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But remember: "... speed is not the goal ... speed is an emotion", as Lubomyr would (and does) say.

He is very funny and warm in person. I've been glad to know him over the last four years. Thanks!

Nice to see you here. My first thought is that you should try practicing this with your eyes closed and just imagining keeping your hand as closed as possible, and imagining a swinging wrist coming to its aid. Probably, when you stop visually focusing on it, you will realise your hands still have a lot of stretching-tension. All continuous music should be played with the eyes closed, though sometimes eyes-open is necessary when practicing a new motion. Some very general points that you might be missing: this keeping-the-hand-closed idea, with fingers loose and not in unnecessary tension, returning to the equilibrium position of the closed fist when possible, is tiring IF you are consciously forcing your fingers back to the hand, snapping and pulling them back. Now, I think that’s ok to do as a sort of training, so your hand understands the right shape, but ideally the fingers return to equilibrium quite naturally, in an unconscious and relaxed way. A swinging, flexible and *active* (raised) wrist and upper forearm can be very helpful in achieving this (especially for making larger runs along the keyboard without stretching your fingers); it may be that you’re not utilising your wrist, or that your hand is still attaining a tense, clawed position (clutching your fingers inwards, rather than letting them casually return to the palm)

But it’s worth mentioning: Lubomyr talked to me about having a closed hand for a very long time; I’ve been conscious of this for years, and trying to train my fingers to act in this way for years, but only more recently has it happened. It takes a good deal of patience and you can make the right movements and still find it tiring, as the body (or mind) is not yet fully ready. Now, as I wrote in my caption, my fingers will be in closed position even in day to day activity (they no longer prefer to be splayed) and I can feel a kind of springing sensation these days, each finger having some inner coil.

⁠@@him21016ok thanks for the tips. I will try this. I have never really tried to play with my eyes closed before so maybe that will help.

@@graysonmcdonald8Yeah, so I was lucky that I had already begun to play eyes-closed when I was studying some of Philip Glass’ music (the metamorphoses and Mad Rush aren’t a million miles away from continuous music, though still quite different), just because I randomly found it helpful, so when I started with Lubomyr’s music I already had this good habit. Getting a sense of the space around you is difficult at first (and at last: in Lubomyr’s arpegge motion, a complex mental perception of space is required) so I recommend testing it on some simple patterns (what Lubomyr might call “static-position”) such as doing a basic broken chord key change exercise, C-G-E-G-C-… C-A-E-A… C-A-F-A-… B-G-E-G-… B-D-G-D-… and so on, as you please, with either hand, just to get used to it. In general I found it helpful to train eyes-closed playing on pieces or exercises which don’t jump around much. “ Opening “ by Philip Glass is an excellent classical example of this, but of course I should recommend Lubomyr’s “meditations” which you can purchase from his webstore / direct email.

One reason it’s important is that in full-blown continuous music, both hands are simply doing way too much! The visual stimulus would be wildly confusing and your brain would default to focusing on all the wrong things (“and now I put *this* finger on *this* note *there*”, x 10 notes per second). It is also necessary to gain the right sense of peace

Hey Chenrui, how did you find me (in this poor, but unfortunately unique, little corner of the internet where you can hear Lubomyr's music played by someone who isn't him)? I am greatly amused that you got ASMR adverts on the side but that's got nothing to do with me. I can't monetise myself or control adverts, I don't think, until I reach 1000 subscribers (a long way off).

I think much of my older stuff here is quite sloppy but at least it shows some progression. The two/three most recent recordings I put out I'm quite pleased with, though

Got it - so the ads weren’t from you! So I should start with most recent videos? As for how I found you, I’ll answer you in two words: Lukey Pookie.

@@ChenruiZhang-p2m Yes, th-cam.com/video/53FWob1WAv8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Sstfns9elhogk5BV this in particular I think is the best thing I've uploaded. Lubomyr wrote the score specifically for me (though the piece had existed for years before, in his mind) and it is really very strenuous, I couldn't have played it just 6 months ago. Though, the professional recording of it is of course far better; he has a version for two pianos which is insanely beautiful. Lukey Pookie is undefeated

try and addd 3's etween the two's and then 7's between thr 17'sad fve between twelves.soon you can't count any more.

@@selfcorrected-Bobby I have no idea what this means !

@@him21016 see arpeggios as a street. as a musician you must be drunk, an stagger between them

Hi, glad you like it. These are all beginning exercises from Lubomyr Melnyk. Usually you can buy scores like that from his website: lubomyrmelnyk.com/ but recently there have been some server issues: alternatively you can email continuousmusic@gmail.com to ask him/his secretary for resources like this. You can also buy lessons and music tracks not available online, there.

The 22 Circular Etudes aren't, I don't think, available online for purchase anywhere. I know about them and have found them only by accident, a copy was on his table at one of his concerts and I just bought it then. However, you should be able to email: "continuousmusic at gmail dot com" and ask; he / his secretary monitor that email and he has many things for purchase which aren't listed online.

Thanks for your message. I have only played a few circular etudes so far but have found them to be (1) very instructive exercises for the physical control and strength (2) difficult to _really_ play properly. So I hope you can get access and enjoy them, but fair warning: they are much harder than the Meditations, and because of point (1) you want to be careful not to injure your hand by trying to go too fast before you're ready. Some of them are strenuous.

real

Yes, thanks! But it is also very strenuous to play if you're not ready for it / in the right state of mind. Lubomyr seriously cautioned me against overdoing it and straining my hand, and to be honest I think I might have slightly injured my left and right wrists playing this - though it felt amazing at the time.

Once upon a time it was easily done in the TH-cam editor, but they disabled this functionality (last I heard...). It's actually a massive chore for me to get the orientations right: the conversions from my phone to my laptop to an mp4 to TH-cam all perform mysterious flips. Before uploading this I tried to make it landscape, but my current video editing software screwed it up in quite a strange way - I just need to improve my setup. I guess integrating the right hand is bit of a broad topic. I don't think it's wise, yet, to make a tutorial for the exercise which I briefly played in this video.

It is highly recommend that developers look after their poor, fragile, infantile Windows users. Thusly can they focus on more important things, such as the nety fly.

Yeah, I’m on a dusty old iPhone right now. I’ll get a better setup someday..

Sounds good to me

also i hope you dont delete trivial questions though cause you know not everyone has privilege of capitalism to pay 100k to university for some piece of paper and sometimes you gotta ask stupid questions on the site.

cause physics stackexchange has gone downhill since they disallowed homework questions, like they assume we have at least 4 years of formal training before you ask your question otherwise it gets deleted, they mad

@@berlinisvictorious yeah I always get bad attitude on the physics stack. Literal non-homework well contextualised questions getting put down as homework. As for the other comment I never look down on ‘trivial’ questions, and yeah ik my privilege

You’ll get there one day Cremerse 🥺 Good thing meditations should be (initially) played kinda slowly.

💀💀 I have a secret admirer 🥺

!! Thanks

Hi! Very nice to hear from someone else who is looking at Lubomyr's music. I've been considering doing videos on how to play the meditations, so ok maybe soon I make one for Meditation 2-A... I can't really communicate any point over TH-cam messages.

th-cam.com/video/CLWDI-llPgc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=jMLOHe5nyTufzfK8&t=1076

its good

lies

@@cremerse1667 real bro

Thanks! It’s nice to hear from people also interested in this music. I’m considering doing tutorials on some of the meditations or other pieces too