Xen

Well he did do Firebird before as a wee baby mushroom. Warhorse music and never been done before, a new piece has come to my attention-Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. And since I mentioned Liszt before, what about the piece Harmonies Du Soir? https://youtu.be/IPbuy1_H46w The part at around 5:30ish could work very well as step sequence.

Well Ballade 1 is almost 10 mins long. Chopin can also vary a bit depending on the pianist playing his pieces, since he was a fairly emotional composer himself. If Yuzu's team decide to further blend ballade 1 with some other of Chopin's Etudes, then we are going to get a very different ballade. As for seimei, now that I think about it, I'm not as against it. Personally, I think Yuzuru is the only male skater (maybe the only skater) who can pull off asian music. I was thinking that it would be awesome if he could skate to an asian warhorse music, so I actually tried to search for "asian warhorse" music-and came up empty! There were a few Umebayashi pieces that struck me as good for SP, but not LP. The closest I could get to one that was warhorse-like, and somewhat emotive, was "ambush from ten sides" which is a pipa (biwa) piece, that cannot easily be edited to fit. There is a slight irony with asian music and figure skating. Figure skating music needs climaxes, it needs to be emotive. But at least traditional chinese music (I can't say if it's the same for japanese music), the music is not suppose to evoke emotions. The highest class music is to be meditative, impressionistic, it's more "thinking music" rather than "feelings music." The lyrics (usually poems) are what accentuates any emotions involved.Then there is the pacing that Yuzuru himself mentioned before, with asian music being slower and hence harder to edit correctly and wrangle into a program. The fact that he managed to do that in round 1, and manage to evoke emotions with his performance, was what stunned me when I first saw Seimei 1.0. So if he does Seimei again, I think he would take on the challenge of bringing in more traditional instrumentation bits into his program, and do a program that only he could pull off. There is no one else right now who has the finesse in technique that could really do it justice. So yes, in that case, I could get behind Onmyoji music again, and it would be one heck of a program that no one could ever repeat.

Oh he'll be a good sport about it, and even compliment how well you timed his jump landings to the music. XD If the Seimei 2.0 was Troll Max, then I guess we can begin this thread anew? Though I am now thinking seriously about firebird....

Well I guess we could go Chopin-Cyberbird/new FS-Seimei EX....dear !lurker Yuzu, whereever you are, please make it happen? I kinda liked this thread....

I'm going to second the 5 quads. While TSL is taboo, there was an interview with Tracy, where she said Hanyu wanted to do back to back quads opening in FP. So first half is already 2. Then this year, figured he can backload 3 quads, so he'll probably try that. So yeah, 5 quads totally possible-wasn't he trying to pull that off this year? I'm also a bit skeptical about nathan being clean with 6-7 quads, even though this year he had that boot issue.

So with all this new Seimei talk, I guess we can start doing cuts of chopin and Seimei now...well at least that cuts down on workload, right? *i want new world symphony*

Seimei SP and Chopin LP? Perhaps we can have that?

Well it is Olympic season...why oh why did we expect chill?

The soundtrack has quite a bit more to it, there's even a violin +piano section here : https://youtu.be/2txSsJJ4vQo Yuzu could select from the more traditional instruments section of the OST. There's a section in the OST that's all shakuhachi, which could be beautiful if done correctly, though I can't seem to find it on youtube...

....well, at least it's not R&J, or NPD, or POTO, or Zigunerweisen...

4Lz//3A 4T3T I think might be it. It would land him somewhere in the middle of the BV pack. If he goes clean and gets the GOEs, he should be top 3 after SP without a significant gap between 1st-3rd. Then it'll come down to the FP. For the FP, I think he is capable of going clean. While Nathan might be going for 7 quads, from this season I'm tempted to say no man has yet to go squeaky clean with a 5 quad FP. Plus, Yuzuru himself can backload 3 of his quads in the LP, which would narrow the gap with a 5 quad program (most of Nathan's quads are also in the first half). And then if Yuzu skates, it'll come down to PCS, which he's perfectly capable of winning on...

And if he brings home the OGM, we can all listen to Beethoven's 9th.... I'm getting around to the idea of Chopin, I'm now just worried if he's going to be hounded by the pressure to beat his own records. Forgot where I read it, but he said somewhere that he cried after his record breaking Seimei, because suddenly it dawned on him the pressure to perform perfectly all the time (something like Michelle Kwan's pressure), and he was scared. Well, if he performs to Chopin Ballade 1, he's going straight for that pressure head-on...

It's a long weekend here, and he's been giving me heart attacks. Listening to the 1812 overture while reading the reactions to his Chopin FaOI SP, the cannons really hit it home....

Is this still off-season? Why does today not feel like off-season?

Yuzu, Javi and Pchan have it rough this season...they all open as vets vs. new quadster no?

So uh, about that FaOI thingy...and that Chopin is coming for us...maybe we can now concentrate our efforts on guessing which Chopin piece is coming our way, assuming he changes the music cuts? Any takers for Tritesse?

*slowly raises hand* Well Rostelecom isn't too far away from me...

Sorry if this is off topic. Is there any chance that we can have a separate thread in the COP-ernicus to geek out over techniques, body alignment and flexibility etc? As for landings, I could buy that good jumpers and clean techniques have similar landings across the board, ladies and gents alike. Free leg angle relative to skating leg would be fairly similar, and I would wager that knee bend would be similar (my guess is around 120 degrees, soft but not too deep). Arm position is another thing-I was always told to never hold my arms too wide apart when I land, otherwise it can end up being windmill arms and lead my back to fall into the outside edge. To stay back on topic, I tried to watch Nathan's jumps in 0.25 x speed, with a pencil to see where his body is in the air before he lands. He is no less straighter than Hanyu, so I'm curious if there's something to do with his unwrapping leg. The part of Nathan's jump landings that strike me as weird, is either he's not straightening his back enough, or he really does land too far forward on his toepicks (which would lead to the lack of flow in his exits), which his knee bends do not help.

I was not aware this pitch was possible after age 18...I hereby stand corrected...

I'm fine with the video. =) Actually I think Yuzu would be a good sport about these types of vids. Actually, it's surprising he hasn't trolled us yet...like opening with the Teletubbies theme and then break into PW (or Notte Stellata). If it were me, I wouldn't be able to resist the urge to troll...

I skate with glasses, will be getting contacts soon, since my glasses have a tendency to fly across the rink when I'm spinning. They are usually one child-in-hockey-skates away from being destroyed. Curious if it's due to the astigmatism or the nearsightedness, but I've tried skating without glasses, and the spatial balance feeling without them is very jarring. Yuzu does look nice in glasses though, professor Yuzuru that is...

The timing is good, very good. Not sure what to say....now try adding the French commentary while watching this.... Wonder what he would think if he knew we were doing gag programs for him...he's so serious about his skating.

I guess Yuzuru could do it for SP or for EX, but not free program. But Nathan Chen's skating style does not strike me as the type that would really match the "lightness" and "delight" that La Campanella requires.If Mai Mihara does it though, yes I can buy it. To me, La Campanella is a transitions crazy piece, with a lot of small little sneaky details that you need to be fastedious about. I think Nathan could potentially do it, but I don't see it yet in his skating from this year...at least it feels almost polar opposite of polovtsian dances. =( Leila Josefowicz -thank you for mentioning her. Listening to her playing and having an ear-gasm right now. =) What is your view about Bruch's violin concerto? But yeah, in terms of composers that come to mind, Yuzuru does make me think that the Russian giants would fit; was also thinking that Schubert might fit, and maybe some of the pieces of Liszt. @SuzyQ: Actually Holst's Jupiter might work for Yuzuru. It's a very regal piece. Though I might actually prefer the original ochestration, there are bits in the original ochestration that would allow a chroegraphic pause. And then a lot of brass that could highlight steq sequences and jump landings. The vocal version that Mao used, does lend more to spins and line extensions (spirals, ina bauers etc) more, but the original ochestration would match jumps more. As for vocalise, yes, I think he might be the only male skater I can think of right now, who can pull it off for exhibitions. =) Vocalise was something I wanted to skate to as a teenager when I started skating. If I close my eyes, I would imagine a lot of held extensions, spirals, ina bauers, all of which Yuzuru has in spades. What would be funny though, is if one of us actually guesses his music choice for the season correctly....

I wonder if it's even possible. Especially the piano version, there's just no way to cut the music down from the full length-it's just not La Campanella if you do so. So 2017-2018 might be the last season it could ever make it's way to skating for the piano version. Honestly, I think the pacing itself does not lend well to ladies, pairs or dance (it's not romantic enough), so that leaves men's singles. And then after 2017-2018 aren't they going to cut the men's to 4 mins too?

Saint Saens- Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Violin Concerto in B Minor ( the first movement has a really strong opening, but I'm not sure what to do with the ending). Then there's La Campanella by Paganini, though I really wonder if it would be too quick? The piano version is super quick at the ending. If anyone ever, ever does a performance to the piano version of La Campanella, and does it well, I'd probably die from awe, shock and happiness... it's one of my favorites.