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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:21 pm
  

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OK, I have no idea where to post this. I've searched the board manually and done searches with the search function and I can't find anything that references this. I SWEAR there was a scene in Alice's Restaurant where Arlo plays the piano in a piano class but either he can't read music or doesn't have the sheet music he's supposed to have for class so he just plays something he likes, instead. But I watched the movie, again, and I can't find it. I remember this from way, way back. Maybe before 1969. Heck, I dunno. Years don't seem to go together right cause at the time this thing happened, I was still living with my parents so that would have been around 1967 or 68, I think.

What happened next was that I emulated him and did the same thing in the university piano class I was in. I'm surprised I didn't get caught cause I played Light My Fire for an hour straight. LOL. :lol: And for a few more classes, too. I thought they would teach me to play the piano but everyone in class already knew how but I didn't. I could play by ear but not read piano music. Flute, yes, piano, no. But i am pretty darned sure that's not what Arlo was playing in the movie I saw. LOL! Or did I have too many of those botanical cigarettes and not see that at all? ROTFLOL!

Help!!!


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:47 am
  

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you played light my fire for an hour? that's pretty good!

it is strange you did not see the scene even after watching the movie again? i saw it some time in the late 80s and from what i remember seems like the students all sitting around playing their various tunes and there were headphones involved and the teacher was going around to hear each student (i don't remember if it was a plug or a switch involved with the headphones, but anyway) i am not sure what music anyone was playing but some of it (how i remember it) makes me think of something like peer gynt or some such which is probably wrong, but then he gets to arlo who is playing some sort of rag timey sounding thing (?) and the teacher is double taking and then get's all jacked up (seems like he yanked the headphones off arlo?) and says something like, "just who wrote that folk junk?" and arlo is all, "i did. i wrote it." next thing i know he is on his way out the classroom

something like that


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 5:51 pm
  

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agnes wrote:
you played light my fire for an hour? that's pretty good!

it is strange you did not see the scene even after watching the movie again? I saw it some time in the late 80s and from what i remember seems like the students all sitting around playing their various tunes and there were headphones involved and the teacher was going around to hear each student (i don't remember if it was a plug or a switch involved with the headphones, but anyway) i am not sure what music anyone was playing but some of it (how i remember it) makes me think of something like peer gynt or some such which is probably wrong, but then he gets to arlo who is playing some sort of rag timey sounding thing (?) and the teacher is double taking and then get's all jacked up (seems like he yanked the headphones off arlo?) and says something like, "just who wrote that folk junk?" and arlo is all, "i did. i wrote it." next thing i know he is on his way out the classroom

something like that


Yes, I played Light My Fire for an hour straight. That's a pretty long song in the first place if you are playing the full song, not the radio edit. And it took day after day after day, for probably an entire summer to learn it on piano, by ear. First I learned it on flute so I could go back and forth, without killing the record. LOL. My friend helped me some as he would play along with me. Heck we even played together over the phone with him on the line with me, working out the notes. I did all the bass with the left hand, the guitar and keyboard with the right hand. It was pretty cool. I used to play it in the university student center and at parties. I played the song everywhere I went. LOLOLOL! I loved playing it so it got me through class without being bored. Dang, I was embarrassed, though. Like I said, I thought they were going to teach me how to read piano music, especially bass clef. I still can't read bass clef and I guess I never will. Ha!

So, yes, that description of what was in the movie is pretty much what I remember, alright and more or less the same as my class except there were about 100 of us and the professor was down below in some sort of booth or whatever. This was like an auditorium with seating that went up as you went further back, height wise. There were rows and rows of us. Everyone had earphones or headsets on including the professor. We could only hear ourselves and he had a switch so he could tune in to each one of us, separately and listen. He usually would listen for a minute or two, then go help the student who he was listening to. I must have been banging away on the keys when he listened to me and didn't recognize what I was playing and it must have been satisfactory for him enough to not come to my piano or keyboard to help. Boy, would I have been yelled at, I imagine, if he had figured out what I was doing. :lol:

So, I am not crazy afterall and it really did happen. I just wonder why it's not in the versions I have watched on youtube. If I had the movie, it's been long lost, many years ago from moving all over the country.

I am pretty sure when I saw it, it was when my bf and I were visiting his parents in Memphis, TN for Thanksgiving and we went to the theater and saw it. :) We saw Easy Rider in Memphis, too. Whrew, that scared us up good! LOL


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:02 pm
  

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Dragonfly wrote:
I did all the bass with the left hand, the guitar and keyboard with the right hand.


are you talking about with using a synthesizer?


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:15 pm
  

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agnes wrote:
Dragonfly wrote:
I did all the bass with the left hand, the guitar and keyboard with the right hand.


are you talking about with using a synthesizer?


No, sometimes an upright piano, sometimes a grand piano and at school an organ. :oops: :) But sometimes, the whole thing on a C flute.


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:41 pm
  

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OK, like on here. Start at around 3:16 into the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deB_u-to-IE

You can hear 6 notes on the low end of the scale, repeating over and over and over. Da da da, da da da, da da da, da da da. I started with that, practiced it for weeks on end until I trained myself to be able to just let the left hand go and it would keep playing, no matter what the right hand was doing. ROTFLOL. Kinda like turning your arm and hand into a robot. LOL!! It was hard to do for me, hard to train myself to make that left hand keep going without paying attention to it while I was playing a completely different melody with the right hand and chords with the right, as well as single notes, depending on where I was in the song. Does that make sense? Does that sound weird? Heck, I dunno because other than messing around with pianos most of my life, I still never learned to read the sheet music for them. Only my trusty flute. :) Flute was my major. I started when I was 5 or 6 and kept going until and while I was in college. My mother and my brother were the piano players. :)

ETA: Start at 1:06. You can really hear it well, there. It repeats all through almost the entire song. I just made it work to repeat through all of the song!


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:13 am
  

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i was having trouble trying to interpret what you were saying. sorry about that.

so now i think that what i am to understand is that you are saying that you were playing on the piano with your left hand, the parts in the song that were played on bass? and playing on the piano with your right hand, you were playing the parts in the song that were played on guitar and keyboard? those notes. (?)

before i couldn't quite make sense of the sentence, but from a different perspective, i can see now how it would make perfect sense.

that was probably pretty neat to see and hear. and i love the sound of flute!


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:43 pm
  

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agnes wrote:
i was having trouble trying to interpret what you were saying. sorry about that.

so now i think that what i am to understand is that you are saying that you were playing on the piano with your left hand, the parts in the song that were played on bass? and playing on the piano with your right hand, you were playing the parts in the song that were played on guitar and keyboard? those notes. (?)

before i couldn't quite make sense of the sentence, but from a different perspective, i can see now how it would make perfect sense.

that was probably pretty neat to see and hear. and i love the sound of flute!


Sorry about not being clear. Sometimes I sorta talk backwards. I'm or I was dyslexic so I sometimes can't get my point across very well. But, yes, bass with the left hand, piano (Ray Manzarek's part) on the right as well as the guitar.

I don't know how cool that may have sounded or if it even did. I know people liked it but the only way I could have told is if it had been recorded and I could listen to it but that never happened.

I was told by my mom to pick an instrument at school. A bunch of the band kids were going from one classroom to another, letting everyone hear what their instruments sounded like. There were only about 5 or 6 kids and each with a different instrument. Flute sounded good to me so that's what I picked. Heck, I was probably 6 years old if that. They stuck me in school a year early. :lol:

I sure wish I had a copy of Alice's Restaurant with the part where Arlo is playing that piano with the head set on. Maybe someday, I can buy it again.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 5:59 pm
  

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it is puzzling why it would not be in what you have watched? i just went to you tube and clicked on the first one in the search and it is in there.

it starts a little after 5:30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP05C_agI3k

and i was right about the peer gynt thing!
it seemed like what i remembered but wasn't really positive. a sort of classic classical classic in stark contrast to what arlo was playing. haha


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 6:21 pm
  

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Thank you!!! Checking it out right now!


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:29 pm
  

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I found it and yea, that is sorta what I remember but I didn't remember the class was so small. My class was huge with somewhere between 75 to 100 students and the setting was more like a theater with us looking down at the instructor. The closest photo I can find of anything that resembles it at all is this.

Image

I remember the pianos and the color of them plus the instructor would go to people's pianos and work with them but he didn't come to mine. When he did that, I knew I could seriously rock out because he couldn't flip the switch to my piano and listen if he was sitting at someone else's piano. :D

I didn't stay in that class very long because I knew there was no way I was learning what I thought I would learn which was to play the piano by reading it on sheet music and knowing what I was doing. LOL. I knew I'd flunk that class so I stopped going. :lol:


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:42 am
  

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do you still have access to a piano? it doesn't seem terribly wrong to play it by ear?


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:28 pm
  

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No, I sure don't have access to one anymore. Heck, I should have kept the keyboard my ex pitched when he got rid of me. :lol: :lol: :lol:

He threw away a perfectly good Yamaha keyboard but I dug it out and gave it to a friend. I wasn't thinking!!! Rats. I had to sell that old upright, many, many, MANY years ago. I wish I still had one cause the urge to play and work that song back out is getting stronger and stronger. :wink:


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:53 pm
  

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maybe a cross between a keyboard and a flute?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEKzSW1pih8


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 9:58 pm
  

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At 1:04, he's doing it!! Hee hee!!!! But then he switches to just the piano part and doesn't play the guitar lead after the real keyboard part is over. Then he starts to switch back, again. I can see his left hand going - same fingering. He's not quite as elaborate with his chords, though. Looks and sounds like 2 notes instead of 3 but he's good at it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLV_pvVRePM


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