fred: i hate bach

judy: bach is a genius

randy: i’m trying to eat dinner. why are you fighting?

judy: we’re not fighting he’s bragging about being stupid.

fred: bach is a bunch of scales unlike music.

randy: that’s fighting.

judy: you don’t get it.

fred: yes i do.

judy: you play piano?

fred: like a fish.

judy: whatever that means.

fred: swimmingly i play piano.

randy: cute.

judy: if you like dad jokes.

randy: food?

judy: in most piano music the left hand is like a bass player.

fred: like perch and halibut – bass. (winks)

judy: how did you get so funny?

fred: read a lot of dostoevsky.

judy: uh huh.

fred: left hand is a bass player, I know that’s not anything new.

judy: and have you seen how it often follows path of least resistance.

fred: how is that?

judy: duh open your eyes.

randy: stop fighting.

judy: you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen.

randy: you’re the one crusin’ for a bruisin’.

fred: you can lead a horse to water but can you make it drive a car.

randy: that’s not the correct-

fred: thanks randy.

judy: in the left hand it’s almost always single bass notes or octaves while the right hand tells the story, even if the left is chording the right is being melodic.

fred: true enough.

judy: if you go backwards and look at earlier piano literature the left hand is treated like an equal but over time people dilute it’s power over and over, like they don’t want to think too much.

randy: like language and everything.

judy: listen again to bach.

fred: it’s exercise music.

judy: whatever the right does the left does as well and the lines of movement are complicated for the fingers – almost all the time.

randy: just like language – earlier words have weird pronunciations and later things become spelled more and more phonetic and slang like? same thing.

fred: slang like?

randy: people writing boys b-o-y-z, or fuze guys or dostoevsky sometimes is spelled with Y instead of OE. there’s a million examples.

fred: it was always that way.

randy: no it wasn’t.

judy: bach was a musical mind unconcerned about easy solutions.

fred: and boring.

judy: for those without brains it’s very boring yes.

randy: i like him but i don’t play piano like you guys.

fred: like yuze guys.

judy: the point is he moved in various directions for reasons of musical taste vs. simplicity. he was playing what he heard because there’s no other explanation for the crazy moves his left hand does.

fred: you hurt my feelings when you say I have no brain.

judy: it’s hard to be a goldfish in the same tank with the same two fishes for four years.

fred: were we ever not goldfishes?

judy: we weren’t born to be pets trapped in a bowl.

randy: says who?

judy: this is it exactly. when bach played the piano was new it didn’t have a history of accepting the lowest common denominator. so he wrote equally for the left and right hands.

fred: you’re saying before we were in captivity we were daring and inclined to do things based on thinking things were limitless?

judy: more or less yes.

randy: but the tank is great. we get food at the same time each day.

judy: i guess if that’s all you want then that’s the way it goes. I’m just saying that bach came to his place with no history of short cuts and it’s interesting in that situation that he made up work that engages so much brain activity. He wasn’t interested in dumb jokes and lazy technique.

fred: and then he wrote the well tempered caviar?