Impressive? Really? I've seen better improv players in crappy bars playing for tips. Is this all it takes to make it onto one of those talent shows these days?

Vodka Zombie: He's 16. He's self-taught. HE LIVES IN A TOWN WITHOUT A PUB!

You people are farkin' heartless. I think he needs to win so he can move to a town that has a pub.

I see the Fark Hater Club™ is off to an early lead, but I'm with you.

Get that kid a houseboat!

I thought the word was "unibrow".

That's one impressive Australian Antonio Banderas

downstairs: Not impressive. Just pick a key and bang random notes in said key. Throw in some dramatic tempo changes. It impresses people, but its kinda stupid.

You have no idea what you're talking about. So you're saying I could pick a key -- say C major (all the white keys), and play random notes and it would sound good? I don't think so.

Do you even play piano? An instrument? Have ears?

/This guy was good for 16 and better than me when it comes to improv in front of an audience.

I'm in awe. I'm going to sit here and try to plunk out "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" again and hope not to feel too utterly inadequate.

Anyone else hear some Mike Tyson's Boxing in there?

Punch-out! I should say

Pretty good. I could listen for a few minutes, put a few quarters in the hat and continue on.

Far better than I could ever do and probably far better than the haters in this thread particularly at 16.

Yea! Him!

/hopes future Australian videos have subtitles

I'd say it's impressive in the way most dumb shiat on the Internet is impressive. Like those guys that shoot baskets from really far away.

The thing is that he probably has an intuitive talent for music that could really be developed if he received some training. After a year with decent teacher, he'd be more than a two-minute novelty act.

Ah Fark, the land where underachievers sit around and tell overachievers they suck.

Arkanaut: I thought the word was "unibrow".

Australians use the weirdest language.

root88: Ah Fark, the land where underachievers sit around and tell overachievers they suck.

Is there such thing as being an overachiever at underachieving?

Is everyone drinking hater-ade this morning?

I would like to see all those that made negative comments about his playing do what he's done at the age of 16 without any formal training....

Yep, didn't think so.

Could someone who knows music explain how that was necessarily improvised? Why couldn't that be a song he'd been playing for years? How can you tell the difference?

jiaxiaobo: Could someone who knows music explain how that was necessarily improvised? Why couldn't that be a song he'd been playing for years? How can you tell the difference?

You have a point really. I mean he could be a big fraud, wrote all of it and played it hundreds of times. I play the saxophone and have done improv stuff many times, but I can't write music to save my life. No patience for it.

Well, my pants were welling up watching that chick's eyes welling up.

He's definitely good. He's definitely got some talent. But I also agree with earlier posts in this thread. Any kid who spends half an hour on the piano can get to that level very easily. In fact, there are tons of kids under 10 years old who are training classical and much better than him. His improv is cool, but once you get to a certain level, improving in a key you're comfortable with isn't that tough. Long way to go before he's a Lang Lang / Li / Argerich / Powell / Peterson / etc.

I'm self-taught on the piano, starting at about age 12. At age 16 I could've easily done this. Anyone who's figured out enough to be able to "fake" an accompaniment based on a few chords can pretty much do it.

He's not bad, and I hope he keeps playing (and enjoying it), but I wouldn't really call it 'impressive'.

The derp is deep in this thread. There's more to music than being able to pound out scales for thirty minutes a day and play a few tunes mechanically precise. His composition blends multiple classic styles with ragtime, and whether he made it up on the spot or not (not the impressive part), his talent in executing it flawlessly and with such emotion and clarity of theme is impressive. I'm guessing all the people hating on it are jealous or ignorant of music.

When I saw the headline, I figured "young guy with a good rhythmic sense, and some finger facility, playing a gumboe of motor-rhythm styles, 99% on the white keys (i.e., practically diatonic)."

Self-taught or not, he's got some aptitude, and a natural fluidity in his fingers (it'd be easy for someone who does manual labor all the time--even a 16-year-old--to have really clunky and inflexible hands). But he never does any "crossing his thumb under"--something every pianist has got to learn to do sooner or later. If he was my student he'd have a little "unlearning" to do if we wanted to progress sooner, but no big deal.

So, I'm somewhere between the haters and the Very Impressed. Someone to show off on a local-type talent show?---sure. A national-class undiscovered talent, not so much.

Oh, and then there's the issue of playing electronic keyboards, with their relatively flyweight actions (on which it's easier to do the kind of florid stuff that he's doing in his right hand than on a "real" piano). Still, I don't feel that a minute or two of my life was wasted......good luck, mustache guy!

^^^^^^^
**gumbo** (of course)

kenny's mom:
Oh, and then there's the issue of playing electronic keyboards, with their relatively flyweight actions (on which it's easier to do the kind of florid stuff that he's doing in his right hand than on a "real" piano). Still, I don't feel that a minute or two of my life was wasted......good luck, mustache guy!

My kids' piano teacher thinks similarly, though the kids seem to do fine switching between our Yamaha digital piano and the "real thing", even for performances. The pianos that their teacher uses are out of tune in interestingly different ways every week. I'd like to find an excuse to get their teacher to play on our Yamaha, just to see what she thinks; it's sure as hell never out of tune. We have a Wm. Knabe square grand from the 1860s that I'm planning to do some work on. Perhaps when I pull out the action (keyboard) and if I strip the case off the digital piano, maybe I could slide it in there... ;)