player pianos - but the recordings have to be, as this is, from ye olde days.

b) You may have noticed I love animations with character.

This was done 11 years ago - a long time ago in computer animation terms - but I think it holds up beautifully today. Look out for when the butterfly goes into the piano mechanism.

Mike: you were doing computer animation with Pixar around this time - what do you think of it?

Here's the technical gen from the youtube page:

"Computer animated student film from 1997 featuring procedural animation of an upright piano driven by a MIDI file derived from a player piano roll arranged by Frank Milne in the 1930s.

Based on a concept by Brad Winemiller, it was produced by Kirk Bowers, Mark Fontana and Steve May at The Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). Additional modeling support (piano harp and strings) was provided by Phil Massimi. Software used was emacs (text editor) for modeling, Steve May's Scheme-based Animation Language ("AL") for animation, GIMP for texture maps, Pixar's RenderMan for rendering, and Side Effects' Houdini for compositing.

An early version of this film was originally created for a procedural animation class taught in 1996 by Rick Parent at Ohio State's CIS (now CSE) department. Additional contributors in that class included Bret McGee and Jeremy Loomis (early butterfly models). "

After featuring an invisible piano in the last post it's time to get back into the piano visuals again with our series about gorgeous and beautiful pianos. This is the first upright I've featured and is a one of a kind. It's a Brinsmead and for sale at PianoGrands.com (as always, I'm not on any financial  kickback from any sites I recommend)

Built circa 1888, commissioned by a man as a wedding gift for his daughter, it's 58" tall with hand-painted pictures, poems and music notation. Very feminine, original ivory and ebony keys and, we are told, in excellent playing condition.

  I have to finish this post with what is going to be my cry every time I post up some new luscious piano for sale: "Go on, buy it for me. You know you want to!"

Here's a memorable sketch by Rowan Atkinson dating back to 1979 (can't believe it's nearly 30 years ago since I first saw this!) where he plays an invisible piano. He's playing Beethoven so it follows on nicely from the Dudley Moore Beethoven stuff a coupla posts back.

If you enjoyed this pop over to my Scrumptious Blog where I've just posted up another sketch where Atkinson plays a set of invisible drums!

Here's a couple of piano album references from the 1970s. The first is the artwork of the snow-clad piano on a mountain for the 1977 Supertramp album 'Even In the Quietest Moments'.

Poor piano!

The second is from the 1976 Tom Waits' album 'Small Change'. He has a song on it called 'The Piano Has Been Drinking':

"The piano has been drinking

The piano has been drinking

The piano has been drinking

Not me, not me, not me, not me, not me."

Lucky piano!

Someone's used a snip of the recording to illustrate this bizarre piano contraption found outside the Red Lion pub at Cropredy.

At the time this was recorded I was a Beethoven freak and enjoyed every nuance. This is the 1981 version and I include it because this performance was the first time I heard it so it is special to me. If you're a purist and want to see a recording from the 'Beyond the Fringe' era in the 1960's then please visit:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlqD4mLvw&feature=related

Thanks to Mike, who alerted me to the following, my piano blog enters the 21st century!!! About time you cry!

So, if you're posh enough to have an iPod Touch or iPhone (I'm not) you can now have a virtual piano on it. Oooooooooo! Coz, you've all had sleepless nights waiting for this haven't you? It's called the Moo-Cow-Music: Pianist (demo pic below)

My mate, Fingers Faill, who is a guitarist (sorry to mention the 'G' word on a piano blog) sends emails to me from his iPod and it confuses me no end. Perhaps if it entails using his iPod he'll stop playing the guitar and take up the piano instead!     

Hey, I bought this poster on ebay at the weekend with some of the birthday money given to me by my friend, the cheerful Edith (who's also the best impersonator of a hamster ever seen! ). Thanks, Edith! It's advertising the wonderful humourist and pianist Victor Borge in his show at the Shaftesbury Theatre - that's in London. Don't know when this would have been, the styling looks like the 1950's to me, if anyone knows DO contact me and tell me, I'd be very grateful!

Victor Borge was an entire one-off and his humour still works today; here's an example of his funny version of the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (see my previous post for Tom & Jerry's Oscar-winning version of the same piece!).

If you enjoyed this I'll certainly be posting up more Victor Borge gems here so keep a look-out!!!