YouTube Recommendations

During the past two years, partially due to all my surgeries then COVID, I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos. Views are typically split between K-Pop music videos, clips of Korean variety shows, science/technology vlogs, and whatever random content recommended by the YouTube algorithm.

Here is my YouTube journey from last night:

• Season 9 episode 1 of I Can See Your Voice (Korea) was available online, so I downloaded and watched it. One of the tone-deaf contestants turned out to be a world-class violinist.
• I searched for her name on YouTube and found many videos.
• One of the videos was two Asian guys talking about a 12-year old prodigy. That turned out to be a TwoSet Violin video about Chloe Chua. Researching further, those two guys are professional violin players, and Chloe Chua is a violin child prodigy.
• Watched a few more of their videos, but this one caught my attention. In it, Chloe is supposed to be giving Brett and Eddy lessons on playing Paganiniana. I do not know if they are playing worse on purpose, but she is awesome.
• Here is the sheet music and performance by Hilary Hahn, another violin prodigy. This is supposed to be one of the most difficult pieces to play on violin.

• Watching all the notes fly by reminded me of another piece of music. I used to play trumpet from junior high though first year of college, then for a few more years while I was working. I am not that good. I can play most orchestral music but have problems with high or fast notes like 16th and 32nd notes. I also do not improvise well, so any jazz solos are usually pre-written out. Anyway, something like Paganiniana on the trumpet would be Variations on ‘Carnival of Venice‘ (for trumpet or cornet) by Jean-Baptiste Arban. He published The Arban Method for trumpets and cornets in 1864 and I have a copy of it (not the original of course), though I could not play anything in the book.
• Here is the piece played by Wynton Marsalis.

Chloe has a YouTube channel and there are several performances with a classical guitar that are great.