Piano Grade 1 result Pass

This is just a short post to let those lknow that I passed my Grade 1 piano exam with 110 marks. A respectable pass but nothing great. I think I'll have to postpone my booking for the Usher hall :)

My main problem is that I find it difficult to maintain a steady pulse and two hand co-ordination this is only going to get more difficult as time progresses. I am handicapped by not having a natural sense of rhythm which some people seem to have. I was never good at dancing, I don't buy the idea as some people seem to think that you either have it or you don't. I believe firmly that by training you can gradually improve. Although I do find trying to follow a metronome really tedious and boring. Obviously it's more difficult but I believe you can actually get there. I must have improved my sense of basic pulse from last time as I was able to do the hand clapping example without any problem whereas at my last resit. I was unable to do so.

I am now faced with a dilemma, as the ABRSM syllabus for grade 2 has changed but you are allowed to do the past syllabus for the next time round which would be in March. I have been studying the three pieces on and off and am reasonably confident about two of them, so I could put myself forward for the grade 2 exam but unless I get my rhythm sorted out then it would be marginal whether or not I pass. I will make the decision in the next two months or so

On another topic I want to make a few remarks about Duncan's comment to my last post that we don't know anything about the nature of dark matter or dark energy. That's not entirely true, we know their equations of state and also their ratios. Also we can use the Friedmann equations to predict the future expansion rate of the universe. In a way the situation is similar to the classical ideas of gravity, electromagnetic fields and entropy. It was never possible to get an idea of what these entities actually were however just like dark matter and dark energy their effects on other objects were able to be predicted and measured. To some extent it doesn't really matter that we don't know what dark energy or dark matter actually are because as inputs to cosmological models their effects on the universe can be calculated. Just as say knowing that the gravitational force between two bodies obeyed an inverse square law enabled planetary motions to be predicted. I would say this is more important, given the lack of experimental evidence, than a fruitless attempt to undestand the true nature given  the lack of experimental evidence as to the nature of dark matter or dark energy.

It seems to me that physics has made great strides in developing our understanding of nature works, without getting bogged down in trying to understand the actual nature of some of the important entities that it has used. I'll leave the speculation to those cleverer than me in the mean time I want to focus on the uses of physics which is more than enough to keep us busy for a long time.