Piano juggling
Tuesday July 27, 2004 – 9:56 amMy mom sent me a video clip of a guy juggling balls onto a piano keyboard, playing all kinds of complicated melodies with chords and everything. I found a copy of the clip on the web over here if you want to check it out. As a musician and a juggler (former juggler? non-practicing juggler I guess) this was driving me crazy, I had to know if it was for real or not. I asked Harper but he wasn’t sure. My verdict is NO. He’s a great juggler but there’s no way on earth that the notes you hear out the speakers are corresponding to the same notes he’s hitting on the keyboard. Gotta be using a sequencer, and the balls must be just triggering the notes. Still… pretty amazing showmanship there, you gotta give him that much.
September 9th, 2004 at 10:35 pm
Well I have seen this video upwards of 20 times… and I can say without a doubt that this is fake. You will notice at about 1:05 he does 3 chords in a row… at the end of La Coceracha (spelling?) it goes like this Low, high, low. He hits high, low, high. and if that doesn’t sell you I have found another blunder… at 1:34 durring that song… (if you know the name of it PLEASE e-mail me at implantman@hotmail.com and subject the e-mail piano balls song) he does that part and he is supposed to hit 2 of the same note but they are abviouly like 4 keys apart. DOn’t get me wrong, he is one of the greatest showmen I have ever seen… how he leads you to believe he is rappy then whips out the ending in like 225 BPM tempo. But he does just have a Midi Keyboard. you load in what you want to play and you can press the same key again and again and it will play the song as if you were pressing the corrct keys. Well anyways good for him, he has made a mint out of his con. BUT there is one fella who acctualy can do it. His name is Dan Menendez and he was on Fox’s 30 seconds to fame. I have his video is at http://www.pianojuggler.com/DanMenendez1.wmv
I hope this clears up some confussion, and YES i do realize that i do have TOO much time on my hands when i am studying Piano Juggeing videos. Thanks fo reading.
-Hambone
September 28th, 2004 at 6:45 am
the 1st one is a fake, but so is the 2nd one. We’ve been looking at it a few times and in the 30 seconds version there’s not only a melody, but also a baseline. On a keyboard this can be done automatically but only if you’re playing and holding a chord. Just pressing one key is not enough for the keyboard to know which corresponding base to play.
Still cool though!
January 24th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
I agree. It’s an illusion. I did a google search to see if anyone else had caught on. I’ve seen 2 different guys do it, Menendez and the other guy. I play the piano by ear and they aren’t hitting the right notes(if it were a real keyboard). The impact of the ball on the keys just triggers the next note in the sequence. It’s still impressive how they programmed and memorized the notes. I think Menendez is a better showman. He doesn’t play so fast or so complicated. He fooled all my family and friends until I told them what the trick was. I knew that it would be pretty impossible to play a keyboard in such a way no mistakes, and I thought about those lightup keyboards for beginners. There is a mode in which no matter what key you strike, the right note sounds. You can hit the same key over and over and it plays the song for you. These guys CAN juggle very well though.