Learn to Play! Piano

Dear Friends,

Rejoice! This month's Hard Taco offering is a fully self-guided song cycle for beginner pianists: "Learn to Play! Piano with Bremlov Stremsky Vol. 2." 

It features fifteen blessedly short songs, and I've compiled the sheet music into THIS BOOKLET, which is free to download. 

I've already let go of my dream of One Direction covering a Hard Taco song instead of the National Anthem at a professional soccer game. But this project gives me a new, humbler dream: That a human child could one day play a piano piece I wrote at a recital in their teacher's basement. If that happens, I will be happy forever. In fact, even imagining this possibility might be enough to make me happy forever.

Bremlov Stremsky Volume 2 is a sequel to a similar song cycle that I cobbled together many moons ago, back when I was a college freshman.  

Aside: I don't just mean many lunar cycles ago. I mean that since I started college, multiple protoplanetary disks have been captured by Earth's gravity and congealed from the surrounding gas and dust into nascent moons. Many of them.

The year was 19-Something, and I was sitting around with my roommate. Let's call him Josh. We were reminiscing about childhood piano lessons with some other riffraff who lived in our dorm. For the sake of simplicity, let's also call them Josh. Someone mentioned how beginner piano books often included lyrics. And that's when I knew: The Lord's plan for my month was to write and record a collection of half-original, half plagiarized piano/vocal duets, Bremlov Stremsky's Piano Lessons Volume 1! 

Okay, that's a really boring origin story. But you're going to love this part. Some of the lyrics for Bremlov Volume 1 were a bit... horribly problematic. But I think it's important to acknowledge growth. Bremlov Volume 2 doesn't include the word "Injuns." Yikes. Volume 2 was recorded with a real piano. And perhaps most importantly, Volume 2 does not directly rip off relatively unknown artists like J.S. Bach. (I told you, Volume 1 was many many moons ago.)

Some things, however, haven't changed. One of the original collaborators (let's call him Josh) was able to travel to Ann Arbor to lend his vocals ot the new tracks. And he sounds exactly like he did when he was 18, but without the "Hey ladies, I'm in an a smarmy cappella group so blah blah blah" attitude. 

Now print out that booklet, and get that kid in your life ready for his/her recital!

With warmest regards,

Zach