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Contracrostics

Greetings. I'm Contra, or Matt. Come join the study.

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##Hello! I'm happy you've decided to come by. I'm Contra, or Matt. I began this Twitch stream after some years away from the piano, and with this channel have spent a few years exploring lots of things, particularly the autographs of Chopin. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that we have made dozens of very important discoveries about Chopin through his autographs, many of which have gone mostly unremarked upon throughout history. I've played since I was 12. I won an international competition and had my orchestral debut at 16. I used to be very focused; I traveled all around the U.S. trying to find the best ideas and the best minds to talk about music with, living inside my car, being homeless, etc. whilst pursuing what was then my dream. I eventually got to perform all over the US, Sweden and Mexico, and was generally on my way. In 2004 I met my mentor and best friend, José Feghali. José had won the Cliburn Competition in '85 (probably the largest and most intense instrumentalist competition in the world at the time). While doing my Artist Diploma with him, we did a lot of cool and exciting projects, like pioneering the first HD streaming music classes between Julliard and TCU (before streaming was a thing) using one of the only Gigabit networks available to Universities at the time (In Abilene, Texas). In these first streams, the teacher would be, say, at Julliard or London and the student would be sending out 24-bit sound and HD video (compressed with Windows Media Encoder) from, say, Texas or out at the New World Symphony Hall. There were no programs that supported streaming this high amount of data throughput at the time, so we made a weekend out of it and cracked MS Conference XP to handle the necessary data throughput for our streams. Together, we produced and recorded dozens of albums. He taught me as a classical producer; my first solo-produced record of another classical artist got two Grammy nominations, thanks to Jose. Then José killed himself, and I couldn't approach music for many years. With the intensity of my grief I sensed life was about to fall apart in a big way, so I I left my piano at a friend's for storage and walked away. I spent most of my time after that homeless and on couches, while trying to find work in a different career. ANY different career. There were over 200 applications worth of attempts and unanimous rejections. There was a promising contract with the National Weather Service that I spent a year of my life working on, day and night. The device I was contracted to build would have helped us collect real and valid data regarding global warming, and it was designed, tested and ready for the first wave of manufacturing. Then, a certain presidency choked almost all the funding for science soon after the leadership change and my project died. No more lab floor to sleep on, no more doggie bath to bathe in behind the lab, homeless again. Music worked its way back into my life by being a last resort...again. Now though, it's become something quite different. Most of you know my former partner Misty. She offered me a place and space enough for the piano (in fact it took up all of the space). She wanted more community in her life, and since I had a crappy Rode shotgun mic and a webcam, I started this stream. I had previously followed my favorite game designer on Twitch (Jonathan Blow), and realized that streaming might be in the spirit of those first masterclasses that José and I set up years ago. I saw Jonathan talking to people about his work, working with chat and company on great projects, even some wildly ambitious ones. I thought that maybe if I used Twitch In a similar way, I could share and learn with people in that way too. Since I need the ability to be reclusive and quiet for long periods, outreach via the internet seemed to be the best way. For two years after that, I streamed almost every day, when I wasn't driving for Lyft. I was also in constant, excruciating pain and it was going untreated and unaddressed. There was much I had to grit my teeth through during those years, and the physical pain was the least of my worries. In spite of it, we accomplished a lot of things together as a community. As the stream was almost built, I had to take a period of indefinite leave. I had to solve the pain issue, and if I couldn't, I had to try to come to terms with the idea that maybe playing piano wasn't good for me, at the end of the day. So here we are. I took the year off and did a lot of work and study. The pain is 90% better, and I've given it some real time before coming back, to make sure I can handle it all. Well I can, and now I hope you get to enjoy the microphones and sound that you helped me to create. We were a good team. Toast yourselves, kick back and enjoy. You know who you are that helped me.
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On its surface, this is not a request stream. I will mostly be studying classical music and visiting with friends. There will be at-will forays into other genres and subjects. Pianists, let me know what you're learning and how it's going, I'd enjoy talking with you about music.
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I want to keep my stream ad-, hype- and disturbance-free. I can provide something better for all of you if I don't allow subscriptions. I allow for individual donations, but there will be no automatic alerts. You will have my private gratitude. The remaining possible ways of supporting the stream are: Crypto currency (best; see Crypto panel), [Streamlabs](https://streamlabs.com/contracrostics), or [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/contracrostics) .

Crypto

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Bitcoin can be sent to the wallet address in the UPC code, and most other tokens (ERC20, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, etc) can be sent to my Metamask wallet: 0xED6EB937fa5FB378F90D421EB9E60762d7d7724c
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#Dear friends, over the course of 4 years and with your help, the Renaissance Project is complete. For those who don't know, this project involved a complete rebuild of my audio setup and equipment, all of which had been lost around the time José died, and I walked away from music. This is the reason for the title of the project as well, which I don't believe I explained to anyone. It is here. The list is done. The wishes can be replaced by simple enjoyment now.
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...be hateful. ...be bigoted. ...be insincere.
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###Q: What kind of piano is that? A It's a Steinway Concert Grand, built in New York, 1894. That's not a typo, it really is 130 years old. According to Steinway, there are only 3 still 'alive' from this production, which was a 2-year 'proto' period for what became the standard 9-foot model today. ###Q: Do you teach? A: Yes. ###Q: Do you take requests? A: I will entertain ideas. The best way to get your music looked at is to be studying the thing yourself. I'd rather get into the nitty gritty with people than string pretty notes together. One of my favorite things to do is study music alongside others. Otherwise, I want to stick to music that challenges me and poses interesting problems that lend to good discussion. ###Q: Who tunes your piano? A: I do. ###Q: What kind of mic are you using? A: Currently two Shoeps MK4 cardioids on the piano and a Shure SM7B for voice. ###Q: Do you collaborate on projects? A: Almost never. ###Q: HAY STRIMMER PLAY MY SONG! A: nownownow?